Helllooooooo 3rd Year!

I'm not even going to bother looking back on my old posts... most are such obvious products of the anti-med school oppression I lived under for three and and a half long years from my verryyy much EX-SO that it makes me wanna puke all over his constant array of Excel charts... thankfully they, nor him, are in any range to puke over, even if I was a projectile-vomiting firstborn male with pyloric stenosis :)

Here's my original blurb from when I started this blog as a happy, excited-to-be-here medical student:

One day, I came home from my preceptor's office having just performed surgery on a 7-day old infant with an extra digit, taken out sutures from a young woman's back while draining the abscess, convinced a patient who had been smoking for 20 years to quit, and thought, "wow... this is pretty awesome."

After a year and half of medical school, there are things about medical school that strike me as wonderful, and things that make me wish I'd never chosen this career...

I just deleted the current blurb I had up... something about how med school doesn't come with a manual and one has to find their way on their own and blah blah blah... Yeah, you'd start being philosophical too if someone fed you their own philosophical BS 24/7 for over three years ;o)

6 weeks of Pediatrics FLLEEWWWW by... it's been ages since I've functioned on such low levels of sleep and high level of excitement and drive... and I loved (almost) every effin second of it.

Of course my semi-procrastinating ass is STILLL working on her patient write-ups the Saturday after the last day of the rotation. Did you expect anything else? Have I ever handed in anything on time? Obviously this time was 100% legit and to be honest, other than my delway with the write-ups and a day and half missed out of the entire rotation (after the resident said, "Go home!") I've been on track for all 6 weeks :o)

I'm thanking my lucky stars I'm skipping my next rotation, which would have OB/GYN, to traipse around India with my mother so we can both regain our senses of self and take a much-needed, and overdue, break from the need to be doing something. Then again, I'd even take re-studying for Step 1, as 11 people in my class will be doing, over the splishy-splashy-ness of childbirth...

...Or would I? I was supposed to hate Peds too... the kids were supposed to drive me crazy and my blood cultures were supposed to be positive for every type of bacteremia possible for the duration of 6 weeks.

Don't worry, they're still pending... 48 hrs tomorrow. I'm gonna guess I'll be put on Ceftriaxone pending sensitivities like every other kid who popped in with a sepsis work-up to our floor over the past few weeks... I remember thinking in my half-asleep, pre-round state,"whoever the eff invented/discovered that one is probably peeing and pooping mula."

As for the kiddos. I love 'em. I love the lack of thirty billion meds to document and manage (in most)... I love the relatively better hygiene that makes it much more "palatable" to physicially examine them... (although one patient, who was transferred from a long-term care facility, almost made me puke with the amount of candidiasis she was covered in... poor poor thing...)... and the parents, who were supposed to test the limits of my deep breathing exercises, were actually the 2nd best part... the concern is evident, and actually quite-heart-warming. Maybe it was because I was a medical student and they somehow knew most anything that was being done was not my decision, and thus not my fault... or maybe it's because we as students have the luxury of time (and humility) to actually EXPLAIN what's going on and why... (that, I feel, is the most important aspect in any specialty... frustration arises when you have no clue what's being done and what it's being done for, whether it be with you or a loved one)...

I decided a few years ago that I was going to stop pretending I "looovveeeeee kids!!!" like every other female my age and admit that, though I have no hate for them, I'm not one to go out of my way to coochie coo one or fawn all over a ball of pudge that might grow up to be the next serial killer. I'd much rather leave it to someone else and focus on better, more important things like which Audi will be mine post-graduation.

So imagine my surprise (and my family's) when I started coming home... happy... excited... esctatic actually... of course they rolled their eyes when I hesitantly squeaked out that I mightsortakindamaybejustalittlethinkabout doing Peds and attributed it to just the excitement of being out on the wards... but I've HAD tons of clinical exposure... I've done more pap smears and rectal exams and friggin hernia checks than most interns by working in a Family Med outpatient site during my first two years with Docs who were more than willing to let me do whatever... adult medicine never tickled my spleen tip, but peds medicine? Hmmm... who would have thought?

I guess there is still plenty of time to peruse and ponder and flip flop between specialties and career moves... but considering Peds was the 2nd lowest on my future specialty differential (yep, even below Proctology, but definitely above Orthopedic Surgery after the smell of burnt cut bone made me vomit during block 3 of anatomy)... I've decided I had no effin clue what I was talking about over the past few years...

If I go into OB/GYN though, somebody please, please PLEASE for the LOVE OF GOD...

... find me a rich man to pay for my malpractice insurance? :oD

Onward ho!! Two more A/P's with some UptoDate references and I'm settttt to go back home!! :)