One of the things about medicine is, for every one subject that you read about, you find three more that you need to revise. I thought I needed to know a bit more about renal failure, so I cracked open the textbooks and had a look. Everything was peachy until I came to the "causes" section and noticed that I knew nothing about prostatic hypertrophy, and then the "treatment" section where antibiotic subdivisions popped up again. I flipped to the corresponding chapters, but lo and behold, these contained more new questions than old answers. I could have spent all day traipsing from page to page, making the previous section make sense by filling in the gaps with info from the new one.
This phenomenon leads to the misconception of thinking that you know less than you do. I continuously find whole fields of knowledge that I know nothing about, but that doesn't mean that I don't know anything about medicine. I know a hell of a lot more about most things than I did when I started, when I couldn't point to a spleen if it put on some shoes and tapdanced on my tits. But there will always be three things to learn for every one thing I already know, that's life. Medicine is massive. The secret is learning enough to pass exams, keep your superiors happy, and most importantly to keep yourself content in the knowledge that you are a competent, respected doctor.
That in mind, I've had my relaxing weekend at home and now I'm back to get stuck into the schedule again. You can't keep going indefinitely working 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, sometimes you need to come up for air. Now I've had a break I can fully reabsorb myself in the devilishly complex and addictive world of medicine, and see how much I info I can soak up before I need another breather.
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