Pediatrics

Blogger ate my last post about pediatrics. I'll give a brief summary, but suffice to say pediatrics is not on my list of potential careers. which surprised me a bit. And made me realize how good it is that i had the chance to do this rotation before applying to the match. I've worked with kids for so many years, i just assumed that i'd go in that direction, but being a pediatrician is very different from all the other kid work that i've done.

1. Kids loathe and fear doctors. (and then scream and struggle and vomit in your general direction)
2. Parents are terrified when their kids are sick. (think cornered mama bears)
3. Daycares are the origin of whatever is "going around" (and then they bring it to the hospital...)

But the part that i really couldn't handle is that pediatricians cure things. Which is just not a place i can approach healing from. Deep down, i know that we are all dying. And that all medicine is really just a way to make suffering less, and to help us enjoy what little time we have on the planet. All medicine is different flavours of palliative care. Even in pediatrics. None of us can be cured of our mortality, or even of our sin. We've all got both, programmed right into us from the get go.

Some pediatricians are attracted to the field because children can be seen as blameless in their illness, innocent, and curable. When really, i don't think they are any of those things. Or, conversely, that adults who are ill are sick of their own doing, and don't deserve compassion because they brought it on themselves by smoking or eating badly or not exercising or having sex or not wearing sunscreen or whatever.

Sick people are just sick, illness is not punishment. And nobody gets ill because they deserve it.

So, no pediatrics for me. (As a residency that is; i'm hardly lacking in kid time in my real life, or likely in whatever field i eventually choose).