The Stages of Internship

The stage of Elation
Final year exams just got over. Results declared, you find out by god knows a stroke of luck that you cleared all 4 subjects. And now you’re ready to unleash your ‘knowledge’ and ‘expertise’ on poor unsuspecting people. But with the results, you have also acquired a false and rather alarming sense of new found confidence. I mean, you can actually call yourself Dr something. Seems like the end of a long, winded, rocky and slippery path. But you wont realize the steep descent until you actually wake up after the concussion that you get on falling or rather tumbling down. Anyway, you come back from the ‘well deserved’ vacation, and with all the enthusiasm that only a newbie intern has, get your name tag with the doctor prefix on the very first day, wear the steth like it’s a diamond chain, and walk into the hospital with your head high high up in the air, looking down on the poor 8th semesters, forgetting that you were in their place just a few months ago. Lol. You get this feeling that you’re ready to handle everything. Poor poor you. Because in exactly one day, this ecstatic and elated state will disappear, melt, and drift away into the next stage

The Stage of Denial and Anger
You don’t want to believe it. That this is the kind of work that you get to do. Collecting reports, writing orders, and running around the hospital. Measuring blood pressures, and pulses. Monitoring like your life depended on someone else’s vitals. You’re so angry that you’re made to do irrelevant and mostly clerical work. Typing discharge summaries. You don’t see the point. No one does. You ask yourself, what exactly am I learning? You try and give your pg angry stares when he asks you to do something that you think is inconsequential. Try to keep your head high up, wanting to believe that what you do actually makes a difference. This stage usually lasts for about 2 or 3 weeks. And then all the emotion just dissipates. Because there is nothing that you can do about it. Nothing really.

The Stage of Depression
This is the bad part. Lasts for more than a month or two. That’s when you feel like a total ass, a total loser, incapable of doing anything, even thinking. You feel like a machine, a robot, that was made to order, to do things that no one else wants to do, that is always at someone’s beck and call, operated by remote control. You hate waking up in the morning, you don’t want to do anything else other than lie down in the bed, and count sheep. You stop eating, drinking, and wish you stopped living as well. I personally went on an iced lemon tea diet. For 3 weeks. But the good part is I lost weight :P when you close your eyes to sleep at night, all that you’d be able to see is rolls and rolls of white cotton and guaze, and a lonely bottle of betadine. There’s no company either, coz all your friends are depressed as well. There is no escape. That’s when you decide to change professions. You wish you had majored in history, or literature. Whatever. Anything but this. But then this too shall pass.

Stage of Acceptance
This is the last stage, when everything around you suddenly becomes unreal. You learn to dissociate yourself from the surroundings. Its like watching a movie, or watching the whole thing happen from a few feet above the ground. Insensitive to pain and all other emotions, anaesthetized with a drug called Internship. That’s a beautiful feeling, though, because no one gets any response from you. If they shout at you, its their energy that is being wasted, coz you will be at that level high above the ground, where it will sound like someone is playing violins and showering roses on your head. But you have to be fore warned. Because this is also the stage when you begin to accept dirty work so easily, that you ask for it, even if they don’t give it to you. That’s what I did yesterday, offered to hold a 30 year old well built man’s edematous leg for a surgery that took almost 5 hours. They were only too willing to let me do that. And when I wasn’t holding the leg, I was compressing his leg, giving pressure, or whatever they want to call that crap. And I fell asleep. I woke up because I almost fell down. That’s when you know nothing else matters. Lol. But this is the best stage by far, because you are laughing at everything. You are not you anymore. You are something else. Nothing can touch you. You have gone beyond what is euphemized as internship. Its like attaining nirvana.
Ps: This is not intended to discourage future interns, but if you think you’ll be doing something great, just a warning sorts, so you wont be extremely disappointed later.