Life as a radiologist

Life as a radiologist is a dream for a lot of young medical students when they intern / prepare for their PG entrance. It looks glamorous from the outside and a few succumb to it even if they have a greater aptitude for some other field. The features that make radiology attractive are the easy big money( its neither easy/ not very big after some time), cool working environment and lack of tension/ risk and ultimate lack of physical effort.

Most of them turn out to be false when you enter practice  or at least few years down the line. Money is big intially , but it stays the same for a long time . Our minds being human , never seem to come to a conclusion how much money is much!! Our surgical and other speciality friends start slow but once they cross a period only their choice limits the amount they earn.only cool thing about the working environment is that its cool literally( no one knows if all the places are radiation safe- no one takes those into consideration - they just think these guys sit all day in the AC rooms and just sign something). Most ironical impression is the apparent lack of risk / tension. You got to sit and work in a full fledged busy scan center at 8 in the evening to feel the real pressure associated with the job( you have CT/MR scans going on two sides, with a bunch of films on the table to report, a few on the lobby and a kid wailing in pain with probable torsed testis -  and imagine you have not had anything from the afternoon). it does not get worser than that - thats what you feel atleast at that moment. And you do not have the liberty of making a mistake and rectifying it later. whatever is typed and signed is going to stay on forever even if you leave this world .  A mistake however small is going to stay on ever recorded in words (haunting you for a long time if you are unlucky). You are always going to get some cases you are not very sure of , as the field is too vast- it covers from head to toe , skin to marrow and embryo stage to the  demented geraitric patients( though you do not "do" much). 

To top it all , some of the ignorant comments from people  like why are you working like a technician, why dont you start a clinic and why did you join this course, can be really irritating at the  least.

Even worser is the situation when you get to see young patients walking in normally and walking out with grave diagnoses in  hand.I have cried atleast on four to five such occasions and struggled to avoid being the person having to break the news.Hope not to be in such situations at all

Anyways  i love this speciality  as i think i fit it ergonomically.Hope its the same with anyone who joins the course and no one joins it because it just looks cool.