Overcoming Self-Doubt on the Journey to Becoming a Doctor. #443 Part 4

Let us know what you like , what you don't like about the show and , ultimately , let us know who's winning these arguments , because I need to know that I'm beating Renee in these debates . Run the tape .

Not unsettling in a , you know , you ever notice that an orthopedic surgeon never writes to me and says yo like I know I'm like waiting for orthopedic surgeons to be like why are you always hating on us ?

So I have a question have you , and how often ever questioned if you were capable of becoming a doctor ? Have you questioned what type of doctor you wanted to be ? Specialty and integrity wise ? You understood why you were doing it , but have you just felt out of place at times ? I felt that way the last time I was in the OR observing .

I just felt like I'm overstepping , overstepping my capabilities , overstepping their boundaries in the way . Just wondering have you felt that ? How did you overcome it ? As always , thank you for being a great platform that really wants to hear from your audience and being transparent .

I also want to thank Niamh for coming up with this episode and show and the show is amazing . It doesn't say that why do you have Dr Renee on the show ? She seems to be a drag on the show .

I have had those questions in the past , but I never questioned whether or not I was actually going to become a doctor , and part of that is because I felt like shoot . If other people could do it , why can't I do ?

You know , one school I got into and that was it , and then I would probably just try to get through , hang on and try to graduate and that is not what happened .

Anyway , we're walking through , we're walking through um , this here don't you hate what people say ?

You know , school's about to start and this guy kept going oh man , I'm gonna just fail out , I'm gonna just fail out . And he just kept saying it over and over and over again as we're walking through the building and , mind you , we didn't really know each other that well just yet .

So I turned to him and I was like dude , why don't you just drop out already ?

I made some big mistakes . I didn't talk to people about it and when I didn't get in , there was a lot of soul searching that I had to do and a lot of embarrassment that was self-imposed . Like nobody was laughing at me throughout the entire process . Nobody was pointing at me that you didn't get in the mix . It was all . It was all me .

And I was like I didn't want to tell my parents . But eventually they were like , hey , man , like that money we gave you for for that application , what the hell happened ? I was like , oh shit , I got to tell them Right . And uh , you know , I was like , yeah , I didn't get in .

And , um , that was a very difficult time because during those couple of months , you know , I graduated from from school , from college . Now I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do so I went and I worked at the sports authority , which doesn't exist anymore , so I was selling anything from Jordans to basketball hoops to whatever it may be .

I was selling that . Then I worked at CompUSA and the entire time in my mind , while I was selling all these different things , even my sister , nadine Suarez , she tried to get me a job at I think she tried to get me a job at AT&T .

And they say , hey , listen , we have this opportunity where you can become what's called a graduate assistant , where you in essence are a coach for whatever sport . So I was a coach for track and cross country and what they do is they'll give you a stipend but then they fully , completely pay for all of your education , Right ?

So if you need to take additional classes , I'm like , boom , that's what I need . So I kind of talked it over with my parents and , you know , just kind of said , I'll go back and do that because it had to be better than me just working at the sports authority or CompUSA , right ?

And I just didn't tell anybody that I planned on reapplying because I was just embarrassed . But long story short , that was a big struggle there . I reached out to my mentor at the time and I couldn't get in touch with that person also .

So I don't know what was going on with that person during that time , but I couldn't get in touch with him to kind of discuss certain things . That's a different subject actually . We should talk about that . Like helping your mentees in the good times and helping them in the good in the bad times also .

So I figured it out eventually and I decided to kind of just be a bit more strategic with how I was applying to medical school . And I specifically remember like it was during winter break and I had keys to the track and field office Everybody's gone and there was a big snowstorm on campus .

And I just remember , every day I would just wake up in the morning and I would go and walk through the snow to the office where they had a print , a printer , a fax , they had the legal paper and they had the really nice stock paper . And I remember just like hoping to goodness , like I'm going to here's my personal statement , I'm going to fold it up .

I just remember getting paper cuts and folding it up and I remember licking in them all and putting a stamp on them and then going to the mailbox and just hoping that they open it and that they , you know , let me in . This is like remember , this is like 2001 , 2002 .

and .

And you know , slowly but surely , the interview started coming in , and even then there was doubt , and then I got my first acceptance , then I got my second acceptance , and then I got my third acceptance .

And I just want to just let you know that , like during those two years though not only this doesn't work for everybody , but during those two years , all of that uncertainty , all of that not knowing what to do really made me hungry .

