my job as an intern (a “real” doctor, mind you) is awesome. i have the pleasure of sticking my finger up a stranger’s butthole and sticking a plastic tube into someone’s peehole. it’s funny comparing adults and pediatric trauma patients. pediatric trauma patients will do everything in their power to prevent someone doing a rectal or foley. i remember this one 14 year old guy started to cry, as if getting a rectal was like getting raped, and this would turn him gay for the rest of his life. he clenched his buttcheeks so hard he could have broken walnut shells.
that got me thinking… isn’t that what a normal person would do? it’s amazing to me how adults allow doctors to do all these things to them. they barely even protest. i wonder what their experience in the hospital has been like; they’re trauma victims, so they don’t necessarily have an extensive medical history. what is it about adulthood that makes them so resigned to let the doctors do things that a teenager would do anything to avoid? i’m pretty sure it’s not better understanding of what needs to be done, because, frankly, i don’t give my trauma patients that much credit. i think it has something to do with being constantly beat down by society. subclinical learned helplessness i think is ingrained in virtually every american citizen.
No comments:
Post a Comment