Forensic psychiatry

We were camping last week when the news broke about the decapitation in Manitoba so I was surprised when my physician friend mentioned it off hand. He is pushing me to consider specializing in forensic psychiatry since this guy clearly needs help and the courts will need a hand understanding why he lost it. I'm not sure I have the gumption to entire that field, but I couldn't agree more that one should come in to help out. This is a horrific event and I'm interested in seeing how it plays out.

PETA has compared this event to animal slaughter and I'm not sure how to take that. While I can see why they consider the murder analogous to the mass meat industry, it's way too soon. There's been a lot that PETA has done that I have found to be tacky, but this is the worst campaign yet.

When I brought this up with an extremely paranoid religious person I know, I was told that it was the result of satanism. It's not a psychiatric illness, the devil made him do it. I guess that saves me several months of studying next year, the right answer for the underlying biological causes of schizophrenia? Satanism. Depressed? You're not praying enough. Thank goodness no one we know has any sort of mental illness like depression or other psychosis (said dripping with sarcasm). It was a short conversation because no one deserves to be shot on their birthday.

Expectations

It's time for another rant. I'm in a terrible head space right now because my mother laid a wicked guilt trip on me last night. The family came to town for Easter Vigil Mass and I chose to go with them rather than skip it or go to a much closer (and as it turns out, 2 hour shorter) service. But I went. And I went to communion. Then in front of the church, she told me that I shouldn't have gone to communion, that living with my partner means that I'm not allowed to go to communion. She loves me, but needs me to know that it's not OK that I think that I'm eligible to go to communion. She wants me to annul my previous marriage and get married and make everything legal and perfect. Since weddings are so cheap, and med school is practically paying me to attend, of course I'll do that. I'll do it tomorrow. And then everything will be absolutely perfect and she'll love me.

But wait. I don't want to have children. Oh, well, you can't be a good Catholic and not procreate like little bunnies. Ok, so what if I'm biologically incapable? Well that's fine then.

But wait. You're willing to counsel women in making their own choices? You will help a person through their last moments on earth with pain relief that may hasten their death as a side effect of alleviating their pain?

I don't know why I'm trying so hard to be a good child. She's already picked the perfect one. It's the one that drinks almost every night, always assumes she can have the car, lies to both my parents, isn't planning on a future education and will likely be married and pregnant and married by the time she's 25. That's the perfect daughter.

The one who never drank through high school, worked her ass off at home and outside of home to provide for herself and family, who got into effing medical school but lives with her boyfriend...well that one's just plain evil.

I'm so incredibly jealous of friends and class mates who have a safe home and haven with their families. It's hard to imagine a place where you know that everyone will love you, even if you decide you want to be a doctor.