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Pre-Terminal Blues
I'm leaving for Scotland in a week, and I have rather mixed feelings about it.
It's the culmination of several years of hard work (and a lot of waiting around), and I did match into the only speciality I wanted, psych. That being said, the prospect of leaving behind a rather comfortable, sheltered life is daunting to say the least, it's been easy for me to coast by; med school takes forever, and even when I was working, it felt more like a prelude to my "actual" professional career rather than something I had to take seriously.
The money didn't matter. I had little in the way of expenses and I lived with my family anyway. I just needed something to keep me occupied while I put my nose to the grindstone, or more productively, buried in textbooks. I never really felt I had to be an adult, as weird as that might sound.
That's about to change. It has to, when I'm crossing several oceans and a continent to find my own way, a stranger in a strange land, the diaspora of extended family rather far for comfort.
It's been a tumultuous time. For the longest time, shifting to the UK was always a problem for the future. I had exams after all, a seemingly interminable number of them. Even when I knocked them down like bowling pins and was informed I'd matched, I felt several months of euphoria from having my efforts be rewarded, and that's long worn off, with me acutely aware that time and distance are going to get in the way of the people and places I hold dear.
I won't really miss India. I'll miss the people I love in it. It's not the worst place to live, if you have money that is. Far from the best. Still, the UK represents an upgrade/side-grade, and I did have to enter training at some point, or forever feel like I'm suffocated by the shadow of giants.
I'll miss my dogs, one of them is turning ten and I won't be here for his birthday. I'm going to miss coming back home after a long day (and night) and feeling the warmth burst out of my chest when I see them waiting for me, tails a-wagging. There isn't much you can say to them to make them understand that you're going away for a long time. Possibly forever. Almost certainly longer than one of them might live. It hurts me more than it hurts them, but half of the pain is being told that the last time I was in the UK for several months, they'd always laid down by my bed or next to the stairs, waiting for my return. They'll be waiting a long time, this time.
Family? Somehow easier yet harder. My grandpa is 95. I can see the cognitive decline slowly hollow out the man I loved. His memory is no longer as tack-sharp as I recalled. He usually forgets when I'm about to leave and I remind him every other day. I listen to his long stories, both personal and anecdotes from an even longer career, and I don't interrupt, even when it's a reprise of what he's just told me yesterday. Holding his hand and sitting by his side is an opportunity drawing from an achingly finite and ever shrinking pool.
My parents will keep. I'll make sure my mom keeps on taking her Ozempic, mild GI side-effects are worth it if it potentially saves her a decade or more of her life, or at least her liver. They're doctors, and still note quite at the age where I have to seriously worry about them, they'll keep. Indians look to their own, I'm not worried, as much as I'll miss them.
My younger brother? He's going to be fine. He's made it through most of med school and while I won't be around to lose hair and pop Ritalin so I can coax him through his exams, my parents are more than capable of the same. The number of doctors in my household will rise as quickly as it fell. Cheeky bastard is stealing my gaming PC, I paid a ridiculous amount for the setup, but while I could pry out the parts with the highest $/kilo, I'm content to let him have it. My old GTX 1070 was a trooper, but he can have my slightly newer RTX 3070, though I've left off dusting my PC for a while as the price he's going to have to pay when scavenging the parts. I'll still miss him, I pity single children, the only reason they're not more lonely is that they don't really see what they're missing out on.
I'll be okay myself. Or so I hope. Any difficulties I face are done willingly, I don't have to face even a tenth of the privation or hardship the older generations in my family had to. They didn't put a silver spoon in my mouth, but it was at least anodized, and I never went hungry.
Still, it's a lot to tackle. Mostly because the NHS and the UK training schemes suck. It's hard to settle in when you have to shift shop every six months, and my first placement is a hospital in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. To give you an idea of how isolated it is, trying to navigate there with Google Maps shows an estimate of 40 minutes of walking and 38 minutes by public transport, from a prospective rental in the nearest village.
Queer isn't it? I thought so too, and I ended up double-checking. Google, in it's infinite wisdom, suggests I walk for 38 minutes to the nearest bus stop.
Which is on the hospital premises.
And from there, I board the bus that'll take me to the very distant second stop, on the other side of the hospital.
Thanks.
Anyway, this means I'll have to buy a car, and I'm still a greenhorn when it comes to driving. If I choose to rent in the bigger city, it's going to be a long commute on a highway, and I'll have to drive a ton even if I end up renting closer as mentioned, assuming I want to do things.
