Continued First Blog

Ok. So that was the briefest of brief intros. Now I have to start 'blogging', right?



So, rather than make this about ME, per se, I'd really rather just use this as a way to vent as a surgical resident, as a way to share with anyone out there who may be interested in this bizarro-world my personal perspective and experiences. Plus, these stories always make good party conversation... depending on the audience, of course.



However, one thing I will do throughout this is make sure to adhere to HIPAA, a vital component to being a physician. Doesn't mean you can't tell the stories, you just can't, in any way, infer who they are about. No incriminating details. Could get nasty otherwise.



So, on with it.



Lets see... the best stories are always the traumas. Then there was my year in OB/GYN. L+D provides endless entertainment, with some tearjerkers. There is also just the drama of being at a competitive urban academic center and all the fodder that comes with it. There's the daily emotional turmoil of dealing with life and death, living sub-human work hours, balancing life and family, and everyday deciding if it's all worth it (it is... I think....).

It's quite a ride, and then you graduate- if you're lucky.



Surgery is a very satisfying but wacky field. We're like a blend of ADHD and OCD kids- running around looking for the next stimulating moment, but able to flip that energy into a focus with such extreme intensity for long periods of time that we don't eat or pee for endless hours without a notice. We get to work with our hands, which is always fun. Artistic, in a way. But we're also problem solvers, digging into a mystery with vigor. But the best part is...

People let you cut them open! I mean, come on... that's wild!! These days I do take it for granted sometimes, but I shouldn't. I've had my hands in so many bellies that I don't get a thrill from JUST that anymore, not like when I was a medical student. The thrills now often come from the rare disease, the tough case that makes you sweat but it all works out. The brutal case, the life-saving case, the trauma. And sometimes the straight forward case that goes so well you can't not pat yourself on the back and say 'job well done'.

But it's funny to look back at med school and that initial thrill. There, the personalities emerge over the years, and who belongs in medicine vs surgery vs radiology or ER all come out. People who can't get out of bed before 7am will just NOT go into surgery, end of story. Students who cry 'uhhh, the lifestyle!' will chose Dermatology or Radiology. But those students, who after waking up at 4:30 and spend all day on their feet running from case to case, only eating peanut butter crackers that they steal from the nurses station, only to get home at 7pm to go straight to bed to to do it all over again, who can smile at the end of the day and say 'you're not gonna BELIEVE what I saw today'... those students choose surgery. Because there is just nothing else that compares.



I was that sudent. And then I chose OB/GYN. Silly rabbit. I thought I could do surgery through the 'back door'. There is no back door, except, sort of, how I got into my surgery program. But anyway...

