I have been a terrible blogger as of late and I fully acknowledge that. This blog has massively dropped to the wayside as I have had to choose between eating, sleeping, and showering each night for the last four weeks while beginning my journey as an M3. Surgery is a crazy service to start on, thats for sure! Setting my alarm for around 4:10am has become normal (though never easy), and I've been spending almost all of my waking moments in the hospital. I never thought it would be possible to actually get close to an 80 hour work week, but I was oh so wrong. I desperately miss my nights of eight hours of sleep and waking up to sunlight instead of pitch back darkness. Such is the life of a third year med student on the most time intensive rotation we've got. Luckily these past four months were filled with some of the cutest little patients, who make being there a little bit better. Even though most of them are quite sick, I am very glad to have started in the Pediatric Surgery department. The surgeons were great and it was a wonderful experience to learn about all the surgeries necessary for kids that I will never have a chance to see in any other setting.
Some of the patients I have been seeing have had very routine maladies like appendicitis, while others have had some of the rarest disease processes there are. Being at an academic medical center really skews your idea of what people see most often all over the country. For example, I have seen two patients already who are unrelated and who both have a syndrome where there are less than 300 documented cases in the medical literature. That is nuts! Who would've though the rarities could seem so unassumingly common. It is all very interesting and very exhausting at the same time.
So now after the first four weeks I have arrived at our "mini-switch weekend" where we all get two days off in a row before we change surgery services. I will start on Surgical Oncology and Colorectal Surgery on Monday morning, which means I have to venture to the main university hospital and leave the children's hospital behind for now. My walk will at least be a few minutes shorter at least, but I will miss seeing kids all day. For now I am just enjoying getting some sleep and rest for once! Hopefully I can refuel so I am ready to go for another four weeks (well actually only a little more than three due to 4th of July and exams that have been bumped up two days so there are surgeons available to give our oral exam!).
Oh, to update on a comment I made in one of my last posts almost three weeks ago: I did end up getting my wisdom tooth out two weeks ago yesterday. It kind of sucked, but I avoided dry socket completely so I count that as a win. There is still a bit of a weird feeling in my mouth, so thank goodness I only had one to remove!! I don't know how people deal with four. I only had local and a bit of nitrous so there was no post procedure loopiness. There was, however, a lot of fear in eating for a while. I'm past that now and almost back to normal chewing. Hopefully it just continues to get better and better.
Some of the patients I have been seeing have had very routine maladies like appendicitis, while others have had some of the rarest disease processes there are. Being at an academic medical center really skews your idea of what people see most often all over the country. For example, I have seen two patients already who are unrelated and who both have a syndrome where there are less than 300 documented cases in the medical literature. That is nuts! Who would've though the rarities could seem so unassumingly common. It is all very interesting and very exhausting at the same time.
So now after the first four weeks I have arrived at our "mini-switch weekend" where we all get two days off in a row before we change surgery services. I will start on Surgical Oncology and Colorectal Surgery on Monday morning, which means I have to venture to the main university hospital and leave the children's hospital behind for now. My walk will at least be a few minutes shorter at least, but I will miss seeing kids all day. For now I am just enjoying getting some sleep and rest for once! Hopefully I can refuel so I am ready to go for another four weeks (well actually only a little more than three due to 4th of July and exams that have been bumped up two days so there are surgeons available to give our oral exam!).
Oh, to update on a comment I made in one of my last posts almost three weeks ago: I did end up getting my wisdom tooth out two weeks ago yesterday. It kind of sucked, but I avoided dry socket completely so I count that as a win. There is still a bit of a weird feeling in my mouth, so thank goodness I only had one to remove!! I don't know how people deal with four. I only had local and a bit of nitrous so there was no post procedure loopiness. There was, however, a lot of fear in eating for a while. I'm past that now and almost back to normal chewing. Hopefully it just continues to get better and better.
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