Even living by my lonesome seems scary. I'll be truly alone, no family or friends (at least till I make some at work), though, with the universe being nice for once, I did meet a certain someone who doesn't live all that far away. Let's see how that works out.
It'll probably get better after my initial placement. The second one is actually in a town worth the name, but six months is a long time, for all that time flies by regardless of how much fun you're having.
So much to do. So little time left to do it. The anxiety makes even an otherwise much needed month of lounging about at home seem like I'm burning precious time. I'll see if I can coax my elderly dog into clambering onto my tiny bed, even if that leaves little room for me. I need a hug, and I need to know that things will be okay.
They probably will be. Right?
It's interesting to read your perspective on family relationships. I couldn't stand to be around my family by the time I was 17 and went away to college, never to return. My remaining grandfather, a similar age to yours, has always been a classic holier-than-thou ignorant religious prick and I also come from an eastern culture where filial piety is THE virtue of all virtues, and as a result everybody bent over backwards to kiss his ass and not upset him. I can't even imagine a universe where I would be in your shoes and missing my grandfather at all. I actively dread every time I have to go to my mother's house to visit him and the rest of my family.
All of that to say, you are lucky to have a family that you will actually miss when you are away from them. In that sense "everything will be okay" is already your reality. The material circumstances will come and go, but being able to carry that kind of family in your heart is already the endgame ideal. You already won, just enjoy the ride.
Good luck to you in Scotland!
It wasn't until I was significantly older that I understood that you can't take a happy, healthy and loving family for granted, and I'm sorry yours didn't live up to your expectations.
My grandpa is a far better man and doctor than I can hope to be. Our cultures aren't that far apart, though filial piety isn't quite as uber alles, but nobody wishes to upset him because he's an absolute sweetheart and they'd feel terrible about hurting him haha.
It's certainly too late to expect your family to get better, but I can only hope that when it's time for you to start your own, they look back at you as fondly as I do mine. You know the things not to do, after all.
Thank you. That's a touching way to put it. My family loves me, I'm largely safe from financial privation and I have a decent career ahead till the AIs put me out of business, I occasionally forget that I'm a very lucky person in many regards.
As long as I stay away from the haggis, I'm sure I'll have a good time haha. Good luck to you wherever you are!
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Do you have a significant other? Is she coming with you? Loneliness is one of the biggest problems for immigrants.
I was initially supposed to move to the UK with my ex before she failed her exam and our relationship fell apart. I'm better off for it, she, in conjunction with work and exams, was leaving me stressed and burned out. Still, it did make the prospect of moving significantly less harrowing when there's two people to plan and commiserate with each other, or to keep each other's foibles in check.
Thankfully, through the power of online dating, I did meet someone who to my immense surprise doesn't live all that far away from the places I'll be working, though she's doing her PhD and we would have to travel quite a bit to catch up on weekends, at least till I move on to my next placement. Fingers crossed that works out 🤞.
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You don't need a car unless you're getting it for other reasons. The UK is very friendly towards biking and your daily trip can probably be seen as a 30-40 minute bike each way which isn't too bad if you're only doing it for 6 months (a total of 120 working days). It substitutes in for your daily exercise too.
You might be able to pull that off in the more urban parts of England, but I only pray that anyone who tries biking in Scottish autumn and winter, when it's going from constant horizontal rain and fog to snow, ends up in an ER that's not at my hospital. If they did, I'd probably be called in for a psych evaluation.
It's really not practical at all, and I'll inevitably need a car at some point for both the sake of work and convenience.
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Have you considered bringing your dog(s) with you to the UK?
It's not really feasible, I'll be working rather irregular hours, shifting every 6 months, and I don't think I'll be able to wrangle a large dog or two all by myself, especially when I'm finding my own feet there.
Further, it would be a little bit cruel, they've spent their entire lives here, and while they certainly love me the most in my family, they do love and are loved by the others in my household. My younger dog might be able to adapt, but the older one has hip dysplasia and a decade is no joke for a German Shepherd.
As far as I'm concerned, getting a dog for myself can wait till I'm done with my training, in a permanent relationship, and have firmly entrenched myself in a geographic location. Still, something to look forward to, a house isn't quite a home without a dog.
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Good times. Commutes can be good for the soul. Like anything really that can otherwise seem tedious or difficult. Also driving is fun, get a car you like. I like convertibles.