Not knowing what to do really made me hungry and it got me to the point where , as Renee knows , I'm extremely competitive , right . And once I got in I was like yo , now that I'm here , I'm knocking this out the door , right .

It wasn't hard for me at all , it was just oh , I know I get this . Like I've seen all of this stuff before the anatomy and all that stuff . This is just memorization and this is repeat and this is just recycled over and over and over again . But this is not organic chemistry , this is not like physical chemistry . This is not like physics .

Like there is some physics , it's sprinkled in , but this is stuff that I really could understand .

What the key is is can I show up every day , go to class , and then , when I come home , you go to class and then , when I come home , you know , eat something real quick , and then just review everything over and over and over and over , and after a while I was like I got this , I got this he was very good in med school .

Come on yo , you know what I'm saying ? Bad , right In Brooklyn , got an office in his , in his basement . Like who doesn't want that type of life ? Right For real , for real . So for me I was like , oh yeah , like I want to go to school and I'll be an OB doc .

But my first mentoring experience , like with an actual doctor , was a surgeon who was a trauma surgeon and I was like , oh , this life is great . Well , excuse me , what he does is great . But I said , you know what , once I get in , like let me just kind of stick to what really the inspiration that got me through here , which was OB .

So yeah , she'll tell you . I was like the first year representative for the OB guy club and then I thought I was going to go into OB like first two years , up until I did my family medicine rotation and I started doing a lot of these well-woman checks and I was like hell he would come in .

Yes , and actually my first gynecologist ever was , um , a male um , and I always thought I'm like , how do you guys come in and do this every day and they're still like you have a wife at home and you still go home and you still look at her the same , because you never know what you're getting that day .

I wasn't good at it , I was better than you , you probably were . I found the medicine boring . I found it so utterly boring so that when we would sit for rounds and you know , then they would pimp the students and ask you know what ? I don't know , you had a fever for five days . Like , what is that ? I don't know ? Give him some tussin' .

Yeah , boy , let that tussin' get in there . Boy , If you run out of tussin' , put some water in the jar , shake it up . Mo' tussin' , Mo' tussin' .

. But I did . I struggled a lot because after that rotation , that rotation was in the summer or , excuse me , it was in the winter , was actually in the dead of winter , I think we it was like February or March and it was my third year .

At the end of your third year is really when you should be , you know , starting to look at what residency programs you're going to apply to . Well , my OB rotation was literally in what ? June ? Yeah , it was in June , which is essentially the last rotation of your third year .

So I went through all of the specialties and I was like man , the specialty I thought I was going to love , I absolutely hey , I don't want to do this . And now I don't even know what kind of doctor I want to be and I was hell bent that I did not want to do OB .

So , going into my OB rotation , I remember I used to tell him I don't know what I'm going to do , I know I'm not going to like OB , it's the last thing , I just don't know what I'm going to do and eventually got into my OB rotation After a week of that , I was like , oh wow .

What I didn't realize about myself at that time was that I really liked to work with my hands , and that's what pediatrics was missing for me . It didn't allow me an opportunity to work with my hands , it didn't allow me versatility .

You know , in the day , you know so you were in the hospital pretty much all day , or if you were in clinic , you were in clinic all day and then that that was just it . But there was no surgery , there were hardly any procedures , there was nothing . And I didn't realize about myself at that time that that's what I really loved and that's what OB gave me .

And that's when I started realizing , you know , that I wanted to be an OB .

But as far as integrity , man , let me tell you something If you are a person with integrity , you are going to have to hold on really tight to it , because there are people in medicine you know , colleagues , attendings alike who will make you question whether or not this is a profession where everyone has integrity , because not everyone does , because I have seen

things , even in residency , that I'm like wow , like that , right , there is egregious .

You know , like if a patient , for example , it's like you're seeing a patient and you know that the patient needs something , but for whatever reason , maybe the patient doesn't have any resources to get that thing , and so you come out of the room and you're talking with your attending to let them know what you discussed with the patient , what your exam was , and

now you start talking about the social issue that is going to prevent that patient from getting the care that they need , and the attending is like you're not their social worker . What are you worried about that for ?

Maybe there may be an overzealous surgical tech or nurse who's just kind of really going out of their way to make sure that you either know how to scrub or know that you don't , you know , cause anything to be contaminated , or you know they're just in their feelings and they just want to . You know , kind of shine on someone .