I loved Gyn-Onc. The epitome of the fantastic GYN surgeon, taking care of the sickest of the sick, the cancer stricken middle-aged woman with ovarian cancer or the younger woman with cervical cancer. I loved it, the patients and surgeries were great. Real surgery that required skill and finesse, just like General Surgeons.... in fact, better! I was sold. I kinf of knew wanted to do Surgery, but I didn't want to do a surgical residency. I was in medical school before the 80 hour work week. When the surgery residents where on-call every 2nd-3rd night, stayed post-call, and worked routinely 100-130 hours a week. Yikes. Who wants that? Ob/GYN was gentler, kinder, and only 4 years. Then the fellowship was rough, but it would be in that magical field I loved so much, so I thought I wouldn't mind. Then I acually DID Ob/GYN, and boy was I wrong. NOT kinder, NOT gentler. But that wasn't the problem. I just didn't like it. Obstetrics.... not at all. I liked the babies, don't get me wrong, I'm not totally cold and heartless. But I hated, and I mean HATED L+D. Attendings running around like skittesh chickens with their heads cut off. The nurses could be downright MEAN, unless you knew how to play them, which thankfully I figured out (not ALL the nurses though, I love many of them too). The patients could be nightmare high maintenence entitled brats. And then a baby died. And then another. Not from negligence or anything like that. But just because sometimes babies DIE! And no one is to blame. It's the 'life sucks' policy in all its glory. But then the lawsuits come (none against me, thank god, but some with my fellow residents), and, well, all the fun of the great patients with the great babies is thrown out the window because all it takes is one, ONE 'BAD' BABY and you're mentally toast. Atleast I was. But to top it off, the GYN surgery was not so fun afterall either. And THEN I found out that my great wonderful program had NEVER matched someone into a GYN-ONC fellowship. 'Say what?' I was foolish enough not to look into that crucial little fact before choosing this place as my #1. I thought, 'Harvard hospital, great program, residents also interested in Gyn-Onc, world famous Gyn-Onc attending... of course they match into the fellowship.' WRONG. My intern year 2 chiefs wanted Gyn-Onc, one got it (the first!). The other was a strong candidate, but she did not match. That scared me. She didn't like Ob/GYN either. She couldn't see herself doing anything in the field except GYN-ONC. What was she going to do?? What would I do? Well, what I did was jump ship. I was the most miserable intern and couldn't figure out why, until I rotated on our mandadtory General Surgery rotation in May of my intern year. It was like a breath of fresh air. The chiefs were confident, compitent, respected, and trusted. The residents didn't run to anaesthesia to read EKGs or get medical consults for difficult patients, they did it themselves, and well! I was mistified! Traumas weren't the chaos that L+D is (well, in comparison... it is chaos though). But for a girl who'd just spent 17 straight weeks on L+D, I thought the trauma bay was a cool and collected place! The attendings were so calm, and reassuring, smart, and talented. And they wanted ME. The OB intern who was told that I 'must' be clinically depressed by my own program because I was so unhappy- only to be told by the resident psychiatrist that my co-reseidents and attending were miserable, manipulative little shrews and that I just needed to be around different people. So I did 2 days of my Gen Surg rotation, and decided that was it for me. There is no back door. If I want to do sugery, I was going to have to DO surgery. And the General Surgeons recruited me to the dark side, heavily. And conveintly enough for me I hadn't signed by contract with Ob/GYN for the next year yet. So, how did that happen, exactly? LUCK.

I was sent my contract for the next year in February, due in April. I was on my L+D slog, and therefore put it off until the last minute out of sheer lazyness. When I finally got around to looking at it, it was the day befor it was due in. But I found an error- it had an Intern salary listed for my 2nd year position. Good thing I read the fine print, eh?! So I sent it back to be fixed. So a week or two later I get the new one. And it now says I'm going to be a PGY-3 with a 2nd year income, or something like that. So I send it back AGAIN. Now it's May and I'm already on my surgery rotation. Thinking of jumping ship. So now I get my perfectly written new contract and say, "I'm not signing it". They gave me until June 1 to decide. And so, after much painstaking indeciveness between 'devil-you-know vs devil-you-don't", on June 1st I signed a contract with General Surgery.

And that's how I ended up screwing over my Ob/GYN residency in the last month of Intern year and running into the burning building that was my new home in the Department of Surgery.

First Blog!

Wow, never thought I'd ever blog! But here I am.

I guess I'll start with a little background about me, to make it all relevant:
I am 32 year old female surgical resident in a Boston hospital. I am currently doing research, ie have more time to do something like start a blog. My life can be really boring, and really exciting, depending on the day. I like the stories I have to tell, and so I figured I'd start telling 'em.
Life in Surgery is an adventure every day. It's busy- crazy busy sometimes- exciting and full of adrenaline. It's also full of politics and game playing and 'who-you-know' shenanigans. You take some of the biggest egos in a hospital system and place them under inhuman amounts of stress, fatique, and expectations and just watch what happens. Real life surgical residency puts Greys Anatomy to SHAME. And I love every minute of it (well, ALMOST every minute....)

Have an experiment to do, but I'll be back. This is fun, babbling about myself.....