One month

Its been a little over one month since I started residency... Since then, I've learned a lot about nephrology, but not nearly enough to be considered confident/competent in the field, and not nearly enough to where I feel like I know enough for general pediatrics. I find myself constantly double guessing myself and questioning my knowledge base... Because lately, it seems minuscule.

I was reading another bloggy by a current medical student who talks about the difficulties of med school in real talk. None of the flowery garbage about how somethings are so inspiring, but she talks about it in a way that's realistic. I know what she is going through and although I could never eloquently describe how med school was affecting me, she's been doing that.

Basically, med school and medicine makes you question everything about yourself. I'm no different. I'm not sure if my pessimism is from constantly being beat down by exams or from breakups prior. I love medicine, but I don't like the feeling that I know nothing... When will this feeling go away? We are starting board review quizzes that are required every two weeks, and this week is on growth and development. They are requiring everyone to participate, from interns to seniors, and adding in a $100 prize for each resident per PGY year who scores the highest total score at the end of the year. I'm glad and mad because I've already given up and I've already assumed that it won't be me from the interns. Its a great tool to have since it requires us to start reading and preparing for boards early on. But, the incentive just makes me feel dumb.

I graduated top %5 of my high school class, somewhere at the top of my college class though I'm not certain where since they did not rank us, and I was used to making As and a few Bs. I cried if I ever made any Cs (I made 3 in my life prior to med school). Then came med school, and with all the smarter people in my class, I had to finally swallow the bitter pill that I'm just average. I've gotten pretty good evals from other people I've worked with like other residents and attendings, but I can't seem to shake off the feeling like I'm inadequate. I feel the same in residency. That I'm just an average intern. I want to "exceed expectations" and have people thinking wow, she's good. I kind of feel like I'm just trying to survive at this point.

And its only been one month.

Until the next one then.

Difficult

Peds is hard. Not to mention hardcore. My head is spinning with everything that has happened to patients both medically and socially. I can't really say anything here for HIPPA and legal reasons, but man. I need a hug. Or maybe just my two days off this weekend. After Friday, I will have worked 12 days straight.

Tired!!

Until the next one then.

Drowning

I. am. drowning. with. work.

Not just actual work, but I just moved into my apartment closer to work and half of everything is still in boxes!! I am so tired when I get off work so all I end up doing is just eating and watching mindless television... Hells kitchen, Masterchef, sytycd, and whatever else I can find that's entertaining. I need to search for and read articles to actually learn something but I don't have Internet yet, and I forget to do it at work lol. My list of things that I want to learn and read about is steadily growing. But, I have been pretty good about keeping up with my work at work though. I hope I didn't just jinx myself!! :-/ My entire kitchen is in boxes. My living room has bags everywhere. My bedroom has clothes everywhere but I just hung up a lot of my clothes so hopefully I'm almost done with that room. I just need my dresser, sofa, and desk (that I'm going to use as a dining table since its huge). I just have a memory foam pad/mattress topper sitting in my living room that has served as my sofa and my bed this past few days. My bed is here and it's ready and I'm going to sleep on it and I'm super excited about sleeping on it since its actually a bed!!

But for realz, man, I have so much to do!!

And I start my continuity clinic tomorrow where I'm the PCP for the patients. Me. Woah. O_o

Until the next one then.

Tired...

One day off is like nothing... I don't feel like I had any time off. Fortunately, since tomorrow is July 4th and I'm on subspecialty service, I'll actually get to go home after a half day. I still have work to do tonight, like I have had every night. I'm sitting in the lounge waiting to checkout to the night resident but whoever is checking out right now is. taking. forever.

My mom is convinced that we can't find a boy for me because they all think I might be too smart for them since I'm a doctor working in the med center... Ohh lol, if they only knew what kind of idiot I really am. But it works for me actually... I have absolutely no time to maintain a relationship, much less start one from scratch. In a way, I guess *someone* did me a favor by making me so jaded and ending things when we did. I won't have time for anyone but my patients and myself for the next three years... At least thats the situation as I'm seeing it based on the past week...

Until the next one then.

One week!

So I've officially finished my first week of residency!! I still feel really stupid though... Hopefully that will change soon. I guess I just have to get used to all the protocols in place at the hospital and when reporting certain things...

What I learned in the past couple of days:
How to calculate fluid balance I'm a kid who's getting peritoneal dialysis
What day x of y antibiotics really means
The labs are sometimes forgets to update the culture results on our patients
If I drink iced tea at lunch, I'm energized enough for the afternoon
I'm a little more efficient than the ther intern. I think the difference between us is that he writes everything in paragraphs and I write a short assessment paragraph and bullet thr plan list. This seems more efficient and much easier to read instead of having to sift through all that text to figure put what we were planning on doing for that patient that day.
We are getting a senior resident to work with us starting tomorrow! I'm not sure whether or not that's a good or bad thing. We don't have many patients on our service and adding another res takes away from the learning side. But, it will help tremendously in clinic. Last week, we had so many patients in clinic that I was there until 7pm, and I didn't even get a chance to write my notes. So we will see tomorrow how that goes.

Let's go! Week 2!

Hopefully I can learn some medicine this week lol...

Until the next one then.