As someone who has done the leaving home thing at least twice and whose only tether now is one aunt, an estranged brother, and a few good friends with whom physical distance is really irrelevant, I understand the reflectiveness. Still technology now makes getting in touch real-time even by video trivially easy. I just deleted a longish paragraph where I talked about the old days but no one wants to read that shit. Hug that dog.
I dream about a nice secondhand sedan, a convertible is probably ill-advised in Scottish weather haha.
I wonder when I'll enjoy it, right now I have few misconceptions about my skills on the road and thus an appropriate amount of anxiety. I'm doing extra classes even after I've acquired my license, but I'm still far from confident. Maybe it'll be easier in a country that has more civilized drivers with a passing acquaintance with the rules of the road, or at least lower levels of congestion. I presume once I'm there, sooner or later, I'll be able to enjoy the much vaunted Scottish countryside to my heart's content.
Let's get you back to the old age home gramps ;)
Nah, I'd actually like to hear what it was like back in the day, I imagine relocation was a far bigger deal when the internet and smartphones weren't as ubiquitous. I presume you moved to Japan a good while back, and that's certainly a culture shock and a half a dozen. I speak the language, understand Scottish accents just find, and Google Maps, leaving aside questionable recommendations, does mean it's very unlikely I be utterly lost and stranded.
I will certainly keep in touch, though I know that voice and video calls aren't a good substitute for in-person comms for me, it certainly didn't quell the homesickness last time I was away.
He's being hugged so hard his ribs creak and his chest aches. Or maybe that's just me.
At age 22, I joined the US Peace Corps and moved to southern Africa and lived in a village of about 500 which was 145 km off any paved road. Dry, bright, intense heat, and surprisingly cold in winter (July, etc.) Everyone there knew my name, which isn't George. There was only power from around 8am-5pm except when they forgot to buy diesel for the generator (which was often.) There was sometimes no water because whoever forgot to buy diesel for the borehole pump. There was only one phone at the nearby school, which I wasn't allowed to use except emergencies for some reason. There was no radio except AM sometimes at night, and the only English radio was Voice of America when that came on. And this was in 1992 so there was no Internet to speak of. For entertainment I read Dostoevsky or whatever. They sent us Newsweek every month, but it was about two weeks out of date. I remember taking a chair out of my sitting room and putting it out in my yard and drinking vodka and watching satellites among the vastly increased number of stars in a place so remote. I did a bit of writing. I drew pictures. The 19-year old nanny of the woman who lived behind me liked to dance topless at night in my last six months there. My nemeses were camel spiders who would come out at night, and about which I have many horror stories. Once I killed with a shovel a couple of puff adders on the volleyball pitch (which was essentially just a bunch of sand). In Christmas vacations (December, so hot in the southern hemisphere) when my PCV acquaintances were out rambling around in Madagascar or Johannesburg, I would sit like the introvert I was in my house with with the windows open and listen to the villagers a kilometer off singing traditional songs that everyone knew except me. You could see the light from the bonfires and whatever. I took up smoking, and drank a good bit of beer, and read by candlelight. When I went anywhere far, I had to hitchhike. I have a lot of bizarre stories about that as well, in some of them I should have died. Anyway when I left my US home to go to Africa I was leaving friends but the girl I loved didn't love me back, we had all just finished university and people were going their own ways, and I figured it was time to GTFO. It was, too. Three years, I was gone. Japan came a lot later.
Great story.
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Really, don't sweat the driving. I recently returned from a road trip that went all over Scotland and found all the drivers to be very patient and courteous. It even rubbed off on the other obvious tourists.
That's reassuring, while it isn't quite Mad Max where I live, traffic laws that don't have stiff fines attached to them are taken more as polite suggestions.
Luckily for me, there's a motor training school close to where I'll be renting, and given that I have to acquire an UK license eventually, I'll show up there and plead with them to help get me further up to snuff haha.
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If it's any consolation (it's not) you'll be too busy to angst!
My first placement doesn't have an A&E, so I can only presume it's going to be quite quiet as hospitals go. Mostly outpatient work and I suspect that anyone particularly critical would be taken somewhere else entirely.
Of course, I wouldn't be complaining about an easy start, but that's still speculation and I might well be swamped with work. I can't imagine the rain and lack of sunlight helps with the local mood!
Outpatient in many specialties is harder and busier, because you may end up having 20 minute appointments back to back from 8am-5pm with little chance to chart (which is certainly more burdensome with psych).
Granted I don't know how much the UK changes this.
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