End of three months of intern year -update

...So intern year has started, and 'the blog' has fallen by the wayside. I'll try to be better at putting in entries - if not for anyone else, then for myself, to keep a record of this um, memorable experience...

I wrote this in an email to a friend, and realized that I was actually "blogging" at him, as I had stopped having some outlet for my self-absorbed thoughts. So this is more of an appropriate place for what I wrote than my original email.

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Things are going pretty well. am now on the outpatient block (just ending - sadly), and it's been quite restful. I walk to work at 8 every day and get home by 5 or 6. My walk is ~20 minutes each way and i spend it staring into people's homes and gardens, and taking a lot of deep breaths. I get home in the evening, spend an hour rocking on my hammock with a glass of wine (and my laptop -eek- it's an addiction!), and then maybe catch up on notes or do some reading (not really), or go join one group or another of interns who are out drinking away their stress.

It's amazing how everything is relative in life. My 8-5, M-F schedule still feels a bit like vacation -- like I'm cheating on my residency or something - when for most people it is a normal day to day job. I guess if I was confronted with a lifetime of this schedule, it would wear on me, as well. But no worries, I start on wards on Monday, and that pleasure will last me three months. .

..and at moments like this, I take a huge sigh of relief for choosing my program, where the wards schedule is sane, where the environment is supportive, and where three months of wards do not feel threatening to anything but my vitamin D levels. I have friends who are suffering at other programs (and others who are thriving despite a much more rigorous schedule), but I really feel like I made a great decision.

Intern year is kind of like third year of medical school again - where you get thrown into a completely new role, and continuously get reminded of how little you know. I've had multiple days this week, where I've seen a patient, presented their case in an overwhelmed and disorganized fashion to the attending, and then literally ended by saying, "Frankly, I suck at ortho/derm/rheum/post-hospital care/cancer/(insert-everything-but-DM/CAD/CHF) and I have no idea where to go from here". And pretty much always, the patient, jolly, unassuming attending will respond, without blinking an eye, 'well then, lets go figure it out!' .....and we go, and we do, and I learn something new.

I have quite a few friends applying to residency programs right now, and they ask me how I chose the ones I did. Last year, I knew this was an important question, but I guess I didn't actually understand just how important it was to me. When choosing the place where you will, ultimately, be shaped into the doctor you want to be, It is important to know what you need the most: is it an intense, sometimes malignant, environment that will pressure you to do your best, or is it a supportive atmosphere that will attempt to keep you sane (while you continue put pressure on yourself to do better -- not just for your patients and yourself -- but also for all these nice people that seem to be putting a whole lot of faith and trust in you.)

I guess we end up where we want to be. My life is far from where I had hoped it would be right now, but it's going OK. The carrots and zucchini have peaked their heads out in the garden, Spike the Pond Fish has not died despite the aphid infestation, and as I prepare to enter to bowels of the hospital for another three months, I'm actually -gasp- possibly -gasp- looking forward to it.