Thursday Born

It’s like I’m back on surgery except there’s a lot more women everywhere. I just started Ob/Gyn on Monday and wow, I’d forgotten how exhausting these days are! I got lucky and I’m on Benign Gynecology surgery (tubal ligations, hysterectomies, prolapse repairs, etc) instead of on Gyn Oncology (all the cancer surgeries; general far more complex operations) but the hours are fairly similar (the students maybe work up to an hour a day extra, which yes, is still significant). My schedule will be about 6am to 6pm most days, which is better than my Colorectal Surgery hours, but surprisingly worse than Pediatrics when I was averaging 10hrs a day on Inpatient.

I come home tired, and hungry, except I’m too tired to eat a meal so I snack on the nearest sugary thing and then I’m not awake long enough to get hungry again and eat a proper meal. I also come home, and wake up, with all sorts of intentions to write this email, or put up that curtain, or cook that eggplant that might have gone bad by now, but I just don’t have the energy.

I only have two weeks of surgery, followed by two weeks of outpatient (which will be better hours), but then that will be followed by two weeks of night shift on Labor & Delivery right before the exam.  So as much as I just want to come home and vegetate, I need to make some magic happen and find the will to study.

I’m really liking Ob/Gyn, btw. It’s actually what I came into medical school thinking I’d do. But ultimately, I’m not sure it’s right for me, so I’m trying to make the most of this 6 week experience! I already have some (rather tragic) patient stories to share in vague detail, but I don’t like to share them immediately after they happen.

I’m not very close to the grand majority of my classmates, but I know everyone by name (well, except for many of the MSTPs who have joined our class this year) and can comfortably talk to them all. Third year has made it even easier to chat, because at the very least there’s the “Hey! How’re you doing? What rotation are you on?” conversation to have.

I bumped into someone in the library last night. We haven’t ever really hung out and we haven’t had any rotations together, but there’s been one or two other times we’ve found ourselves in the same place and had a brief exchange. This time we commiserated over how strange and arbitrary the grading can seem third year, and she said “Can we bond over this?” I laughed and we hugged. It was cute and sweet and unexpected. =)

I’m really excited for our match day (March 2013! yes it’s already on my calendar), to see where and what we’re all going to build on our medical school foundations. There’ve been a few surprises already even with people I thought I knew well (though when I think back, I never did have a clear idea of what I thought that friend would go into) and a few “well, obviously that’s what they’re going into!” Myself? I’m still unsure. I haven’t outright hated anything, and there’s a lot I can see myself fairly satisfied with. I have a suspicion that I’m going to end up in Psychiatry, but I haven’t done Ob/Gyn yet (which is what I came into med school thinking about) and I haven’t even done Internal Medicine yet!

For the most part, I’m a really mellow person. I’m also a big procrastinator, but I always make my deadlines; I just cut it very, very close. Obviously I’m not a complete good-for-nothing slacker, but I’m definitely not a member of the neurotic, Type A medical student club.

I’m not sure I’m entirely Type B though. When I get an idea in my head (“Oh hey! I should put up that last curtain!”) then I really, really just want to do it. Right now! This is how most of my random cooking or craft projects happen. I see a nifty recipe online and I must try it asap! So I do.

Unfortunately, I’m still at a point in life where I have exams every 4-12 weeks, and sometimes those exams are only three days away. In which case, as much as I really, really want to put up that last curtain, I’ve learned to say to myself “No, that curtain can wait till after my Shelf exam.” And for the most part, I don’t dwell on it and I can get back to studying.

(But it would only take like, a half hour! Argh.)

I wake up early. As a kid at sleepovers, I’d wake up before my host and spend the first hour or two of the morning raiding their bookshelf.

I’m not sure if it’s just that I need less sleep than other people or if I’m naturally a morning person, but ever since college at least, I’ve found it too easy to stay up late doing nothing in particular. There’s a strange allure to being awake at odd hours of the night, engrossed in chatting with someone or in reading various somethings. But one year, after spending two months in Ghana for the summer, then immediately returning to college without changing my sleep schedule, I found that waking up early in the morning, at 3am or 4am, brought that same magical focus but with better energy.

