Doctoring

The past couple of months have been a complete blur. I graduated medical school, got married, moved to a new city - albeit, without my husband of a month - and started doctoring, that is, intern year of residency. In this whirlwind of events, I haven't had much time to reflect on the gravity of things; I suppose life's just been a race lately with me barely holding on at the back and yet having an amazing ride even if some moments, it feels like I'll be dead last.

During orientation to residency, they lectured us on many things that I found completely useless - like how to order a particular test on Epic (our electronic medical record software) a week before I would ever put an order in - and I think I forgot 99.9% of what was said during those 7 days however, the one thing that really stuck was someone telling us to find some sort of outlet for our feelings. For the past 4 years or so, a lot of that outlet for me has been my now husband, who, as a med student when we first met, and now a doctor, has always been able to relate to the joys and difficulties of going through this path. That's become much more difficult now that we live in different cities, even though we talk to each other almost every night, but sometimes it's exactly the opposite of what you need after a long day at the hospital. Someone to sit with, to be quiet next to, to watch a silly show with. Talking about what happens during intern year is difficult; and mine has just barely started. I decided though, that in the absence of that someone sitting with me on the couch every night, or in addition to, I will try to use writing as an outlet once again like I used to when I regularly wrote here.

It's only been 3 weeks since my first day as a "real" doctor.  It wasn't anything like this, although the one thing that's certainly true, is that I felt like I knew absolutely nothing at all. I still know very little in the big scheme of things, but oh boy, has it already been a steep learning curve! I've been trying to figure out what's been the hardest part, but it's hard to even pinpoint one thing. There are days when I feel so overwhelmed by the million little tasks, which feel impossible to all accomplish in the span of even 24 hours, let alone the 12-13 I am supposed to be at the hospital for. There is so much administrative work involved that I must be spending at least 75% of the day sitting in front of the computer. Either writing notes for each patient on the events of the day, entering orders, for either tests of medications, making sure that when patients are discharged, they can get all the medications they need, dealing with insurance companies, pharmacies, social issues, it's all a maze! But perhaps what's most unsettling about all this administration is that it really cuts down on the actual time I get to spend with the patients themselves. And that part is truly rewarding in most cases! I have been working on the inpatient oncology service - you might be able to guess that most people who end up there are very sick and many of them dying. Just in the past 3 weeks, I've held the hand of a young woman in excruciating pain while her pain medication arrived, I've been to a wedding on our floor of a 24-year old girl with terminal cancer (perhaps the most gut wrenching thing I've even seen), I've seen a man undergo a very cool clinical trial treatment for the first time at our institution, I've had to say to a family "I'm sorry but your cancer has grown", I've had a patient get very sick while under my care and eventually die in the intensive care unit, I've missed an important test result that changed the management of a patient (thank god for the senior residents!) and lost sleep over it. And these are only a few examples of things that have been happening over only the past 3 weeks.

All I know is, this is a really hard job. But it's a really awesome job, and I wouldn't rather be doing anything else in the world! More details to hopefully come soon...