posted July 04, 2013 08:20 AM            

It was quite an adventure! I think it is true what they say, that sometimes you don't choose your career, it chooses you. That is the case with me, also with my mentor. We both have Jupiter conjunct Uranus, I think maybe that's why. I was actually preparing to be a child psychiatrist. It was the most awesome, perfect, wonderful, special career in the whole wide world for me. But like 2 weeks before I was supposed to choose a specialty, they announced there weren't any positions in child psychiatry in the city I wanted to move. I could have gone to a different city, I was considering it, but for a second there I told myself maybe this is a sign. In the last 10-15 years, that year was the only one with ZERO positions in child psy. I've done my summer practice in plastic surgery while I was in med school. I thought it was a beautiful, elegant specialty but intimidating as hell. Plus in my country, you had to have really good scores to nail plastics (like top 3-4 in the country), which I didn't think it would be possible for me. Plastics was my first love but I always considered it out of reach. Child psy was much more accessible, pretty much all I had to do to get in was to show up. So I sort of made a pact that if there was any position available for my score in plastics, it was meant for me. I took the last position in the city I wanted to move in. So methinks it was totally fate hehe.

As a resident, I had a pretty good position, thanks to Jup in the 10th. I worked with the previous head of the department and now my mentor is the new one. There's a ton of work to do, times when you work more than 36 hours straight, times when you have your breakfast at 6 PM or don't have a second to use the restroom until then. Emergencies are the best! I think we're all adrenaline junkies in disguise lol. I used to love complicated cases, burn patients with a not so good prognosis, made me show my stubborn Aries side and fight with all I had to see them through. I lost 5 patients until now, 4 of them due to extensive burns. Cancer patients also get to me, especially because we have mostly skin cancers here and even though you take it out, you leave that person disfigured for life. Reconstructive surgery is truly awesome. I think this is where true surgical talent comes out, because you have to imagine the flap in its tiniest 3D details before you make the first cut. My mentor is one of those very talented people so I was lucky to get to work with him. I remember a couple or cases, those I fought the hardest for. Truth is, it is a very rewarding specialty. Many of them are, but in this case you not only get to save someone's life, you also try to improve their quality of life as much as you can. We're still very much behind, there were times when we didn't have antibiotics, sutures or syringes, but still we managed somehow. Some of us even do advanced research, even with our limited resources. A colleague of mine is trying to come up with a method of increasing nerve regeneration with stem cells. The satisfaction of a successful case is even bigger because it was obtained sort of against the odds.

After 5 years of plastics, I can say it is definitely a versatile specialty, it leaves room for both structure and creativity. It has low mortality rates, which tends to matter a lot in the long run, and allows you the possibility to go rogue (private practice). Aesthetics and mesotherapy are quite lucrative. The major downfall, for me, was that I had to put in long hours since the beginning, I didn't have holidays or week-ends and I lost a lot of nights writing scientific papers, doing on-calls or supervising critical patients (or worrying about them). Last year was the first time that I actually went away on vacation, in 4 years.

posted July 04, 2013 02:21 PM            

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Hera: Really? That's interesting! I sort of saw you more in an artistic/creative field for some reason (tho plastics is art, if you ask me). I guess it greatly depends on where you intend to practice. Here in the 3rd world is not the same as Canada lol. But if you wanna know my story..

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posted July 04, 2013 03:51 PM            

Medschool lasted 6 years, my residency another 6.. I started at 19 and I'm gonna finish next year at 31. It is hard work. If you're not really sure about it, maybe you should consider other options. It's very time consuming and demanding. You have to read all the time, sometimes insane amounts of information (the good news is that it's mostly logical or it gets that way in the senior years lol), you're forced to sacrifice your family and your loved ones (and they usually reproach you) and I imagine it costs a lot too over there (here it is actually still free - we have a lot of foreign students here because of that, though they do have to pay an annual fee and some of the schools are/used to be quite decent). The books and materials are also quite expensive, but you can always improvise a bit (in med school) or find them online cheaper.

posted July 04, 2013 06:11 PM            

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Hera: Medschool lasted 6 years, my residency another 6.. I started at 19 and I'm gonna finish next year at 31. It is hard work. If you're not really sure about it, maybe you should consider other options. It's very time consuming and demanding. You have to read all the time, sometimes insane amounts of information (the good news is that it's mostly logical or it gets that way in the senior years lol), you're forced to sacrifice your family and your loved ones (and they usually reproach you) and I imagine it costs a lot too over there (here it is actually still free - we have a lot of foreign students here because of that, though they do have to pay an annual fee and some of the schools are/used to be quite decent). The books and materials are also quite expensive, but you can always improvise a bit (in med school) or find them online cheaper.

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Hm...I feel I could do it, I'd just have to really really push myself. The forsaking people and leaving for my own adventures is something I tend to do anyways, so really all reading reseaching and essaying will take the bulk of the effort Where do you live? Free is good, but here because I'm a Native American my band can get the government to pay for my schooling (or at least I'm sure it can, I dunno about med school in specific).

I think I might have to do it when my progressions become all fire, about age 31 to 33. I'll have Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter progressed into Sagittarius, progressed Moon in Aries, and Mars will still be in Leo at the tail end.

Then at age 43, I become super earth...(Sun/Merc in Cap, Mars/Moon/AC in Virgo) so maybe that'll be the time I'll have graduated and buckled down to work for the next 20 years, earning lots of money and building towards a great life.

posted July 05, 2013 04:16 PM            

I came from an upper middle class family (until like four years ago when my dad decided he wanted to be young again) and that's what was done with me - soccer, art, French, the violin.

So basically, I want to really provide for and support my possible children.

posted July 12, 2013 02:51 PM            

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Originally posted by somethingexcellent:
WEEEEELL I would like maybe 3 or 4 children. I kind of want to have twins, and I'm expecting it a little bit too because they run in my dad's side. But definitely at least one daughter. See, I want to stick my children in sports and put them in lessons for instruments and art and languages. I won't push them with an iron fist, but I want to get them out there so they can socialise and so they can learn what they like.

I came from an upper middle class family (until like four years ago when my dad decided he wanted to be young again) and that's what was done with me - soccer, art, French, the violin.

So basically, I want to really provide for and support my possible children.

Plastic surgeon is like the very tippy top. I'm also contemplating becoming a teacher, a university professor, or a dentist. But chef first! I might take an apprenticeship overseas somewhere.

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Wow! I'm sort of the same! Though I suspect if you were a woman you'd limit it to 2 kids lol. That's how many I want. And yeahhh, TWINS! 5th house in Gemini and my grandma had 'em (though they died in the womb). It sounds really lovely, I hope you'll get your happy family!

posted July 13, 2013 01:22 AM            

Who cares how everybody does it? You should dance to your own rhythm! Plus, I can think of a few successful actors that started later. Success is sometimes something you grow into. I know a dr in my country that is a plastic surgeon and has dedicated his life to microsurgery, he was pretty good at it but not excellent. He never thought he'd do nose jobs, avoided them like the plague (truth be told, I also think the nose is probably the hardest to get right). Until one day when he decided to try his hand at it, at 50+. He is now the BEST in the country.