Like I've gone through all three of those types of experiences where I felt really uncomfortable for those three separate things . Or there's an asshole surgeon who just wants to take advantage of medical students and just pimp the hell out of them or , you know , just make them feel just extremely uncomfortable while they're there .

I've experienced all of that stuff where I've questioned like man , like can I make it in the operating room ?

But I pushed on and I could always see myself actually doing the operations that I was like , oh yeah , like this is just a rite of passage at this point , right , I just know that at this point , like what I'm learning from this asshole surgeon I won't ever do when I become , you know , a surgeon on my end , you know a surgeon on my end .

And then , even in residency , like there's a point where you're like man , like can I actually do this on my own ? But what you realize most , if not all residencies , they teach you all the skills that you need in order to become an extremely good surgeon .

It really is up to you and I think we talked about this a couple of episodes ago , about you know how everybody in essence is 99% the same . There's just this 1% or even less than 1% . That's not a big difference . That's what I expressed . But actually , renee made a really big point in saying , actually that 0.1% is actually a really big difference .

That's the stuff that matters . That's the stuff that makes the difference between you as a surgeon individually or as a doctor individually .

You know , getting a patient to open up to you and tell you things that they couldn't tell any other professional , versus just being closed off and you know you're not being able to get what you need to get to offer really good care .

There's Hispanic folk there , there's African-Americans , there's Africans , there's Caribbean , there's Native Americans all in the program . So it's just kind of more of like OK , like we can do this . But then it's like well , can I actually learn enough to do this on my own ? That's what I went through for the most part .

But , you know , the point of you wanting to be a doctor is not so that it's so intuitive that you know that you wouldn't even have to go to medical school to learn anything .

That's the point of medical school , right , is that you enter in a realm that you are completely unfamiliar with and eventually you learn the ways of the wild , right , like , you just learn it . So you're going to be uncomfortable , you're going to feel out of place , you're going to be standing in places that you shouldn't be .

Someone's going to move you , right , you're going to touch something that you should not touch , you know , especially in the operating room , and somebody might get pissed at you and be like , oh , I just scrubbed the whole thing . Like , now we got to start all over those things . You know those things are going to happen .

You're going to get woozy in the OR some of you , right , like my . Well , it wasn't my first surgery , but my first day of my surgery rotation , I remember I ate a huge breakfast .

It wasn't the first time I had been in surgery before , because I had done that as a pre-med , but that day I had eaten a big breakfast and I think everything just went to my stomach Because as soon as we started and it was great about 10 minutes in I was like , oh , something ain't right and I had to back away . And I had to back away .

You know , I had to back away . I was scrubbed in , I had to back away and just kind of , you know , catch myself before I passed out in the OR and then after that I was fine , right . But you have people who do like full on , pass out in the OR because they just don't like the sight of blood .

And , yes , if , even if you don't like the sight of blood , you can still be a doctor . So you know , just yeah .

You'll have to go through the process of practicing and overstepping a bunch of times and realizing where your place is and go through it , you just realize like there's , you can't get yourself out of that pain right , like you have to just kind of see it , experience it , so that when you get , you know , to the other side no-transcript crouch down and stuff like

. I hate that type of advice , me too um , because it's just teaching you to kind of take or be . It's teaching you to , it's setting you up to be taken advantage of that's how I feel they want you to be small . Yeah , you know what I'm saying and for me it's just like look , just like you're going to make mistakes .

You're going to learn from it and just know that the majority of mistakes that you make are just mistakes Like they're not because you set out to like hurt someone . So if someone is yelling at you or if someone is like over responding , that's usually that person's issue . Just remember that . Exactly that person's issue .

He didn't hear the beginning of the thing , but then he would blame me for whatever was said at the tail end and I'm like that's where you get it from .

They have a superiority complex where they just feel like , well , I got to always be the biggest person in the room and in order to do that I got to pound on pretty much everybody in there . But you'll notice that these same people , they're people that they will never pound on , they will never step to .

You know , to just understand that if you are in the presence of someone like that , you're probably in the presence of someone who isn't a very good person , but that has no reflection on you at all .

Um , just remember that that's not the kind of leader you want to be but you use it as an example like of what not to be so at the the end of the day , just keep that in mind .

. Is there anything else on this topic ? This episode has gotten long in the teeth , man Sheesh .

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