What Am I Going to Do... The Sequel

So a lot has happened since I made this post in July. I've been splashed with urine, for example. I've stuck my fingers in butts. I've snuggled crying babies and then held them in a vice grip while an intern jabbed their backs with needles, praying for the "pop!" that would signal that we had (finally) reached the subarachnoid space. Babies don't like that. I've been slapped by sleeping children whom I must wake to auscultate. I fell asleep standing up in an OR. I witnessed open brain surgery (last week, and SO FREEKIN COOL). Missed a lot of meals (although you wouldn't know to look at me--I think my body's in survival mode, and is packing on the adipose for warmth), missed a lot of sleep, and generally smelled rank at times (in public).

So what have I learned from all this?

a) I don't wanna be an intern. All of the above complaints are NOTHING compared to what the interns suffer. One of my interns is 8 months pregnant and she cannot get any sleep on a call night. On post call days, the interns (and residents) routinely get out by 2 or 3 pm, having shown up at 5 or 6 am the day prior. That's a leetle bit longer than the 30 straight hours rule. Our interns were so nice to us, letting us eat, pee, and sleep. I think either they remembered what it was like to be a student and yearned for those days, or they wanted to soften our hides before we ourselves were subjected to the brutalities of internship.

b) I have a real problem with the sad stories. We already knew this. (When I have my classroom month in November or December, I'm going to go seek professional help yet again about all this, so someone other than my husband can watch me cry about the little ones).

and c, the moment you've all been waiting for, is my updated
Goals in Life:

I had a free moment in the school computer area the other day and started poking around on the school's 4th year scheduling options. I went through the electives and started looking at stuff I'd like to do or *might* be interested in. Here's what I've come up with:

Heavy-weight contenders:

Ob-Gyn is still high on the list, as is Infectious Disease (although I'm not sure what they do, besides running around saying "What a cool, multi-drug resistant bacteria you have! Here's a nice toxic antibiotic to treat that with."). Recently dropped from the list: Peds and Med/Peds (which, for some reason, is pronounced "Peeeds", not "ped" like "med" or "Mister Ed" or "Keds" the shoes). Goddamn surgery is still on the Heavy Weight List. Recently added to the heavy weight list: Urology, ENT, and Ophthalmology. I'm not sure if I'm extremely interested in any of them, but they do offer some aspects of surgery, specializing, lifestyle, and happy cases. We'll see--I'm going to examine each one to see how they fit.

No-No's:

Medicine, Psych, Neuro (I FUCKING HATE NEURO), Radiology, Pediatrics, Med/Peds, Cardiology (ugh).

Unknown entities:

Anesthesia--everyone tells me I should do anesthesia. I have no idea why. It seems kind of boring to me, honestly.

Gastroenterology--not as nasty as I'd initially thought, and colons look cool on the inside.

Derm--perhaps boring, but also immediately rewarding in some cases.

Pathology--man, those pathologists are the happiest, friendliest, smiliest group in the whole hospital. I'd love to have that little responsibility for a living patient's well-being (well, not really).

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And there you have it. I love procedures, love working with my hands, don't like rounding so much, enjoy some clinic time (but not all the time), LOVE the "fix it now" immediacy of surgery, and don't like really really sad stuff.

Does anyone else occasionally think I'm in the wrong profession? It's still not too late to be a bus driver again--Metro is hiring at $12/hour!