Transitions

First off, my test is tomorrow. I have been doing a number of practice questions and I think it will be alright. I just need to go with my gut on the questions and not think about them too hard. I'll just keep studying today and see how it goes tomorrow! Think of me around 8:30am!

Now onto the good stuff! My date the other night went surprisingly well. C is really nice and an easy conversation. D was telling me the other night (in a little pep talk haha) that I am good to talk to one-on-one because I can talk about a lot of interesting things...I know a little bit about a really wide variety of stuff. Well, C does too, so the conversation was good. Part of me still thinks that he was just being nice to me and trying to make me feel better, because he knows enough about me to know I need cheering up, but I guess only time will tell. He talked a lot about seeing me again, so I hope that happens, but again I can't help but be skeptical. Nothing so far, but I guess according to the dating rules it's a little soon. And he is definately a dating game player...probably why I feel so skeptical about the whole thing. I don't even know what the dating game is so it's hard for me to keep up. I'll definately be interested to see where this goes!

Bewildered

Naturally, it has come to the end of my time on this rotation and I haven't blogged at all. Sheesh.

This rotation has been alright. I had much less responsibility and got sent home before noon on more days than I can count...not that I'm complaining, since I have my Shelf exam to be studying for, but it was very unexpected. I didn't have to put much effort into my day to day responsibilities. Maybe that's because I finally got the hang of some things, but I still know close to nothing in the grand scheme of Medicine. And now it's over.

AC stayed much the same throughout. Always copying what I did (if I pulled out my book to look something up, he would rush to get his out...if I gave a handout with my presentation, he did too...if I was talking to someone, he would interrupt me and ask 5 times what I was talking about until I gave him the Reader's Digest version). Needless to say AC was taxing, but they did get a little better by the end. I hope AC does well in future rotations and learns to chillax a little bit.

My Shelf exam is in 3 days. I'm not that worried about it, and I hope that turns out ok. I've been studying, but only for the past 5 weeks or so. Again, hopefully that's enough.

Now something NOT about school...I have a date tonight. This is V-E-R-Y weird. I have never been asked on a date like that in my whole 23 years; I have always dated friends. I'm not expecting it to be great, and I have a feeling that the guy called me because he feels bad for me, but I just don't want it to be terrible. I have been concocting "worst-case scenario" scenes in my head all day and trying to decide what I would do if any of these things happened (ex. I fall and moon the whole restaurant...I get sweaty...the invariably awkward end of the evening). I'm freaked out. Period. I hate doing things that make me look stupid, and there is so much potential for stupidity tonight it is terrifying. I guess I will just have to "fake it til I make it" with confidence and comfortability. Whatever. Freaking scared. I'll be sure to write how it goes, no matter how late I get home (or early).

Hokay

I am SO sad that I didn't blog at all during my time at GS. It was a rollercoaster of emotions, ending with my being really glad I was on the team I was on at the time I was on it. The resident and attendings were very helpful, taught me SO much, and pushed me to do more and be more involved and read all the time. Even though I didn't get as much studying done as I should have (surprise, surprise), I feel like I learned SO, so much.

Now I am at a state-run hospital and it is a TOTALLY different experience. At GS everything was very relaxed and it was a very supportive environment; at MC my intern got yelled at to the point of tears in my first 2 hours there, everything is so rushed, and so far (end of day 2) I have not done one thing. I'm sure it's just because I'm new and I'm not sure if they understand that I have had 7 weeks of Medicine so far, but I'm, once again, absolutely bored to tears. The patients there are VERY interesting, but just following my resident around like a puppy is getting old fast.

There is another third year on my team from another school this time (I'll call them "AC"). This is a strange experience, as AC is already very competitive with me. It is to the point that if I stand on one side of the resident to watch what they are doing, rather than standing on the resident's other side, AC will squeeze inbetween the resident and I. AC has a different concept of "personal space" than I do and it is annoying always having to try to put more distance between AC and I. AC is always trying to one-up me, but since AC has only been on Medicine for 1 week, they are not doing a very good job in my opinion of trying to out-do me. This will be an interesting relationship to blog about; I'm curious to see how we work together, as AC will be there the whole time I am.

Rrrrrrrrring!

WAKE UP!

Wow, hello! The snooze is over! I have been on inpatient since Monday, and it is SO much busier/better than my outpatient experience was! My days usually run from about 6/6:30am-4:30/5pm. Then every 5 days my team (attending, resident, intern, me) is "on call", so we arrive at the hospital like normal at 6/6:30am but don't leave til noon the next day. I had call on Wednesday, and my team sent me home around 9:30pm, but I had to research about the patient that I got put in charge of so I was up til midnight, then woke up at 4:45am to get back to the hospital. Even thought I did get about 5 hours of sleep (maybe less, I toss and turn lately), I was tired come Friday (Thursday wasn't so bad, it caught up with me eventually though!).

