After several months of either Emergency Medicine rotations or more casual rotations, like Palliative Care and Radiology, I am feeling the pain. I am on the Trauma and Surgery ICU this month, at Harborview. This was an elective, I chose to do this. The grade does not even matter. I simply must like to hurt myself. Actually, I knew it had been a long time since an intensive inpatient rotation so I felt this would be a good way to prepare myself for residency. Here I am at 5am, preparing I guess.... I forgot what it was like to get up so early every morning so I can bike into the hospital and have time to change. I forgot what pre-rounding was like and how tedious it can be. Most of all, I forgot how uncomfortable it is to stand for hours and hours in the hospital on rounds. Rounds... the only thing more painful is Family Medicine clinic I think. That is more psychologically painful, this is just damn uncomfortable. I understand why the residents wear compression stockings on floor shifts, they really help! Today I get the opportuntity to remember what call is like.Luckily, we are in the new wing of the hospital, just built and opened this year. It is shiny and new with chairs that aren't broke and nice big ICU rooms with floor to ceiling windows and views! It makes it actually feel like you are not totally disconnected from the world when you are on your shift which is nice. I can see outside from almost every room and watch the weather change. That helps a lot. The call rooms are also clean and safe now, which is a new benefit. So, enough about getting back into the routine of inpatient medicine, now let's talk Critical Care medicine. These patients are COMPLICATED. My first two patients have been here almost 50 days after traumatic accidents, lots of surgery and subsequent ICU illnesses that tend to occur. Pneumonnia, colitis, etc... Now that they are finally stable (I did not say better) they may have a chance to leave the ICU for either a nursing home, the regular medicine floor or perhaps to hospice as the strokes that one patient has endured have rendered his brain mostly non-functional. From day one I had patients with problem lists that span multiple pages... trying to organize that in your head and actually have something useful to say and add is challenging. But this will be like most "first week" trials on each rotation. I will eventually get the swing of it, get more efficient, find some time to rest and learn and by the time the 4th week rolls around I will finally be useful and then I will run off to a new rotation.
By the way, I only have ONE MORE ROTATION left in medical school EVER! After this I do a month of Pediatric Emergency Medicine for a refresher prior to residency then I am DONE! It is quite exciting. On Monday of this week we got the email, one of two we could have received, that said "You Matched!". This means I was offered a residency position and the computer found a slot for me. Tomorrow, at 9am, I will find out where in gthe country I matched. This is called "Match Day" and it is the same for all medical students all over the country. I am very excited and a little nervous to get the letter. I ranked 11 programs total to make sure I would match at some location, but of course there are less desireable locations and more desireable locations. After these last 4-5 years which have been tough, I really have my fingers crossed for a place I stand the best chance of happiness. As do we all..... I will let you know!
