#pgy3

[the-pen-and-the-stethoscope]

AHHHH I FINISHED RESIDENCYYYYYYYY

#medblr #family medicine #residency #pgy3

[snowandstarlight]

this week i sewed some bowel and some blood vessels and i taught my med student how to do a subcuticular stitch and one of the circulators played the luke combs cover of fast car in the OR and anyway i love surgery

#medblr #general surgery #residency #pgy3

[belleofthehospital]

Oh man, found my way back after a few years. I’m a PGY-3!! I’ll be a chief resident in Internal Medicine next year!!! I’ll be applying to oncology fellowship next cycle. I look back at my posts from before I disappeared of tumblr and I see so much fear and burn-out and confusion. I’m now getting married in a month, I feel somewhat comfortable in my job, and I love where I’m at professionally. What a wild, terrifying, emotional journey. Working on night shifts with interns this week and will remember to be a little extra compassionate - especially to the ones who seem confident on the outside but are shaking a little inside.

#medblr #medicine #pgy3 #internal medicine #intern year #life update

[drdessertfox]

I had a guy with transient global amnesia yesterday and every time I walked in he would always say “you look way too young to be a doctor!” So anyway I went in there like 5 times for the confidence boost.

#emergency medicine #pgy3 #residency

[mindfullymedical]

woo!

I just signed my first attending job contract! I’m going to be a real doctor! Residency finishes after June and new job starts in September-So I’ll also have some time to move, rest, and regain my humanity before I start! SO excited!

#attending life #PGY3

[med-engr]

I find it extremely frustrating that even on days I leave on time from work (only a 12 hour day today, instead of 14 yesterday), I've been so stressed, dehydrated, and starving that I feel like crap and can't do anything to enjoy being home

Started building a headache the last hour or two at work, feeling super tired and even a little lightheaded. Make it home, eat something, get nauseous part way through and still have a killer headache that gets worse if I stand up. Which I think is because I didn't eat or drink much all day. And now I can't fix because my headache had made me dizzy and nauseous. Bodies are so stupid sometimes

Being a ward senior is a lot

I'm liking it mostly but its a lot

Also our hospital is full to bursting so that helps nothing

#pgy3 #residency

[fauvester]

🎶I promise i'm not trying to bribe you by bringing breakfast muffins in i just feel so hideously bad that this is your first day at this hospital and the service is a shiiiit shoooooooow🎶

#meds cool #this poor poor poor pgy3 on the ante service from HELL #and he lives so far away and didnt get breakfast yesterday #/I/ will provide. #rank lists due at the end of the month the grade i get here could not matter less

[biosigh]

Five Years Later

I feel as if I'm floating through space. I can feel the ebb and flow of existence as I drift along a current of dark matter, solar ejecta, and gravity waves among the incontrovertible vastness of this black drip. I gave up journaling five years ago, though not deliberately or intentionally. As with many hobbies, hopes, and dreams, I let it fall to the wayside in an almost childlike and capricious neglect as my senses were inundated with the rush of living presently.

I forgot.

I had been fixated on controlling my present and future that I dismissed the past and its useless reflection as a memoir on my life. A waste of time, at least, that is until I felt existential dread grip me by the ankles and drag me into the cosmos of bleakness where I now find myself tumbling. Looking back, I only see a time capsule, borne in this blog and now surrounded by the degeneracy of tumblr's attempt to fill the vapid nothingness with pitiful offerings.

My life, my present life, is going great. I should have no complaints. I'm heading towards completing my PGY3 year of medical residency, my relationship with my mom is fantastic, I feel well-liked in my circles, I'm in love, and the future just seems so bright to me; I'm heading towards such a luminous future like a star in the distance. Except why do I feel dread?

As my body rolls through space, I see glimpses of that bright star ahead, glimpses of my time capsule behind, and everything else is just darkness. Let me help add some nuance:

I'm heading towards completing my PGY3 year, however I need to find a job. I know I'll get a job, and I know I'll get one where I want to go but the uncertainty of what kind of role I'll have - contractor or employee - soul-killing job or enriching - community or academic - per diem or full time - locum or local? It's tough because I don't know how to circumvent this. Many places want someone soon™ or can't see far enough to want me in a year. Other places want me to sign up, apply and be exclusive with them when I don't feel knowledgeable enough to make a decision without signing away my life for a few years. I'm paralyzed by possibility and I continue to hurtle towards an unknowable future.

My relationship with my mom is fantastic but that came at the cost of losing my dad. He passed during the pandemic but not due to COVID19 - small comfort that is. I felt like he was hanging on until I finished medical school and then felt it was time to leave. I don't think I've ever recovered from that. And inbetween the moments where I think of him and miss him and feel the great weight of loss that this world has, I have glimpses and panic about eventually losing my mom too. Space is cold, no matter how many photos come across me; nothing will ever be as warm as a parent's love.

