Shari Vaidya - Q3 Blog 10 - Like No… I Finna Be in the Pitt
It’s Thursday night, I just came home from Oakland, and it’s 9 P.M. (thanks a lot, mock trial). I should strip my suit, wash off my makeup, and take a long, hot shower…but my idea of unwinding is watching a depressed 50-year-old man perform surgery on a motorcycle crash victim! Yes, for the next month and a half, my after-school routine on Thursday is to spend two or more hours participating in glorified jury duty right after school. When I get home from the Alameda County Administration Building, I indulge in the Emmy-sweeping show The Pitt. Cue the fanfare.
The Pitt follows the daily lives of the residents, students, nurses, patients, and doctors who work and come to the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Its employees are always running on empty fuel (and benzodiazepines, but that's only for one guy). Still, they show up at the Pitt (which is the nickname for the center) to treat people, even if they are met with hostility. The major character in this show is…err, not exactly a character; say hello to post-pandemic American burnout. Within one day (which is an entire season, each episode is a different hour), TWO of the attending physicians need to be talked off a ledge. Each character is depressed or struggling in their own way; one is working on the day of his mentor’s death (whom he had to treat), one is in active addiction, and one gets punched in the face mid-shift!
The weight of burnout seems to follow us; we are meant to take care of a million different things while also having to take care of ourselves. But this is neither easy nor realistic. I mean, how am I supposed to study for four tests and get eight hours of sleep? But I think the takeaway is to keep showing up for both yourself and the people you love, no matter what. The work is hard and often mentally taxing (especially being an ER nurse/doctor…thank god I’m not going into medicine), but the result is what fuels the drive. While I might not be a doctor performing life-saving surgery daily (that’s my sister’s job), The Pitt seems to have a sense of relatability and taste that Grey’s Anatomy fails to grasp.
Coming home at 9 P.M. on a school night is astonishing—I know I wouldn’t be able to function after working for so long after school. This blog hits especially hard after I spent way too long trying to find out how to schedule my day for twenty-four hours on the AP contract thing and just kept ending up with twenty-six hours. Eight hours of sleep was a dream of my past self that I can’t seem to give up. My only point of reference for The Pitt is the other medical show House, which probably aren’t even remotely the same, but are both shows set in hospitals bustling with patients and stressed doctors. The concept of 24 episodes each for a different hour of the day representing the nonstop grind the doctors have to face is an interesting concept! Applying that to school, each week is a whole 35 episode season…well…that’s kind of terrible to think about.
ReplyDeleteEven if the burnout slowly accumulates after time, the sense of responsibility doesn’t diminish. Over the past few weeks I’ve thought “what if I just quit everything right now?” a little too many times for my liking. But everyone else is working just as hard, if not harder, it wouldn’t be right to just succumb to a selfish desire of a carefree life. After all, doctors and people like your sister have spent incredible amounts of time just to achieve the degree they need to help others, which is quite literally peak humanity.
Shari, I really enjoyed reading your blog, it’s a very relatable read and as someone who is a superfan for medical dramas your blog really spoke to me. However, as much as I enjoyed 99 percent of your blog, 1 percent I could not enjoy was your last sentence where you somehow placed The Pit over Grey’s Anatomy??? I respect all opinions of course and there is no shame in enjoying other medical drama’s, but how can you in good conscience put ANYTHING above Grey’s Anatomy!?! It was the first of its kind, the very inspiration for all medical dramas we watch today. Prime Meredith Grey was a DIVA, completely untouchable by any other medical drama character because she had it all. Excess of alcohol consumption, regret, suicide attempts, a mother with alzheimers, a dead husband AND boyfriend, a miscarriage, she was in a mass shooting, her entire family died, her best friend left her to go to Switzerland and her replacement best friend left her to go to Kansas, need I go on any further. Sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t get ragebaited. I hope you know it is all love. If you couldn’t tell I am a Grey’s Anatomy SUPERFAN I have shirts and posters and more shirts, there was a point in time where if you recited any line to me from the first 16 seasons I could tell you exactly who said it and what the context was and what the very next line was (jobless I know but what does a middle schooler do with all his freetime yk). As for the rest of your content, I agree burnout is VERY real. We have to take care of ourselves, and weigh our mental health against the sacrifice of sleep and happiness that is controlled and dictated by colleges. I’m not saying give up entirely in the name of mental health, but we all need to find that balance.
ReplyDeleteHi, Shari. I find it very interesting that this show places each episode in hour intervals! I’ve never heard of a show like that before. On the topic of burnout, I do think sleeping 8 hours is a dream (no pun intended) of the past. Regardless, there is no shortage of great medical shows and movies out there. I think they can be a great way for someone planning to go into the medical field to see the reality of what their everyday life could be (even if the shows aren’t perfectly realistic). You mentioned your sister performs life saving surgery daily. Wow! I’ve seen a few videos here and there of actual surgery and I think it’s beyond insane. While I know your sister has gone through much more desensitization than I have, it’s hard for me to not be creeped out by the plethora of blood, tissue, veins, organs, etc. Some of my friends want to grow up to become surgeons too, and I have a deep sense of admiration for those who dedicate their lives in that capacity to help others. After all, a single mistake or decision can result in you being responsible for someone’s death. And yes, I know surgeons have a plethora of training, blah, blah, but it’s still baffling to me because the surgeon obviously (...hopefully) isn’t going to intentionally perform malpractice or make a mistake. That’s the whole point of a mistake; not intended. It’s crazy to think they have to basically be flawless in their profession.
ReplyDelete