Hey everyone!
It is Monday morning and with a coffee in hand, I am ready for my next core rotation. It has been the busiest three months of my life so far in medical school, and I know that it is only going to get harder. I have officially finished twelve weeks of internal medicine and I have realized how integrative medicine really is. I am tired, but I am ready for surgery! (But am I though?)
So let's go back to the beginning of core rotations, starting at the hospital in May was an experience of its own. From studying day in and day out from a textbook, learning from my attending, residents and patients was a completely different experience. My note taking improved, my history taking was more thorough, and my interactions between the hierarchy that is medicine got a lot smoother. It is such a neat dynamic being on this side of the fence, as I remember being a patient in the hospital, you always see a bunch of white coats walking around but are not really sure what they are doing or talking about. I can assure you they are talking about patients, the attending asking the medical student insanely hard questions and the residents letting the attending know what they have done for each patient from the day before. Internal medicine was such a structured rotation, you go in, you see your patients, you write notes on your patients, you present each patient to your attending, and then you discuss the treatment plan going forward. You have long call days which are overnights at the hospital, you have short call days which are from 7am-3pm (which always went longer), and you have post call and float days. I was pretty tired by the end, not to mention trying to study for our shelf exam at the same time.
I try and take each core rotation with an open mind, as saying " I NEVER want to do this as a career", completely shuts off a little motivation inside you. Whether you know it or not. I know I can be a hypocrite when I say with certainty that I do not want to be a surgeon, but I will always tell myself as I go in each day for my core surgery rotation, I will try my hardest to learn everything that I possibly can for my future primary practice. Whenever an attending asks if I am interested in this rotation long term, I will always say yes, as I do not want them thinking I will hate the next twelve weeks. I know I will have a hard time with surgery as I have a problem with fainting, not due to the sight of blood or seeing a patient cut open, it is the smells, the lights, the environment, and the fear of being in that situation is what I have a hard time with. I have bought myself some compression socks to be able to help my venous blood flow from not pooling in my legs [that is why you see people who stand for a long time faint, as the blood is pooling in their lower extremities]. I will let my preceptors know that I may need to sit down from time to time and I hope they are okay with it! I also have learned some breathing exercises for me to calm down and ease my anxiety, as I have heard from other students that this is super beneficial. Being in Atlanta, you see some pretty gruesome violence, from stabbings, to shootings, to pretty messy car accidents. Wish me luck guys, these next three months are going to be tough. *Sigh*
All in all, third year of medical school is pretty sweet. Yes you are still studying as after every core rotation we have a 25% exam to make sure we are learning enough material for the Step2 CK [another board exam next Summer-yay], but the shelf exams do keep you up to speed with studying. My score from Internal Medicine comes back this week, let's hope what I learned at the hospital pulls through! I am trying to upload more to YouTube, one video will be coming this week, so keep a look out, and I wanted to say thank you for all the kind messages so far!
This post is more of an update post, but I have a motivational one coming for ya soon ;)
Happy Monday!
Bye for now,
-E xo
As always, some pics!