We are on call again on Monday, but I can't stay overnight. I have lecture from 1-5pm on Tuesday that is mandatory, and I'm not allowed to get to the hospital at 6am Monday, leave there at noon on Tuesday, and still have to be at lecture on Tuesday afternoon...it interferes with duty hour restrictions. I can't be doing work/school stuff more than 30 hours in a row. But come my Saturday call I will be staying overnight AND not getting a day off that week (I work Mon-Fri, work all Sat until noon Sun, then work again Mon-Fri...phew!).

Needless to say I really like being more busy, but I still am only responsible for 1 patient at a time right now. So there is a LOT of reading time, which still throws me off. With the patient I had earlier this week that was fine because NO ONE had any idea what was going on (we finally decided autoimmune hepatitis with some unknown acute injury), but then they left the hospital against medical advice on Friday. So even though I got another patient on Friday, I'm still only at 1 patient. And the patient I got on Friday has something pretty straightforward (C. diff diarrhea), so hopefully I can get another patient on Monday...since we're on call I'm sure I will.

Medicine is a lot of sitting around and talking and looking things up on the computer, even for the resident and intern...not sure I really like that part. I just enjoy being with the patients and explaining to them what is going on with their body; my liver patient and family told me they really appreciated that I was going "above and beyond" to make sure they understood what was going on (even though I didn't really know much!) and told me not to lose my "awesome-ness". That made me feel pretty good.

Now I just need to get a little more motivation to study...I have started finally, but there is SO MUCH! Yikes!

Snooze

I'm back to boredom unfortunately. My morning clinic was cancelled today and tomorrow. This afternoon I spent talking about golf and traveling to Europe and driving tickets with two attendings while the fellows saw all the patients. This is my last week on outpatient, and I have to say that I'm glad. I enjoy the specialty clinics, but even there I am a little bit bored. I hate to say that and it seems like I just complain about EVERYTHING lately, but that's really how I feel about it. This is just not as exciting as I hoped it would be yet. I'm sure that by the middle of next week I will be kicking myself for complaining about having such a lax schedule, but it is just killing me right now.

When I'm not in school I should be studying. I don't really want to, so I'm not, but I feel guilty doing anything else, so mostly I just sit around. And that's boring. I had a huge talk with D last night about how I think I have become a boring person. There are a lot of things that I want to do, but I am either too lazy or too boring or too cheap or too busy or too whatever to pursue them. I shouldn't put things off because I fully believe in living for today, but I just feel SO guilty doing things that aren't school related when I know I have school things to be doing. Hopefully I can find some balance here soon because if not I will either fail out of school or be doomed to being the most boring person on earth.

Making Progress

This week got progressively better in terms of my schedule. It culminated with seeing 4 patients in 1 day at my normal clinic, which was definately a record. That was a lot more fun than what I had been doing thus far. It was only simple things, like checking blood pressure meds and Alzheimer's meds (that lady was so sweet, reminded me of my grandma), but it was fun to have things to do. And the patients were funny too. The guy whose blood pressure I was checking decided he would flex his arm without me knowing, so the blood pressure needle started jumping all over the place. I panicked, but then I realized what he was doing and had a good laugh.

I spent another day in hem/onc and really enjoyed myself. I was allowed to do basically everything on my own- look up the patients on the EMR (electronic medical record), see the patients, report to the attending physician, and write my note into the EMR. I also got "pimped" (aka asked questions by the attending, ex. what is the differential diagnosis for macrocytic anemia...something I should know but only knew part of), so it was a great experience.

Overall in the school department it was a good week. Hard to believe that I only have another 2 weeks of outpatient before my life is taken over by inpatient!

Did I miss something?

I have now been through one week of clinicals, and I never expected to be so bored. Most of the patients cancelled for the outpatient clinic that I am at, so I saw a total of 1 patient. In a whole week. Um, what? Things got better on Friday, where I saw 2 patients in the podiatry clinic. I got to trim someone's toenails, which was pretty sweet.

Today I was at the hematology/oncology and cardiology specialty clinics. I saw probably 5 patients in the morning and 4 patients in the afternoon. It was mostly observational, but that is more like the load that I was expecting.

The thing that I am most annoyed about is how much lecture I have. I thought that was over, but no, last week I was in lecture probably 12 hours. That is WAY too much for me! It will get less and less I think as the year goes on, but it sucks for now.

I think I am missing something in terms of what studying I am supposed to be doing. I have to take a national exam at the end of this 10 week block (so 9 weeks left) that is supposedly pretty difficult, and I should be studying now while I have time, but I'm just confused about what I'm supposed to study and what is worth my time. Just a little lost. Not scary lost, but lost nonetheless.

Lastly, I miss my grampy. He is in a SO much better place and I am extremely glad that his suffering is over, but his death makes me miss him and my gramy so much more than I expected. I'm not sad, exactly (for the reasons I just said), but there is just so much about them I feel like I never knew. I was lucky to have them for so long.