There were quite a few times that I wanted to take a minute and write about something I experienced this week, but I didn’t get the chance… so I’ll try to remember the thoughts and feelings now…
Monday
Have you ever had just a really great day? That was Monday for me. Everything at the hospital went really well, it was my last day with my attending and residents (end of the month, all would change the next day). I got my mid-rotation evaluation which basically said I’m doing a great job and keep up the good work. I gave my first ever tour to a group of med school applicants and it went really well… and I got Amighetti’s for lunch (really good deli sandwiches). I met with my advisor about planning my fourth year courses and applying to residency and he told me that with my test scores, grades, and clinical evaluations, I will be a very competitive applicant to any residency program of my choosing (including UW… and Stanford, and Oakland Children’s). This was a great day.
Tuesday
Have you ever had just a really bad day? Yeah, that was my Tuesday. Maybe I should have expected that after such a great Monday something like this would happen. Like I said before, this was the first day of a new month, so all my attendings and residents changed. I showed up at a time that would have been early for my previous attending, earlier than I have ever gotten to the hospital for this rotation, but the attending and resident were already rounding at 6:30am! (This is compared to rounding at 8 or 9am with my previous attending). Realizing that I had missed half of morning rounds got my day off to a bad start. Then this attending was just really gruff and abrupt, such a change from the last one… I just felt rushed all day, then my resident tells me that I (and the other student) are in charge of all the new admissions (of which there were 5 total for the day… that’s a lot by the way!) and we’re to do the admission H&P’s (History & Physical) as well as the admit orders. Well, this is totally NOT in the realm of student responsibilities – at least not for us to do alone, so I just got overwhelmed and frustrated – and it was a good thing I had scheduled Buffy night over at Jill’s for this night – I definitely needed it.
Thursday
I got to go to my continuity clinic today!! 🙂 Big smiles! Because that’s the pediatrics clinic! Oh it was so nice to just be working with kids again for the afternoon. Yep – definitely going to go into peds.
Friday
This day wasn’t so bad – I had to get up at o’dark-thirty to get AJ to the airport in time to catch his flight back to Seattle – but then I was feeling so gross that I just called in sick to the hospital and went back to bed. So most of the day was a wash since I slept it away, but when I woke up later in the afternoon I felt so much better. I think maybe the stress of the week was just getting to me.
Hmm – not as exciting to read about my week in little sound bites as it was to actually live it. I guess it will have to do though. This weekend has been really nice. I’ve been very productive with studying and creating my fourth year schedule and researching options for doing some away rotations (at UW and in Portland). I also got a whole lot of laundry and dishes done, and all the garbage taken out. That kind of stuff feels really good sometimes. And the weather has been so nice – warm and balmy all weekend – so I’ve been taking long walks around the neighborhood with some of my study books – so I get to walk and study at the same time. I’ve had a really nice break this weekend and I’m not extremely excited to start back at the hospital tomorrow, but I think it’ll all work out just fine.
