200 days of psychiatry

Warning! This post is very old and may contain information or opinions that are no longer valid or embarrassing.

I have spent almost 200 days in the Psychiatry department as a visiting resident. I didn't finish residency, I am far from it. But I felt today an urge to blog and quickly write without much thinking..

If you have been following this blog, I used to update you infrequently about my personal matters and then I suddenly disappeared. With only few posts.

I got sucked in a black (or rather a rabbit) hole called the Ain Shams University Institute of Psychiatry.

Let me say that I am having the most amazing and frustrating experience of my lifetime. If not the most important to me professionally, if wouldn't commit suicide or choose another career. Aside from stress and the frustrations I having due to catastrophic social and recreational losses I am experiencing.

I think I have mastered many skills related to the professional role of a psychiatrist and learned a lot about it as a science and medicine. Yet I have constant feeling that I don't know enough and that I can polish and tweak my current skills and there is a huge mountain of knowledge and skills to learn.

I also found myself having to get lots of my work done by assholes. Shit loads of assholes. Doctors, nurses, workers, patient families and from every one I get in contact with. Those who lie, who don't want to work, who think psychiatric patients are crazy aggressive lunatics.

Me being overly diplomatic and pathologically non-aggressive I have trouble most trouble with assholes who want to warm their asses People who lie and argue to keep their asses on the chair warm and sweaty. And they are a lot. I am an asshole my self I almost always expect that the person is decent person with sound judgement and will do his work without hesitation. But this have rarely been the case.

I thought that I could bring with me lots of small initiatives to this place. However, I have been locked in a loop that impairs creativity A catch-22 one. Or rather a double-bind one for the sake of psycho-babbling.

I have seen the most amazing psychotic patients. I enjoyed every moment of helping them, if the rubbish I have been doing was of any help. I need to extend this help to other forms of support yet time is very limited.

Enough for now, would write more .. I hope.