Getting into the groove

cue the Madonna music . . .

Really, though, its a week into intern life and I've finally got a schedule down. It goes something like this:
5am: wake up, walk dog
6:15am: arrive at hospital, change, head to morning report
7:30am: start daily work (scopes, or nutrition rounds)
7:30pm (give or take): get home, walk dog
Then I've got until about 9:30 or so to get my stuff done. My goal every night is to do 30 minutes of reading, 30 minutes of workout, eat dinner, and hang out with the BF and Maddie. It doesn't sound that bad, but I've got to be efficient to get it all done.

I should point out that although 6:15am sounds early to a lot of you, its not early at all to get to work as an intern. That will only happen for me this month. After that, I've got patients to see in the morning before my team gets to the hospital to start their workday. As an endoscopy resident, I'm the only resident on my team, and so I round whenever I want. That's usually in between scopes. And because I don't have any patients to call my own, I don't have to see them super early in the morning, to make sure work gets done for the day. I love it.

But I do miss having a team. It gets a little lonely, and a little scary when I get paged about a problem I have no idea how to handle. But I muddle my way through somehow, and get help when I need it. Like last week, for example, when I was called about a patient who's PEG tube was leaking gastric contents all over her bed. Yummy. Oh, and not just any gastric contents . . . this lady had C. diff, so it stank unbelievably. If I think about it, I can still smell that stuff. Ugh.

Cutting my daily workout from an hour to 30 minutes has been sad. But really its all I can make time for. I sort of count my running around the hospital as a workout too. My endoscopy clinic is on the first floor, the ORs are on the second, and I have patients on floors 3, 4, 5 and 6 at most times. So I'm quite the stair climber.

One more piece of good news: I have vacation in August, so I will be in WI for at least a week. I'll be emailing my demands to see many of you while I'm there. So stay tuned. It sort of stinks to have vacation this early in the year, but I already miss lots of people, and have a family wedding that I didn't want to miss, so I'm glad I got some time off!

finally, some real doctoring . . .

well, maybe not. Most of my patients aren't the most communicative (especially when gorked out on meds during their procedure). I'm on endoscopy and nutrition service this month. Which is awesome, because its a consult service (meaning you only see other people's patients, so have less rounding in the morning). But its also rough, because I'm the only resident on the service. If I have questions about how things work, I have to call my attendings directly. Which can be intimidating. Plus I don't get to have a team of residents to share work with, which can be a great bonding experience.

Today was mostly endoscopy. I looked at a lot (and I mean a LOT) of colons. Its actually pretty fun, sticking an instrument that oddly resembles a garden hose up someone's you-know-where. I still have no idea how to work the scope, and flounder around a lot without going the right direction, but its still a blast. Sort of startling when you're staring at the colon on a screen, magnified I'm not sure how many times, and some poop comes flying into view. Tomorrow I have some EGD's to do (looking down into the stomach with a scope). Whoo hoo!

And, since I'm starting intern year, what better time to get a dog? I found an adorable one, so I brought her home. Pics are below. She's 5 months old. She came with the name Maddie, and we decided to keep calling her that. In my head her full name is Madison, after my favorite city. But Maddie rolls better off the tongue when she's chewing on something she shouldn't be or chasing the cat. The first day she was very mellow, probably overwhelmed. But now she's pretty much settled in, and loves to get into things that she shouldn't. But she's very lovable :)

The beginning

Getting handed my pager was probably the wake-up call moment for me. Just like everyone else in line before me, I attached it to my waist and turned it on. Why? I'm not sure; its not as though they were going to page me out of orientation. Then it hit me: I'm now (semi)permanently accessible to the hospital. Eek! They can find me anywhere. The name badge with MD after my name is a little scary too. I don't feel ready to be the go-to person.

I met my intern class yesterday. Its eerily similar to Grey's anatomy: two guys, three girls. I started to draw the parallels, then stopped myself. What am I thinking? They already told us twice: no sexual relationships with patients, no relationships with attendings or other hospital personnel that would "jeapordize the patient relationship." Damn, there goes the drama. So I guess that's where the similarity to the show ends. In reality, I think I'm going to love my fellow general surgery interns; they seem like a great group. We went out to dinner and drinks and had a blast after orientation activities were over.

I also met a bunch of interns in other specialties. Medicine, anesthesia, pediatrics, OB/Gyn, and lots more. It seems like there's a great group of people, which is key when you spend so much time together. Everyone shares a common terror for getting lost in the hospital and for starting on a rotation where the chair of the department is one of your attending physicians. That makes me feel much better about my own worries (which are numerous).