7 months of residency and 5 months of pregnancy later...

Seven months into first year of residency and you wouldn't know it from my lack of blogging, but I am still alive. Yes, I've made it over the first year hump of my family medicine residency. Hard to believe. And boy do I have lots to catch up on!

I've pretty much gotten a taste of everything these last six months... OB, peds, inpatient medicine, ICU, and gynecology, all with a little time in clinic dispersed throughout. What I liked most (and why I chose family medicine) is that there's so much variety to it and you can really do a bit of almost any specialty as a family doc. I went into residency with a lot of different interests. Integrative medicine, sports medicine, OB, emergency... But the busier I get and the more I go along, I've realized that I can't do it all. But what my absolute favorite thing to do as a family doc is obstetrics. So I've decided to make that an integral part of my practice.

20 weeks along

And what better way to get more experience in OB than to be pregnant myself! That's right folks, we're having our second child! If you thought I was crazy enough to have a kid in med school, then I bet you think I'm even more crazy to do it again in residency. Like I've always said... being a doctor is my career and my family is my life. Meaning, I'll never put my job or anything else before my family. Because at the end of the day, they're the ones I come home to and the ones who support me and love me. So I didn't think much of it when my husband suggested we expand our family.

Much to my surprise, it didn't take long at all. As a matter of fact, the same month we started "trying" or better yet, not avoiding it, we got knocked up! I really shouldn't be surprised at all because the same exact thing happened the first time around. I just thought that three years later and under the stress of residency (and lack of along time with the hubby), it might be a little more difficult than "poof you're pregnant". Boy was I wrong. 

So I'm about 22 weeks along now, and I have to say that being pregnant in residency is way tougher than being pregnant in medical school. For one, I'm working way more hours. And I have way more responsibilities. My first four months were absolute hell. I was throwing up several times a day and tired beyond belief. All of which was so different from my first pregnancy, which led me to believe I was going to have a girl this time around. But to my surprise, we are adding another penis to this household! I'm completely outnumbered. Even our dog is a boy.

Killian proud to announce he's having a brother!

Well right now I'm doing my two week pediatric night float rotation. And usually I hate working nights, but this time around it's been quite enjoyable because I get to admit kids and take care of all the newborns. My pregnancy hormones are on overdrive seeing all the cute little babies. And starting next week I get to do another month of OB and pediatrics, which is even better. The hours are long, but I'll be seeing my favorite kind of patients. Plus it'll bring me back to third year medical school when I was 6 months pregnant on my OB rotation and I had made such great connections with my fellow pregnant mommies.


I make no guarantees, but I hope that I will start to be better about blogging and keeping you all up to date with how residency is going. Especially since I'll be on maternity leave in about four more months, I may have more time. Who am I kidding? With a three year old and a newborn baby, I'll likely have no time. But I'll do my best. After all, one of the reasons I started this blog was to show fellow med students/residents/physicians that you can have a life outside medicine.

Dear Family and Friends....

My dear family and friends,

Please understand that residency is hard. I love being a doctor and it's what I've wanted to be since I was six years old. But that doesn't mean that every day is fun and easy. I work 12 hour days, sometimes longer. And in those long hours I do more than just see kids in the office with strep throat or adjust patient's blood pressure medications. I not only have to take care of patients in clinic, but I see patients in the hospital. I take care of people who are really sick and dying, and then I have to tell their families that their loved one is dying. I have to make important decisions about which antibiotics to give someone who's septic. I have to closely monitor their kidney function. I have to manage their laundry list of medications. I have to inform patients that they have cancer. I make life and death decisions on their behalf, including deciding when to stop treatment and let them die.

On top of all that, I'm responsible to for answering phone calls from patients. I have to refill their medications. I send out referrals. I call other specialists to talk about their care. I type up letters to inform them of their test resulst. So when I'm working in the hospital delivering babies or in the ICU, I still have to be responsible for my dozens of clinic patients. And in between all of that I'm actually expected to read and learn more stuff (as if medical school wasn't enough). This involves me going as far as looking up medication dosages on my iphone while on the toilet when I have two minutes to actually go to the bathroom, and attending lectures during lunchtime. So even when I get to eat, I have to listen to a lecture about hemorrhoids and anal fissures.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that as much as you think you know what I do for a living, I feel like you never really know. This is why I'm telling you all this. Because my job not only is physically demanding and exhausting, but it takes an emotional tole on me. And then I come home and have to be a wife, mother, daughter, and friend.... which certainly isn't any easier. So please forgive me for those days that I come home later than usual, or if I don't answer your phone calls for weeks on end, or if I can't go to that family function that everyone else is at. It's not that I don't want to see you or talk to you. It's that I'm a resident. My time is not my own. I have hundreds of patients that I will see and be responsible for throughout residency, and it's a big responsibility.

