I have really meant to continue posting, most of the time. I've considered quitting posting, but usually, I really have wanted to keep posting! But, I just haven't had any time! Surgery is crazy. I know other bloggers have done it, but I'm not sure how. In fact, the craziness of surgery is pretty much exactly what has made me come to a pretty big change in my thinking...I'm not going to go into surgery!
I really wanted to be the guy that loves surgery so much, they just want to be in the OR all the time, no matter what that might mean. I wanted to be a hardcore surgeon. But, I'm just not that guy. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I love to do lots of things, and those other things are difficult to do as a surgeon. Already, as a student, I feel like I just wake up (way too early), go to work, get off late, come home, maybe watch a TV show, and then go to bed. There's really not much time to do anything else. And, I work less than any of the resident. I probably do around 60-70 hrs a week, but there's no way that the residents are under the 80 hour work week.
So, instead of surgery, I will likely be going into emergency medicine, which is probably what I should have been looking at from the beginning. I love riding the medic, and being an ER doc is really the best continuity with that. I've also found that through the last 6 months in St. Agnes, I really love being in the ER...more so than the OR. It's fast paced, shift work, your work does not come home with you, you don't follow patients, and there's no rounding!! I haven't mentioned it since I haven't been blogging, but I despise rounding. Really really despise rounding! Yeah, there is a lot of BS that comes into the ER, but I've been finding that there's a lot of that in all of medicine. However, you can get rid of that BS in the ER a lot faster than you can most anywhere else. And, strengthening my decision to go into EM, there are also fellowships in EMS and trauma/critical care. I could actually do the EM residency, plus two fellowships, in the same amount of time as general surgery residency! I wanted to be a trauma surgeon anyway, so I can do a lot of the same stuff with a trauma fellowship, and I can also stay involved in EMS (as part of my job). Seems pretty good all around. Just to make sure i'm not crazy though, I'm doing two months of electives in EM.
Unfortunately, not much else new in my life to write about...just hasn't been a lot of time for it. Today was my last Monday of surgery! Since I have overnight call on Thursday, I get out early Friday morning, take the surgery shelf exam on Saturday, and then off to NY for OB/Gyn. Not looking forward to that, but it's only 6 weeks, so I'll survive. If I can survive IM, I can survive anything!
So, I'm going to really try hard to post much more often now. Happy everyone? Here is a picture showing my current level of sleep deprivation (and what it makes me do):
3 comments:
thanks for the update. I thought you would do trauma/er as it's in your blood. Now go to sleep
60-70 hours a week during surgery? I (almost) literally would've killed for that schedule. The residents were doing 100+ hours and the med students were at 120+ hours (if we started pre-rounding at 4:30am as recommended). The students did q3 overnight call (no short call ever), with no post-call and would scrub for cases the day after call. As fun/interesting as it was to cut open someone's gut and yank out their entire colon or sew up some drunk who fell down some stairs at 3:00am, the hours (and endless rounding) were really affecting my sanity and demeanor. Made my choice to go for pathology residency much easier.
I'm not sure how I managed to keep up with the blogging either, but it seems that now i have all this time, I can't find enough to blog! Haha :) glad you made a decision though. I don't know why I'm so crazy, but I keep telling myself I have plenty of time to change my mind! EM is such a good life -- I keep telling my bf that he can be a stay at home dad if he wants! Anyway, good luck and you know where to find me with questions!
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