The icky stuff

So I'm having another one of those meetings that you have when you're starting a new job and in the middle of the whole handing-you-a-binder-you-will-never-read and signing-stuff-that-can-be-used-against-you-God-forbid and nodding-your-way-through-a-powerpoint-presentation we get to "icky stuff." This is the (very nice) IT guy referring to my job casually as the "icky stuff."

Apparently, to the rest of the world, what I do is the "icky stuff." I sort of thought that, at the Coroner's Office, they'd think of it as, oh, I don't know, the heart and soul of the organization. I kind of thought that what I was trying to do was, well, cool.

So you go to med school, you go to residency, you get into fellowship and and all set up to take a grand total of three specialty boards. You are licensed, background checked, educated to within an inch of your life, and up to your ears in student loans all for the privilege of doing what everyone else on Earth will forever refer to as the "icky stuff."

I walk around in this fog where I think I have this totally glamorous job that anyone would love to do or hear about. Honestly. We have our own TV shows-- CSI, Quincy (for heaven's sake)-- not to mention novels (Patricia Cornwell comes to mind.) Seriously, there aren't all that many specialties that have their own TV shows (sure, ER; yes, House, but you have to admit we're overrepresented.) When it's all said and done (God willing!) I'll be not only a licensed physician but a triple boarded subspecialist and people will still refer to what I do as the "icky stuff."

Great. Now I'm not just a nerd, I'm an icky nerd.

(hard to articulate, but it seems kind of worse somehow.)