Just know that I appreciate all your support, but please try to understand that these next three years are probably going to be the toughest of my life and I'm probably going to need you more than ever (even if it's just to listen).

Love,
Maria

One Month of Being a Doctor

As you can probably tell from my month-long absence from blogging, my first weeks of residency have kept me quite busy. After orientation I started off with Maternal-Child Health (which is just a fancy way of saying "OB & pediatrics") as my first rotation. Quite honestly, it's been such a surreal experience that thinking about it just now has perpetuated a revelation that I am actually a real-life doctor. It wasn't being in the hospital or seeing patients or anything else really that made me feel like a doctor because it's something I was so used to doing as a med student. What I think really makes it real is that I was the one making decisions for my patients. Which medications to give, which labs to order, when to discharge the patient.... all these questions were usually defaulted to the physicians I was working under, but now it's on me.

What's even more crazy is that I actually got to deliver babies! Seriously, I brought life into the world. Really, it was all the work of the amazing moms who actually had to do it. I was more or less just a glorified baby catcher. (They should design some sort of sterile catcher's mitt for doctors because those suckers are slippery when they come out.) Delivering babies is by far the most gratifying part of my job. It's one of the happiest moments in a couple's life and you're there to share the experience, and most of the time they're so grateful to you. I still tear up and get all sappy afterwards when I get to put the baby in the mom's arms for the first time.  Definitely made all the long hours worth it.

In addition to delivering healthy babies, I also got to take care of them afterwards. But with the good comes the bad, and unfortunately there were also some not so healthy babies. It's always hard taking care of sick people, but when they're tiny sick people it's even harder. Everything you do has to be that much more meticulous and you're constantly on edge, but the reward is SO much better when they finally do get better (and the majority really do get better). And then it's bittersweet when they get to finally go home.

I was really nervous starting out residency on such an intense rotation, but I'm really glad I did. There's no easy way to start residency. You just have to dive right in, not just getting your feet wet but getting soaked from head to toe. And now that I'm on a rotation where I actually have a bit of time to breathe (clinic and community medicine), I can really appreciate where I'm at right now. I'm a doctor. I'm really here, doing what I love at an amazing residency with some pretty awesome fellow residents. And even though I know the next three years are going to be pretty tough, if my first few weeks are any indication of what it's going to be like, then I have a feeling I'm going to love it.

Well... Here Goes Residency!

I officially started residency yesterday, although I have a week and a half of orientation, EMR training, ACLS, and lots of meetings before I actually start "working". It's hard to describe what exactly I was feeling when I walked into the conference room Monday morning to meet with my fellow residents and the residency director. I wasn't too nervous since I was quite familiar with the hospital already after spending two and a half months doing rotations there fourth year. I also met some of the other residents last week at a shin ding at my house. Plus, I already knew the residency director because I worked with him before.

When I pulled up to the hospital I got the honor of parking in the physician lot. You know you made it when you get to park in physician parking. Quite honestly, though, I really thought that I was going to walk into the hospital and someone was going to tell me it was all a hoax and I wasn't really a doctor. Thankfully, that did happen. After meeting the remaining of the residents I hadn't already met, the residency director started his welcome spiel. I knew it was going to be a great three years since he started off by playing the beginning of the very first episode of scrubs. (He said he was going to walk in and act out a scene from the first episode of Grey's Anatomy, but his family highly discouraged it).

I'm not gonna lie, the rest of the day was pretty boring. A VERY long morning of hospital orientation mumbo jumbo, followed by ACLS training. I had just done a course in January, but still had to do it. I didn't mind though, because honestly it was a good way to get to know my fellow residents a little more. We had to do another whole day of ACLS training today, which I'm proud to say we all passed! So feel assured that the family medicine residents are fully qualified to resuscitate you should you go into cardiac arrest.

My official doctor ID badge!