I feel well-liked in my circles. Everyone seems to want to spend more and more time with me. And as much as I enjoy the welcomeness, I find myself retreating more and more into myself. I don't have gratitude for this because I'm used to striking out my own way. I'm used to solitude. I want to appreciate people, but I feel so exhausted because my time feels owed to others. Relationships are dynamic, and they will eventually die without support. But I so wish I could be a friend who pops in and out. Oddly, the comfort of moving through space is the millennia of solitude.

I'm in love. We're about to enter our 8 years together. He's always given me what I've wanted and what I've needed. And I'm learning to be less selfish in this relationship - I'm not very good at it but I'm learning. I'm afraid that if something happened to him, I will never be able to open up to someone new again (see above). Everyone would be measured against the standard that he is. We worked so hard to forge the relationship of our dreams but my anxieties always brace me for the eventuality - by natural or manmade machinations - that we will be apart. And on and on I float in empty space, alone.

The future seems bright but maybe that's because I can only see nuclear fireworks peppering the sky with blazes of the apocalypse. The future feels bleak. We just survived a pandemic, and an ongoing depression. We have multiple national conflicts stirring with new ones coming around the corners like comets. Are we in the 1920s or 2020s? It's so hard to tell anymore that it feels like time dilation is screwing with my head. Gone were the halcyon days of a promising future, and left behind is the nuclear winter of interstellar space. It's horrifically empty and at times beautifully peaceful.

I just want the spinning to stop. I want to stay frozen in time, locked here blissful in an infinite constant.

[the-pen-and-the-stethoscope]

Welp...tomorrow is my last day as a resident doctor!!!! 

Lots of thoughts, lots of feelings. will share soon. 

#medblr #residency #pgy3 #family medicine #i think i'm almost an attending

[beingdreeyore]

Another 24 hour on call shift done. This one wasn’t so bad. I mean, it was. The 16 hours I was in and out of the hospital were a bloodbath, but then the phone didn’t ring at all between midnight and 8am. I kept waking up to check that I hadn’t accidentally switched it off somehow, but it seems the on call gods were finally smiling on me. 

The day after those shifts I still find myself filled with self-doubt. It’s been that way since I was an intern and in some ways it’s better and in others it’s worse now. I second guess every decision I made the day before. Did I write things clearly in the notes? Is that person I discharged still alive? When I pushed back on the nurses was it fair? Did I do the best thing by each of my patients? Were my management plans the best they could be?

I can be abrupt under pressure and sometimes I think people read me the wrong way, but I actively work at being better at it. Every single shift. Some of you might remember when I was with The Actor, I’d keep a note on my phone reminding me that if the call didn’t go well, he wouldn’t call back. It would make me pause before answering. I don’t have a note anymore, but I do force myself to take a breath - we’re are all stressed and under pressure, we are all doing the best we can. Then, if the request isn’t ridiculous, at some point in the conversation I try to make the other person laugh. It helps both of us.

Having a work laptop at home makes it easier too. I know I shouldn’t (I should take the day to just not be at work in any capacity, I know) but I log in to answer all those questions for myself. After some sleep, would I have done anything differently? I still have a healthy enough amount of self-doubt that I don’t make rash or snap decisions at work and so checking in the next day I rarely change my mind, but it’s good to see it all through the light of a new day. 

I learn a lot on those shifts. Every now and again I also catch myself answering something without hesitation that once upon a time would’ve sent me into a irritably anxious mess. But another one is done. Two down for the week. And now I can finally take a chance to breathe. It’s needed.

#medblr #medicine #psychiatry #pgy3 #registrar

[belleofthehospital]

151 days of residency left!!!

#pgy3 #medblr #medicine #residency #internal medicine

[kweenme]

When my boss tells me I can leave early

#getting out early #live #gives me life #medicine #pgy3 #fellowship #lil nas x #montero #cmbyn #call me by your name #TELL ME YOU LOVE ME IN PRIVATE #nas x #nas #LNX #calvin klein

[heartbeatsandrainstorms]

In just under a year, I've gone from one attending (kindly but directly) pointing out my anxiety problem on inpatient to another attending saying that I've become one of the strongest team leaders on inpatient.

Please excuse me while I inexplicably sob uncontrollably about getting positive feedback

#residency #pgy3 #god I'm gonna have such mixed feelings leaving this place

[med-engr]

When your day was so overwhelming you went to your car and cried after work

And didn't know why, because it's not like anything was that bad

But it's just that your brain going 1 million miles an hour for 12 hours trying to learn a new team, run rounds, orient new people, get the team in a good spot, do board prep for noon conference, sign out, run to clinic, and then see 5 clinic patients who all had problems to talk about for their well child checks with a preceptor who runs things totally different than you are used to so you feel like an idiot and also you don't feel supported at all and you have all of their notes to write still

Yeah turns out thats a lot of stress and sometimes it means you cry on the drive home

But now I'm snuggling with a dog and it is really incredible how much better that makes things

#residency #whoo #pgy3

[mashupofmylife]

Done! with PGY 3 call!

#military medicine #residency #just residency things #pgy3 #psychiatry resident #psychiatry residency #thank god #one more week