So today is the Sabbath and I am on call on L&D. In fact this is the last possible call that students on my current rotation can take and somehow I am the only student here. Our school has said that we have the right to go to church as medical students and that our residents and attendings can’t keep us here but I think that rules like that are harder in practice. If I am on a team, and I have a duty on that team, and I pass of my duties to someone else who already has their own tasks to go to church which is great for my spiritual life but not an emergency, then I put more stress on the team. Some of my classmates have had no problems requesting the time off but it just doesn’t feel right to me. But to be honest, even when I have had time to go to church there are times where I am so tired that I just sleep in and watch the sermon online. For me my relationship with Christ is not very much dependent on my attending church but getting into the Word (Bible), reading some inspired works (E.G. White), and showing Christ’s love to others in service in the local projects surrounding Loma Linda. Not that my way is better in any way, but so far it has seemed to work, although I do wish that I could be more in depth with my Bible study. If anyone knows where I can find the SDA Bible Comentary for cheap let me know.
I had an intersesting talk with a student about whether God had a speciality in mind for us. Its an interesting question because it inherently implies that there are specialties that we can go into that may not be what God wants for us. I’ve thought about this alot and I don’t think it is cut and dry. I do think that God certainly has a plan for each one of our lives and that the knows us well enough to know what we would really excel doing, but He also gave us the power of choice. We can chose our destiny and our path, whether that be a good path or a bad path, but in terms of the speciality that I pursue, I think there are multiple good paths. Sure some may be better than others but I don’t think you will necessarily be going against God’s will (unless He specifically told you to go a certain way) by chosing one specialty over another. I usually hate talking about spiritual things and saying “I think” because our theology should come from the Bible but I haven’t really found much to back my thoughts up. What I do know is that I really need to evaluate my motives for chosing a specialty, because if my desire to pursue one or another is based upon greed, money, prestige (i.e.-the praise of man), and power then that is not God’s will. But if a specialty is chosen truly because I enjoy it, and I can serve God by doing it, nothing is wrong with that, but motives are certainly the key.
Personally I don’t feel particular motives are pushing me towards general surgery, urology, or orthopedics. All of those specialities are amazing for different reasons. I just need to figure out which field has patients and procedures that I would love waking up every day performing. And particularly I love kids, so I would be interested in which pediatric subdivision in each field would be worth pursuing in terms of types of cases and years it takes to get there. For example, to do pediatric surgeon through general surgery, I would need to do a 5 year residency, 2 years of research, then apply to a highly competitive fellowship that will take me 2 years to complete. To be a pediatric orthopedic surgeon I will need to do a 5 years residency and then 1 year of fellowship training without required research. To do pediatric urology I need to do a 5-6 year residency, then a 3 year pediatric fellowship. With my goal being missionary work, I don’t want to be training forever just to do it.
But besides that life isn’t terrible. I have the OBGYN shelf exam coming and I am certainly not ready, but such is life. I hope I can honor at least my surgery rotation this year. But right now I just need to buckle down and study. Happy Sabbath everyone!
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