I tend to be late, or barely on time, if I try to wake up with just a half hour or so at home before I need to leave. I wake up, notice all the things I meant to do the night before, and being awake and alert, I start tackling them. And then oh no! I realize I was supposed to leave five minutes ago. So I’m finally giving in to the fact that I am incredibly unproductive at the end of my work days, but very productive in the morning, and I’m going to try to adjust my schedule so that I wake up at least two hours before I need to be at the hospital. This might even give me enough time to get hungry and eat breakfast before I head out!

There is a decent chance that I’ll give up on this, but I think it’s worth a shot. Wish me luck!

Happy New Year!

I partied in the New Year with my family  at our annual big NYE party. There was good food, an open bar, and, of course, lots of dancing. And my boyfriend (who’s eight hours behind me right now) did a rather admirable job of calling me right as we’d finished our countdown, which was really sweet and made me happy even though I could barely hear him over the crowd. =)

I leave Ghana tonight, and I’m really going to miss my family and the weather and the food and the lack of responsibilities, but I admit I miss my apartment. I’m very much a homebody and I really enjoy being in a space I’ve nested and settled into thoroughly.

Getting ready for the party! (this pic is blurrier than I thought)

Ready! Added a lacy bandeau =)

Party over! Time to sleep!

One of my old favorite authors is Neil Gaiman, and sometimes he puts together a nice little New Year’s wish. You can click here to read the entire post, which I very much think is worth reading, but here’s what he wrote for 2012:

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”

I hope not to make mistakes of the sort that might harm a patient, but it really is so important to act. To do. To try. Making decisions instead of ending up somewhere by default because you’re paralyzed by indecision (or at least embrace the default option! Make it yours!). I’ve gotten more okay with saying “I don’t know,” when asked questions in the hospital, which I think is important. But I need to be more comfortable with trying to answer, because yeah, there are times when I do and I’m wrong and I feel like an idiot, but there’s also so many times I don’t say anything and not only was I right, but what I wanted to say turned out to be an answer the Attending was going to be impressed by. I may not be a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge like a few of my classmates, but I have learned a lot, and I need to trust my fund of knowledge more.

Happy New Year, dear readers! I hope that however 2012 turns out for you, it’s at the very least a year you can look back on and be grateful you lived it.

Choice: What can you choose in 2012 to make your life better?

The first big step of 2012 is choosing the right career path. I chose medicine in 2006, and now, 6 years later, I need to choose what general branch of medicine I want to do. Psychiatry, Pediatrics, Ob/Gyn, Surgery, Internal Medicine, Neurology, Radiology, Emergency Medicine, Pathology… there’s so many options! And by the time I’ll have to pick, I’ll have only tried a general sample. There’s always the option to switch later on during my training, but I’d much rather try to get it right on the first try.

But in a more general sense, I can also choose to have a more positive outlook on life. I’ve spent a lot of the latter half of 2011 bouncing back and forth between being thrilled about how my life is going (finally working in the hospital!), and being sulky and lonely. I’d like to err more on the side of being happy.

Shaking Things Up – Looking towards 2012, what can you do to shake things up a little next year?

Ha, I think life doesn’t need much help next year; 2012 is going to be plenty exciting! Picking a field, picking an advisor, planning out my fourth year (which at my school is a pure elective year! This means I don’t really have any restrictions other than availability and smart planning in filling my year with whatever rotations I want, so long as I do the right number of weeks), taking both parts of the Step 2 exam, applying for Residency, interviewing for Residency, doing one or two away rotations… Yup, plenty of excitement ahead. And that’s just what’s going on in my life in terms of medical school.

In the midst of that though, I also want to publicize my blog more. There’s a lot of medical blogs out there that are far more popular than I ever dream mine will be (and I admit, with a few of them, I don’t quite get it), but I’m not content with where I am yet. I’d like to at least double my RSS subscribers and my hits to my blog. The main things will be posting more, advertising my posts more (interestingly, I get more hits when I link on facebook than when I link on twitter), and commenting more on other blogs.

I know there are some changes I could make to my posts to draw more readers, like talking more about things like how to get into medical school or how to do well in medical school, but that’s not why I started blogging. I started blogging because I wanted to write more often, and because as a pre-med, I really, really liked reading the blogs of (mostly women) doctors and learning about their lives. Not about how medical school works, but about what it’s like to go through medical school. I wanted to learn about doctors and medical students as people. So I guess the main thing that leaves for me to work on, in terms of content, is to try to be more personal, even though this isn’t an anonymous blog.

