Sleeping with the Enemy

I must tell you that in 1997, upon leaving my Air Force Residency in General Surgery, I had no further commitment to train until June of 1997 where upon I agreed to take upon myself an internship in Internal Medicine.  I admit, I had no plans to enter the field and that I thought I would just bide my time until another surgery position opened up for me.  That seemed like a sort of acceptable idea.  In turn, I fathomed, I would learn more about disease and the hospital process. It was a decent plan.
That said, one who is surgical in endeavors is seemingly not very well liked by those in the internal medicine field.  True the internist is taught the adage "never let a surgeon get ahold of your patient".  There is always the truth that if you can avoid the need for a surgery in your patient that you are a real hero.  But that said, I always felt that this little adage was an act of war against the surgery heirarchy.  In my internal medicine residency, I must admit I never had a friend in my internship class.  I really only worked with a few of them.  It was not a collegial atmosphere.  A few of the seniors were richly intelligent and did their best to even make sure that I was indeed learning and having a good experience where good expience can indeed be had in a medical internship.  I did not find that many of the attendings were that conciliatory towards my own prospects of medical education or career intersts.  I was shunned in the ICU.  I was told by the program director when I was given my 1 year certificate "good luck getting into surgery", as if the writing was on the wall that I was not in any way a likely candidate or even a human being of decent judgement and skill.  I was not pleased but kept in mind that she was indeed intolerant and less than instructive in the days that I had known her.  Her first moment with me was to try to explain the very prebasics of hypercholesterolemia to me, as if she thought that I didn't even know that it can cause arteriosclerosis.   I endured.