Alive.

But, @ what cost?

I don’t trust (most) people in medicine (pun sold separately).

I wouldn’t even trust myself if I were a doctor.

A career I could excel at, but would inevitably hate working.

As a generalist, the path of medicine is already a distant memory of confabulation, fictitious and unrealised.

A passion, borderline unhealthy obsession, for all knowledge, is incompatible with specialisation, which demands a singular focus, isolating the impertinent in favour of narrowing down the search.

Research brightens the sun and makes the brain matter pinker rather than greyer.

But, praxis, on the other hand…

If it was told that the medical industry profits from discreetly making the sick sicker, would the claim be too bold?

In STEM, I gravitate towards the binary digits, wave functions and general arithmetic of mathematics. This is what the ‘M’ represents.

However, recently, upon a mental whisper of the acronym, the M had been translated to, or rather replaced with, Medicine.

I had to type out each unabbreviated word, consecutively, in the Safari search bar to be reminded of Mathematics.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Medicine was the prescription that would be of the longest duration for me, in spite of my ambivalence towards the profession.

Although, it would still be likely that my sector remains in writing. A capable and coveted wordsmith of case studies, spreadsheets and other technical drudgery.

Eerily observant and concerningly detached.

Exposed and eager to the bloody acts of autopsy theatre.

Indulging those reflexive musings of allowing the scalpel to lose purchase from sobbing skin.

Slipping slowly, but surely, into a syncope, uncertain of whether or not I’ll awake again, human over vegetable.

Hoping, with absurd humour, that the blood flows with a brighter red.

The red of ink striking through those redundant zeros of terminal student debt.