New Year

All the new 3rd year med students started today and it helped me realize just how far I've come. Though I've had my doubts, I did learn a lot over the past year, mainly about functioning as part of the hospital team and caring for patients. If I had to take Step 1 right now it would be bad news (and I have Step 2 fast approaching...). Anyways, it felt good being able to help oriented the 3rd year students and it definitely helped that I've been on the pediatric cardiology rotation since the beginning of June. It's been good...lots of babies with congenital heart disease including way more hypoplastic left heart disease then seems statistically possible (though I think they just need such complex surgeries--imagine basically completely reconfiguring a heart the size of a small strawberry in the Norwood procedure--that they need to spend more time in the hospital than most kids). I also took care of a girl with rheumatic heart disease which apparently is good preparation for my trip to Kenya. I'm maybe getting better at reading EKGs and listening to heart sounds, though I have a long way to go. I really like my team and I feel I can actually be useful which is always nice.

I had a few crazy days last week with little sleep. I've started working as an extern in the St. Francis ER so Thursday I did my full day of peds cardiology starting at 7am (including a presentation to high school students about med school)...then right after work I drove to St. Francis and worked over night in the ER (fortunately they let me go to sleep at 2 am and just sleep the rest of my time there-nice to make $15 an hour not doing anything). Then I had to come back and work all day Friday since technically I wasn't post call, it just felt that way. The next morning I got up at volunteered at this PBS Kids in the Park event where we helped preschoolers do check-ups on stuffed animals. Good times. Thinking about intern year and keeping that schedule all the time is a little scary. I took pediatrics call yesterday though I couldn't stay over night. This year my goal is really to focus on preparing myself to feel semi-competent as an intern. Scary. We'll see how it goes...