Worn Out

One thing about being a student of medicine, a doctor anyway, I suppose others in my profession (nurses, pharmacists, etc) are similarly afflicted, you are subjected to rigourous testing...and more testing...and more testing. I think now they are requiring that we docs retest every 10 years, after initial certification by our boards. It's a pain, but I think it's appropriate, I've seen far to many "old farts" already who prescribe outdated treatments and in some cases I've seen some who have no right to practice anymore...maybe they never did...I'm speaking of the doctors whose methods were NEVER accepted. Luckily of the latter group I've only seen one doc practicing like that, I was new to the profession, but I still turned his butt in to the medical board...in some cases he was ignorant, which I can understand, in other cases he was purposefully unethical and harmful, which I can't. Not to put myself on a pedestool, I'm not perfect and never will be, and that's why I think repeatedly testing us is a good thing even if it is a huge pain in the neck. I've been studying for this test for two months now, on average 2-3 hours a day on top of what I do for work has been punishing. I don't feel like I see my family much and I feel like I'm stressing them in leaning on them to take care of my son. I'm four days away and the anticipated relief of stress is so sweet I can taste it. As a side note, I remember writing on here in a fairly depressed attitude about doing sub-par on my introduction test to the residency program. I just got the results of my second test (they have us repeat it yearly until the actual exam at the end of our third year). This time I did much better and passed with flying colors, it's really tempting to stop studying now that I feel I've "caught up", but I'll try to keep it up and make my chances of failing the test miniscule (if I do, then I won't have to pay 5 grand to a test-prep program like many of my peers do before taking that bear of a test)...I guess we'll see how that works out. Well time to go to work, my ED shift will be starting in 30. I'm working the 4p-2a shift (as I have been for the past week), it's a fun time, but all things considered it's all starting to weigh on me. It's funny that I used to fear the ED, now some of the things I used to reel away from are some of the things I look foreward to (trauma's, laceration repairs, difficulty breathing, etc.) It's crazy how a year of residency can change things.

Newbie Doc

Bad News

I can't think of a more insidious, evil than cancer.  Rarely, is it's presence not tragic and unexpected.  It creeps in during the dark of the night and steals your loved ones away.  Is it me or does it always feel like the jack-asses of this world could smoke 50 packs a day of cigarettes from the age of 2 and get away with a clean chest x-ray at 90, while those rare kind souls who the world is blessed with to a much lesser degree are taken from us in car wrecks, cancer, and all kinds of random tragic events that Edgar Allen Poe couldn't even think up.  One of my good friends in residency was just diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer...if you spend long in medicine you'll learn that the words "rare" and "interesting" are not words that you want associated with your disease.  Yet again it couldn't have happened to a more undeserving person.  Why can't the child abusers of this world be struck by these things instead of good people, like my friend Mindy?

I haven't read the whole bible, probably not close to half and it's probably a huge hypocrisy that I'm speaking of it, but there's one book that I've read and obsessed over since I was a little kid, The book of Job. Why would God put someone through such horrible things?  In the end, I finally realized the message of the book (the message to me anyway) isn't that God has a plan (which I believe he does), the message is that God is too complex for you to understand and trying to see or figure out the plan is like an ant trying to read advanced calculus, it's too ridiculous to even attempt.  That book's message to me is to quit looking for the plan and to try and walk the road he lays down directly in front of you, that in itself is hard enough.  In a way, it's relieving to give up control and let him steer...in the back of my mind I ask myself, "Even if he steers you off a cliff?"...and somehow I'm still comforted...I guess, at the very least, I'm not driving off the cliff by myself. (which could happen easy enough if you've ever seen me drive)

Newbie Doc

Uproot

It's crazy to say that you can develop close and good friends within a years time or that you can get attached to a place in the span of 12 months, but as I was walking through my hospital being faced with a new job opportunity and simultaneously the idea of leaving this place in another year and a half, I was suddenly hit with a twinge of sadness deep in my chest.  I think that whether it's the 18 years of living at home, the four years of college, or even 1 year of residency, when you're put through the stress of personal growth your soul puts down some roots and you take up a little bit of everything around you in your heart.  It's not home to me, but to the doctor in me it's where one day I'll say I grew up.

Newbie Doc