Are You An Only Child?

I miss working. I miss the hospital. I miss patients giving me quizzical glances on days when I'm tired and out of it. I even miss the - no, don't say it - discharge summaries.

I was thinking about how patients and sometimes nurses would sometimes smile at me and be generally compliant, but would then ask me in a very patronizing way at the end of my history-taking, "Are you an only child?" It's amusing to think about that now, with my sister terrorizing me on and off. I guess it was the fact that in an effort to be polite I never really yelled at them when I first met them and would ask a detailed history without the brusque, efficient manner that they were used to. It probably also had to do with the fact that on admission days and post-admission day pre-rounding, I invariably looked frazzled, but they assumed that I was a sheltered only child.

It really used to bother me - the fact that even as a doctor I was perceived as a child - but I suppose that while the white coat gives you authority it doesn't change who you are completely. Assuming that persona perhaps comes with a little more practice and a thickening of the skin.

When I finally do work again, either in this country or the US of A, I guess I'll have to do something to seem a little older.

Anyways, first Step 1.