Though it's only been two days, I can tell already that I'm going to get along with my fellow residents. The program did a great job of picking a group of people that will mesh well together. And a huge reason why I even wanted this program in the first place was because I like the residents a lot and thought I would fit in well. If you're gonna spend three years and countless hours working with a group of people, it's definitely a bonus if you all get along and like each other. In the end I could really work with anyone, but I'd rather work with people who are my friends. So here's hoping to making many new friends over the next few years!

The Day I Became a Doctor

So it's been about a month since I've posted anything. As a matter of fact, my last post was the day before graduation. And since then it's been such a hectic past couple of weeks, I took a bit of a sabbatical from blogging. It wasn't just that we had to move, my husband had to work two weeks straight, and I had to get a bunch of stuff done to prepare for residency..... I really just wanted to spend all the time I had to be with my boys. Now I'm starting my first day of residency tomorrow, so what better time than to start blogging again!

To fill you in I have to start where we left off, which is med school graduation. I keep telling people that it felt like when I got married. There were years of preparation put into this big event, so much build up and excitement, and then it felt like it went by so fast. I tried so hard to just live in each and every moment of the day, but just coordinating it all was so distracting. You see, I had two graduations. The first of which was with the entire university (undergrads, nursing students, etc.), then we had what's called the "hooding ceremony". The hooding ceremony is the real deal. It's just for the medical students, and it's where we get "hooded" with this fancy piece of green velvet fabric symbolizing that we are officially doctors. 

Dr. Doane, my hooder. Such an amazing physician! 

After spending over three hours and listening to over 1,000 names get called at the first graduation, I was anxious to get on to the hooding ceremony. What was so memorable about it was that it's full of all this old school tradition. From the entrance music, to the actual hooding, to the oath we all recited at the end. We're talking YEARS of tradition. Each and every doctor who graduated before me essentially went through the same thing. What was especially great, was that we could pick a physician to hood us who we knew personally. So I asked one particular doctor who I did my third year family medicine rotation with, who was really the one to inspire me to go into family practice and has been a wonderful role model for me.

UNECOM class of 2012

Got my diploma!

When we first walked into the auditorium, I remember just looking all around and being completely overwhelmed with emotion. All these people surrounding us were the people who supported us throughout the last couple years. Our parents, family, friends. Then looking at my fellow classmates and feeling this sense of camaraderie, and being grateful that I hadn't gone through it all alone. As I walked up onto the stage to get hooded, it felt very surreal. Was this really happening? I was in school for so long (especially after taking an extra year) that it felt like a black hole that I would never get out of. And here I was, five years later. I was finally a doctor. To prove that the whole thing wasn't some hoax, they actually gave us our real diplomas afterwards. Seriously! There was no taking it back. I officially graduated. 

I can't even express how memorable that day was and how blessed I felt to have my family and friends there to cheer me on... my parents, husband, Killian, my cousin Chrissy (who's my best friend), and Dr. Doane (who hooded me). All of them have played such an important role in helping me get to this point. When I was just a little girl, I told my parents I wanted to be a doctor and from the first time I said it, they have always supported me and told me I could do it. Then there's my patient husband, who has stuck by me and supported me throughout it all... long nights of studying, moving a billion times, dealing with my anxiety and freak outs, and being such an amazing dad that we could actually have a child in the middle of it all. Speaking of my little boy. Despite the struggles of raising a child, he's been my source of balance and grounding throughout it all. If I had a rough day, just coming home to him melted it all away. 

My wonderful, supportive, loving family!

Even though it's been a crazy last five years between being a medical student, getting married, and having a baby, I wouldn't change a thing about it. I say all the time that everything happens for a reason and I KNOW that I wouldn't even be in the same place I am today if I hadn't done it this way. Quite honestly, I don't even know if I would have made it through school without having my son. You see, after I had him and took time off, it gave me time to really put thought into what specialty I wanted to do. Plus I think the time away from it all helped me to reboot and refocus when I started back up again. Not that having a newborn was at all relaxing or anything, but I love being a mom. And I loved that I made a conscious decision not to delay having a family just because I was becoming a doctor. 

So fittingly, I have officially changed the name of this blog. Because I have actually survived medical school. Now I'm back on the bottom of the totem pole as a first year resident, and my next challenge is to survive three years of residency. I'm sure it'll be hard, but I'm really looking forward to it. And who knows what'll happen along the way. If medical school was any indication, I'm bound to be in for a crazy ride. But I'm right where I'm supposed to be and doing what I love to do. Life truly doesn't get any better.