Pager is goin’ off — be right back!
oh yeah, the first year of Residency stopped by for a quick visit.
you almost missed it.
I can not count how many times in the past 10 months I’d tell myself I’m going home to write — to reflect on this mistake (so many) or share that small triumph (an endangered species). Something always came up. If it wasn’t another consult or another “critical” lab/radiology finding (cringe) it was my car’s engine literally dying or my Mom asking me if my life is like Grey’s Anatomy yet.
yes mother. still working on that hair flow mother.
I haven’t really sat down to mull things over until now. Most of the time I was just tired. Not the ‘exhausted-and-fed-up-with-this-crap-rip-out-eyeballs’ kind of tired, mind you, but more of the ‘really-i-just-need-to-close-my-eyes-forget-food-pillow-drool’ variety.
To be fair, I definitely had fleeting occasions…what I designate as “no responsibility zones” on my calendar where I’ve thankfully been able to decrease my own intracranial pressure. Also known as “yolo days” I’ve been lucky enough to have short vacations and weekends where I could spend time with loved ones. For better or worse, almost everything else has taken priority over my silly musings here.
i’m gonna go blog….jk….happy hour anyone?
I do miss it. This writing thing. I find it therapeutic. And now I’m sitting here thinking of how I can convey my “wow, time flew by!” sentiment without sounding like a clichéd tool. Sadly, I’m not clever enough. Also, it’s June 2016 suddenly. Where did the time go?
A lot has happened, it would be nice to reach back and bring up all the parts of my intern year that gave me pause — especially now that I’ve somehow broken through whatever internal barrier there was preventing me from typing away. In expected fashion I don’t know how or where to start. It’s almost as if everything that happened has inter-mixed into a giant amalgamation of nothingness. The price of not acting sooner. Priorities I suppose.
And really, that’s probably the most defining aspect of my PGY-1 year: priorities.
right meow.
The ideal resident, I’ve come to discover, is the one who knows which of the zillion to-do items needs to be done now and which can wait a little. Sometimes it’s an easy choice: go see the ejected driver just brought in with a fractured skull before changing out that other patient’s arterial line. Sometimes it’s choosing the least worst choice: a patient has a fractured spine and can no longer move his legs but this patient with a brain aneurysm just stopped talking in the middle of dinner…with blown pupils. If nothing else, I’ve had the purest little taste of how heavy a lose-lose situation can feel.
hard rock? first round’s on me. 😀
Does it build character? I hope so. What I can say is that I’ve been thoroughly conditioned to eliminate all indecision. I’m being groomed to stop hemming and hawing and to just make a choice when faced with a difficult decision.
“If you’re going to be wrong, be sure about it!”
-Attendings
Confidence. The worst thing you can do is nothing and the scarcest resource we have is time. When things are going downhill making a decision….any decision…is better than leaving a choice unresolved. In many cases a wrong choice made with conviction is celebrated over a correct choice that was timid or made through guessing/luck. This kind of thinking is espoused and reinforced on a daily basis — and it has, without a doubt, made me a better physician. It’s also what has led me back to trying this writing thing again. Just do it. Stop frontin’.
“singin’ it slow now because you ain’t used to how fast we touched.”
Time always does the opposite of what you want. In taking care of patients and making decisions that can mean the difference between paralysis and a life worth living: this whole ordeal of priorities and decisions and not enough time often comes to the forefront. If you don’t study/practice more today you might not be able to save the next patient. If you don’t log onto wordpress today you’ll never write. If you don’t tell your loved ones how you feel today the chance may pass you up by tomorrow. As a Neurosurgery Resident I have seen too much regret in the tortured faces of patient’s families….and I’m barely 1/7th of the way through this wacky ride.
The plan is to master this art of decisiveness one day. When I grow up and (hopefully) become an Attending I’d like to think I did something with my time instead of just sitting here with my HonestTea on the couch — despite it being a perfectly “tad” sweet.
don’t want to end up like this slacker.
It feels good to write and search the interwebs for random memes I can loosely tie in to my ramblings. Fun even…I guess I’ll try to keep this up (we’ll see). And since nothing in life is guaranteed it’s probably the best choice right now to call back my dear old mother and ask about the newest gossip surrounding McDreamy.
i will have to
hemingsway 