Doctors make the worst patients

This week has proved hard for me. My medical degree has begun again after the Christmas break and lectures and now in full swing.
The subject matter - Cancer.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to be both doctor and patient in the risks and realities of cancer.
The way information is delivered to a medical student, thought to be unaffected by the subject, is in stark contrast to the ever optimistic delivery of information to a patient.

The unflinching way that pathologists explain what a dire condition cancer is, and how much worse it can be for those genetically predisposed, means I leave lectures feeling more than a little worse for wear.

Its not that I don't want to know; most of the things delivered in recent lectures have been things that I am already all too aware of. Its just the clinical and hard faced delivery that I am finding hard to stomach. 

So I grit my teeth and head off to another neoplasia lecture... hopeful that soon it will be over and we will be onto the next subject...however the whole term is focussed on death and dying.

So it may become less personal but I am doubtful that my course will become more cheery.

Oh the joys of being a medical student.