How To Start Blogging Again (For The Twenty-Second Time)

Hey kids! Can you guess which partly-famous ridiculously attractive blogger has tried to restart his blog more times than Donald Trump has insulted people while trying to become President? (Okay actually, I think Trump might have beat me on that one. The New York Times has compiled a list of 199 things Trump has insulted, including Great Britain, a Neil Young song, and a podium in the White House. --Ed.)

In all seriousness though. I've tried to restart the blog a few times since I started blogging less. This blog is actually ten years old this year* and used to be quite popular, even earning me a writing gig in The Guardian at one point. But as I explained in an earlier post, I stopped writing about trying to become a doctor - because I actually became a doctor.


Despite six years of medical school, it completely overwhelmed me. It was a complete shock to my system. Like Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, I struggled to find purpose and eventually surrendered, being content to just exist from day to day with no greater goal than to survive until the next morning. I'm not ashamed to say, I lost track of a lot more things in my life than just this blog, and I'm still paying the price to this day.

My sister, a wiser doctor than I, gave me one very good piece of advice during this tumult. "You have to force yourself to function," she told me before I started my junior doctor job. "Give yourself two months to get used to any posting, then force yourself to function like a normal human being. Go out. Meet friends. Watch movies. Don't let let it overwhelm you."

Wise words - but it took me years to learn them. And so here I am. Like Kanye West's bank account, my readership has dwindled to almost nothing, but I feel the itch to write again. 

Let's try this again, shall we?



*My first two thoughts on realising this:
1. Yay ten years!
2. OH GAWD I'M THAT OLD

The Best Advice For Medical Students Ever

Medical Student: We have our final exams next month! Do you have any last-minute advice for us? Anything you wish you could tell yourself just before you sat YOUR final exams?

Me: ...Sure. Gather round and come close, because I'm going to give you the best advice anyone will ever give you throughout your careers, and possibly your lives.

The students all gather together around me, their eager faces full of hope, their hungry eyes staring wide at me.

I lean forward and whisper softly, just loud enough for them to hear over the noise of the ward:

"Go to business school instead."

Why I Stopped Blogging

Okay. So I haven't exactly been blogging as frequently as I promised. (Understatement of the Year Award. --Editor) I've tried coming back here and there, and I've tried writing shorter posts instead, but the real reason I stopped blogging is a lot simpler. In fact, it's five words.

I became a real doctor.

Yes, after years of pretending to be a doctor in medical school, years of looking forward to finally putting "Dr" in front of my name and not being a piece of unwanted furniture on ward rounds, I actually graduated and got a real job. (If you hear a distant "thump", don't worry. It's just the sound of all my medical school professors fainting in shock. -- Ed.) I finally got my orientation, joined the workforce, and became responsible for  the lives of hundreds of patients who rely on me as their first line of defense against every illness known to mankind.

It scared the shit out of me.

How I feel every day. You may think I'm joking. I'm not.

To be honest, it completely overwhelmed me. For my entire first year, life was little more than work, eat and sleep. My already ridiculously poor time management skills withered to nothingness, I lost touch with friends and family, and I sometimes slept in the hospital to save travel time. (Yes kids! All the horror stories you heard when you first decided to do medicine? Totally true. MWAHAHA! Seriously, go to law school instead. --Ed.)

But the reason I started this blog is because I thought since my life is so full of misery, I might as well share that misery with other people and entertain them a little. So even while I was suffering, all these stories built up in the back of my mind, and it wasn't long before I felt the urge to write again. But then I remembered the second reason I stopped blogging:

I was scared of being discovered.

Anybody who's read this blog for a few years (that's like, three people now, I'm sure --Ed.) knows that I've lost fellow bloggers and friends who shut down their blogs because of pressure from work. And every doctor owes confidentiality to their patients. Even though I change details of all my patient stories on this blog so that none of them can be identified, I am not anonymous. I know patients' relatives who've googled my name and found this blog. And I'll admit it. I'm scared the same pressure that shut down other blogs might force me to close shop too.


But in the end the reason I'm writing this is the same reason I started this blog; the same reason anyone starts a blog or a Twitter account or even a Facebook note. I love to write. And working as a doctor gives you PLENTY of things to write about, even if they're just bad jokes about patients throwing up repeatedly all over their doctors' brand new Padini shirts. (Not that I'd know anything about that. Cough. --Ed.)

It's been over two years since I've been a real doctor. And how do I feel about it now?

It's still terrifying every day.

I'll Be Right Back (Again)

Yes folks, your prayers are answered! I AM NOT DEAD! (What's that you say? That's not what you prayed for? Well then if you DID think I was dead, why are you in the middle of celebrati-- *gets it* OHHHHH. Shaddap. --Editor)

Posts have been slow here, because I'm in the middle of preparing for a really big interview really soon. but I've queued up posts on my Facebook and Twitter feeds for the next 2 days. Some of my new material is actually funny (shocking right. --Ed.) and has gotten me more than the 2 likes I make my mom and my best friend put on all my posts! (Only kidding. My mom doesn't have Facebook. --Ed.)

So! For your usual dose of seizure-inducing Angry Medic humour, do go to my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter at @theangrymedic - I'm fast approaching 500 followers, and I promise I'll make you laugh. No really. Look at the jokes I came up with recently all by myself:

(Okay so I lied, I didn't come up with all that myself. I had a couple of extremely irritating patients who helped me out. --Ed.)