So: hi again! I’m Aba. In 2012, I hope you’ll get to know me better.

Forgiveness – What one thing do you need to forgive yourself for this year?

and

Thought: What new thought, idea or action have you taken this year that gave you a true sense of freedom?

I had trouble thinking of new and interesting responses to both these prompts. For forgiveness, it would be, as usual, not studying even just a little bit harder. Even though time and time again I’ve heard that setting aside just one hour every day to read something medicine related is one of the best things I can do to be the best doctor I can be, I still struggle with it.

As for freedom, well, the major things were getting my driver’s license and a car, and moving into an apartment without a roommate, both of which I’ve already talked a lot about.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it’s a transition state.  It’s not an end goal; it’s simply the beginning. Having a car means I get to go places on my own, whenever I have the time, and living by myself means I feel more comfortable, more free, to be exactly who I want to be and live how I want to live when I’m at home. Freedom is being free to do. Freedom is potential, which is wasted without action. When opportunity knocks, you don’t rest in peace knowing that the chance came and went. You open the door. What good is freedom if you don’t make any choices or do anything with it? I decided to go to medical school, which has meant that I’ve not done so many other things in all these years. I will need to pick a field for Residency, which means I will not have specialized in other fields, and I will be in one place for Residency, which means I won’t have lived in so many different places.

And that’s okay. That’s good. That’s what freedom is really about, in my opinion.

Friendship - What kind of a friend were you in 2011? What kind of a friend do you want to be in 2012?

I haven’t been a great friend, especially after I started rotations. I show up for the important things, like birthdays, and helping people move, or when they have friends visiting and we’re all going out to brunch together, but I haven’t really been around.

I’m introverted and need a lot of down time, and I happen to have picked a future career that means I’m around people all day and actually interacting with them, meaning that when I get home, hanging out with my friends is not what I want to do. Making matters worse, I often only get one day off a week. Do I really want to hang out with them on my one day I get to sleep in and do chores and run errands and vegetate online? More often than not… unfortunately, no. Or rather, I do want to, but it feels like it takes too much effort to get myself out of my apartment on the one day I don’t have to.

I’m really hoping that now that I can drive over, it will make hanging out seem like something that takes less effort so I’ll do it more often. I might not see them every week, but I think I’d like to see my friends more often in 2012 than I did in 2011.

I realize that this might make it sound like I’m completely anti-social and a hermit, but I’m really not. I’m just that busy and that wiped out from being in the hospital. I do keep in touch with my friends over the internet, and I’m in daily contact with my boyfriend (which is apparently not necessarily the norm in long distance relationships, which I admit I find odd. Why wouldn’t you talk to your boyfriend every day? Even just briefly?). Also, when I’m on my rotations, I’m working with other medical students and residents and it’s not all work work work. We do casually socialize, and I guess that tends to fill my daily interaction quota.

Given all of this, you’d think I’d be interested in Radiology or Pathology. Unfortunately, I’m not. So far, every field I’m interested in is one where I’ll have to keep interacting with people all day. What can I say? I like to challenge myself. Apparently.

Teaching Moment - Sometimes we find teachers in the most unexpected places. Who surprised you as a teacher this year, and what did you learn?

Classmates. I knew I’d be learning from Residents and Attendings this year, but I didn’t expect to learn so much from classmates too. On a lot of my rotations I don’t get to work on the same team as my classmates, so I’m not exposed to other people’s presentations. When I do get to hear others present, it’s always a learning opportunity of either “Wow, that was amazing. I should do it that way.” or “Ah, yeah, that doesn’t work. I need to avoid saying things that way.”

There’s also a lot to be said for just having an idea of how other medical students function in this setting. I know what I’m like but I’m being graded based on how I compare to others, and sometimes it’s a little hard understanding how to improve when you’re not exposed to much variety. So I’m usually glad when I do get a chance to work with others.(Unless they’re a fourth year who’s just so back-breakingly awesome that it’s impossible for me to look good in comparison.)

There’s also the little tips and tricks we pass down, like which books to study from, or where to find the best free coffee, or which rotations have the best hours or are the better learning experiences, or what the codes are to the pantries so we can raid them for graham crackers and juice. Classmates really are a godsend these days.