Surgery: I lucked out (from my perspective) regarding surgical rotations…. started on Rheumatology, which is bizarrely an option on Surgery due to its inclusion in the Musculoskeletal block. I really do like rheumatology… unsurprisingly I enjoy working up arthritis and the like, much as I previously enjoyed dealing with diabetes and hypertension. I like common problems, I guess. I like that in most cases they have reasonably straightforward solutions nowadays. Anyhow. have now continued on to Orthopedic Surgery at the VA — which has been fun, if dull. there is an unsurprising lack of thinking involved, but the surgeries are pretty fun. “Mallet!” And pretty damn effective and satisfying. And the hours have been fairly good, as far as surgery goes. I go on to Urology next and then Connect Care for my general surgery rotation. I hear that has decent hours AND you get to be fairly involved AND you see a lot of bread and butter cases. So I’m reasonably pleased. Would have liked to do anesthesia instead of urology, but I’m sure uro will be useful somehow. Does mean I’ll have to commit some time in 4th year to doing anesthesia though, because I really do think it’s a useful thing to learn about. I will say I like the manual aspect of surgery. If I could do something that sometimes involved short surgical cases (none of this being sterile for hours bullshit) and didn’t involve the hellish residencies and did involve the more intellectual side of medicine…. well, that would be appealing.
Career decisions: Still bouncing between IM and Neuro. Leaning more towards Neuro over the last few days, but that really doesn’t mean much in light of all the back and forth that has been going on recently. It’s basically coming down to what I’m more ok with giving up. The satisfying part of all this angsting is that it’s become very clear what things I am totally comfortable giving up… like say, neurosurgery… or pathology… or radiology… or obgyn. which is not to say I won’t miss certain things about them, but that’s kind of on the same level as the part of me that wonders why I didn’t become a plumber or electrician or cook. have also for the most part ruled out peds and peds neuro. peds neuro comes back to haunt me once in awhile but it’s a distant enough third that I think I can feel pretty comfortable ruling it out at this point.
Life beyond medicine: planning a trip home in june (only 10 days though, sad!) and a trip to vancouver next weekend to visit mom… Axel (the cat) is settling in pretty well, although his new hobby is daily decimation of one of our dead plants. had a fun visit from my cousin last weekend that had the additional benefit of figuring out how to convert windowsills into bookshelves (thanks sam!). am biking again now that I have to schlep to the VA everyday, and my body is protesting slightly at this sudden onslaught of activity (hadn’t biked since last Sept when my bike got stolen). I’m sure it’s good for me though. today my goal is to unpick the massive patch of wrongness in my cross stitch project so I can start work on it again… also cook 2 meals. have resolved not to make any more cupcakes until we finish eating the last batch (I made 24 instead of 12 and had to bring 12 to school to help us out there)… if anyone wants a dark chocolate cupcake with cream cheese frosting, we still have 6 left in the fridge :P