so far...

Sorry for the hiatus but I have a good excuse – namely 3^rd year of med school. It’s been busy and I’ve just finished up my pediatrics rotation and have moved onto internal medicine. Things I’ve learned so far besides the disease/treatment info:

• Peds is similar to veterinary medicine (been said before) in that a lot of it is detective work with a patient who can’t tell you what’s wrong so you just have to go on how they are behaving and go on what the parents say. Good for people who love kids, with a flair for diagnostics, and infectious disease.
• I like working in multidisciplinary teams. My favourite work was with 2 kids that had chronic issues that required involvement of mental health, social work, dietician, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and multiple physicians. Basically those patients were like little projects for me to work on coordinating their care to help them get better – so I felt surprisingly competent for that part given my background. Who knew that medicine can be like project mgmt?
• I like the people a bit more than the science – or at least, I’m motivated to find out the science in order to help the people (not the other way round like for some people). No big surprise but it I’m already seeing how gratifying the work is, having a mom say to me “Thanks for taking care of my baby!” is pretty sweet.
• Happiness is in the small pleasures. I got to go out for lunch with one of my friends one day and I felt like I was on holiday. Same with the Globe and Mail – I read it this weekend (I was in between rotations) and was giddy with enjoyment. I found a woman who sells tea out of her home and actually delivers it to my door (does it get any better than this?). A run on a sunny fall afternoon on a rare day when I’m home at 4:30pm. And not least at all is getting wonderful frozen entrees & other food made by my mom given to me from time to time (on top of the usual weekly dinners at their house).
• Getting rid of my cable was the smartest move I made to save money this fall! I have yet to have time to rent a dvd and the one tv show I watch is available on CTV online for free whenever it’s convenient for me. Nice!

Some of the less fun parts:

• Seeing some child abuse, broken families and weak parenting skills and knowing that even if you can fix the child physically, it’s really just the tip of the iceberg for that child. And probably, they’re going to have a screwed up life (or at least childhood).
• Breaking bad news. The one good thing about it is that at least if you’re the one delivering it you can try your best to soften the blow. I had to tell a very kind woman I met last night that she has cancer throughout her bones all over her body. A tough message to tell and a heck of a lot tougher to hear. It went quite well but I’ve been thinking about her all night and since it’s my first time doing such a thing, I’ll probably never forget her.
• Complainers you come across on your team who seem to do far more complaining than solution proposing. My overall beef with life, not just medicine.

So now I’m off to do some studying for a couple of hours before I head to bed and hope to sleep away the twitch in my eye that seemed to start up after my late night/early morning combo last night.

Thanks for dropping by!