The Mrs. has been on me for some time now to post about work. She says that she's even had a couple of requests. For those of you hoping this was going to be a list of items that I have pulled out of various body cavities, I am sorry to disappoint you. This won't be that sort of post. Residency so far has been such an amazing (and exhausting) experience for all of us. The 80-hour weeks, 30 hour shifts, not sleeping in my bed for days at a time, it hasn't been easy to get used to. However, the thought of being out on my own in 3 years practicing medicine without any supervision scares me enough to understand why I have to spend so much time at the hospital.
In the past month I have delivered ten babies and pronounced three people dead. I've shocked two people with paddles. I've done more pelvic and rectal exams than I would care to recall. I've watched a wife and her two-year-old son come to visit her husband in the ICU every day and spend hours talking to him, just hoping that maybe someday he'll be able to say something back to her. I've seen people's lives change, sometimes for the better, but usually for the worse. I've saved a schizophrenic man's life when I used my shears to cut the bed sheet that he had used to hang himself with from the ceiling of the emergency department. I've learned that a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the chest isn't always fatal, particularly if you use bird shot. I've learned that some people are going to die no matter what you try to do to save them, and I've seen other people make it through things even after everyone had written them off.
Finally, I've learned that being a doctor's wife can be very lonely. Once I asked a friend in medical school who's father was a physician what it was like having your father being gone all the time. She told me that it was difficult. He couldn't always make it to school plays, or athletic events,and he even missed a birthday party or two, but then she smiled and said that what got her through it was knowing that her father's patients needed him more at that moment than she did. While I plan on having plenty of time to be with my family when I'm done with residency, I hope that we can have that perspective while I'm in residency and not able to be with them as much as I like. I love what I'm doing and looking back, I don't think I could feel nearly this fulfilled doing anything else.
Check out a video that my residency program put together when you get a chance. Hope everyone is well. I'll post again sometime when I have a chance.
http://emergencymedicine.iusm.iu.edu/
4 comments:
Aaron gets an "A" for effort, but I wanted the extraction stories. That must have been something to see someone in a room trying to hang himself/herself. I think that was on an ER episode and the intern there had to break a glass cabinet to get to a scalpel out and cut the guy down.
Sounds like the ER is definitely keeping the doctor occupied! And judging from our [most recent] ER experience, it's a nationwide syndrome.
And I'm all for more extraction stories-bring 'em on!
He doesn't want to for patient confidentiality reasons. Even though he's not naming any names, it's still a little risky. But I get to hear them all! Ha ha!
After reading Aarons post I realized why I've stayed away from medicine. I thought about nursing in High School and after following one around for an afternoon and fainting, I decided it wasn't really for me. I'm glad someone can do it, good luck with everything. I'll stick to graphic design, I have yet to faint doing that.
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