Have a couple of thought-provoking posts lined up so stick around. I'll be back Thursday - try not to miss me! (Oh who am I kidding, nobody misses me except my dog. And then only because she won't get her favourite dog biscuits without me around. She's such an ungrateful bitch. AHAHA see what I did there? Yes? No? Hi mom! --Editor)

Schizophrenia Jokes (Also It's Not Multiple Personality Disorder)

Let me preface this post with this warning: My life sucks nowadays. I wake up in the morning thinking "oh God not another new day". I go to sleep thinking "Yay, six whole hours of no one screwing with me". But I put on a happy face for my patients and a snarky face for my Twitter followers. Which leaves this blog as pretty much the only place I can really be myself. And today's one of those days when the whole weight of how much my life sucks is really pounding me in the face. 

So the last thing I need today is to see ONE smartass comment that totally pushes me over. To put it in context, here's the joke on my post I Haz A New Banner (Part Two) (in the italics under the photo):

Yes, I made a schizophrenia joke. Yes, it's a bad one. And YES, I FREAKING KNOW THAT SCHIZOPHRENIA IS NOT THE SAME AS MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER, OKAY? But it's a longstanding common misperception that it is, and in everyday humour, the two are taken to be the same. THIS IS NOT JUST ME; check out these jokes:

I'm schizophrenic and so am I.

National Schizophrenic's Convention: Anybody who's everybody will be there!

If a schizophrenic threatens suicide, is it declared a hostage situation?

I may be schizophrenic but at least I have each other.

Paranoid schizophrenic: Are you staring at us?

(all from Joke Buddha: Schizophrenic Jokes)

Hell, one blogger even started a collection of schizophrenic jokes. Here's a sample:

I've half a mind to go to that meeting on schizophrenia tonight.
 
Did you hear about the panto that was held in aid of the Schizophrenia Association? It descended into chaos when someone shouted "He's behind you!"

When is a man two men? When he is beside himself.
 
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.

So schizophrenia has always been portrayed as multiple personality disorder in the mass media, even though every medical student in diapers knows that's not the case. And I certainly am not above cracking the same jokes to make people smile.

Then this high-and-mighty Lord Psychiatrist dude comes and puts this comment on my above post:

Psychiatrist said...

As a supposed Cambridge Medical Graduate you should know better than thinking schizophrenia refers to split personalities that talk to one another.

Schizophrenia translates as "splintered mind" which unfortunately has meant that the whole world believes that it refers to people with multiple personalities. A more accurate interpretation of the nomenclature would be that individuals are splintered from reality, with manifestations of psychosis, delusional thought, neologisms, thought withdrawal/insertion/broadcasting and passivity. They do often get auditory hallucinations, sometimes even coming from a part of their body, but schizophrenics never believe that those voices are another personality within them.

Oh man. Oh MAN.

I realise I may have overreacted, but like I said, I'm having a very bad day. Just like everybody else. So this was my reply:

The Angry Medic 

Psychiatrist: Bitch please. I have a MA from Cambridge in Experimental Psychology. My Psych supervisor was Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, BAFTA-nominated father of modern autism and cousin to actor Sacha Baron-Cohen, and he described my dissertation on 'The Magnocellular Theory of Autism and Dyslexia' as "excellent". I could reel off the Schneiderian first-rank symptoms like a well-oiled engine after my first week of psych. So YES, I THINK I KNOW WHAT SCHIZOPHRENIA FREAKING IS.

However, as a supposed psychiatrist YOU should know that it is a common misconception that schizophrenia and MPD are the same thing, and jokes to that effect are so common they have become part of popular culture. So if you want to correct me, go shove your judgment up the arse of every single clown out there who has ever made the joke. Start by Googling 'schizophrenia jokes'. The first page itself will give YOU voices in your head.

If you need more proof, here is me correcting Adam Kay of physician musical duo Amateur Transplants on the same mistake over two weeks ago. I regret it now. He must have had the same resignation in his head at being shot down by a fellow physician WHO FREAKING WELL KNOWS that he suffered just as much as I did to pass his finals and he's making the joke for comedy value AND NOTHING ELSE. 

I hate, HATE it when people play the Cambridge card on me. Do you know what most doctors' reactions are when they find out I'm from Cambridge? Do you think they are filled with admiration and fall at my feet? No. Most of them immediately hate me, or think I'm an arrogant twat who thinks I'm God's gift to medicine and descended to Earth in a beam of light from Heaven with a Russian church choir singing freaking Carmina Burana in the background.  

Every time I make a mistake it's Cambridge this, Cambridge that.

"What do you mean, you couldn't take blood from her? Didn't they teach you that at Cambridge?"

"You've never done this procedure before? But I thought you went to Cambridge?"

"You can't handle this surgery by yourself? Are you sure you went to Cambridge?"

So if you think I walk around all day with a massive neon sign above my head saying "LOL I WENT TO CAMBRIDGE LOL" expecting people to fall at my feet and nurses to rip off their clothing at the very sight of me, think again. I never, EVER tell anyone I work with. I just say I went to Imperial College London and leave it at that.

What do you think? Was I too harsh, or am I justified? I've had a bad day.