A Perfect Match

As you all know from the buildup the last few months, this past friday was The Match. The day in which the future of every fourth year medical student is decided. Of course they have to torture you by having you wait until exactly 1pm to get that oh-so-important email. Each school has it's own way of doing The Match. Some have ceremonies where students get envelopes and they all open them at the same time. Others have each student read out individually in front of the class where they matched. My school's kinda lame and we don't have anything like that. We just get an email.

So my day started like any other. I woke up, went to the gym to distract myself..... hours later, minutes before 1 o'clock, my husband and I are sitting next to each other couch waiting. At exactly 1pm I open up my email to find that I have matched at NH-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency. My first choice. The joy and happiness of it all just overcame me. Along with a sense of complete and utter relief. The last fiver years of our lives culminated in this moment. This is what you work so hard for in medical school, to get the residency of your dreams. And I did.

My Last Day as a Medical Student

Pic of me on my last day as a med student!

Four and a half years ago I stepped onto campus as a first year medical student. I vividly remember everything about that day... Getting a tour of the campus, getting my picture taken for my ID, getting sized for my (short) white coat. One of the most exciting (and scary) days of my life. Little did I know that it was only the beginning of the hardest, yet happiest, five years of my life. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours of studying, long days in hospitals and clinics, all mixed with getting married and having a baby.

So for the first time in five years, when my alarm went off this morning I woke up with a smile on my face. Today was my last day as a medical student. As of today I have sat through every hour of class, completed every exam, finished all my required clinical rotation credits. Today was the final time that I would introduce myself as a "medical student", and the last time I would have to wear the short white coat.

Smoothie time!

I started my day off like any other: getting some morning snuggles from my little man, followed by showering and getting dressed, having a smoothie for breakfast, and then off to the hospital. I met up with the attending in the ambulatory care center where we did a diagnostic colonoscopy on a patient with metastatic colon cancer, an upper endoscopy, two liver biopsies, and another colonoscopy. Then my day was done. I walked out of the hospital for the last time as a medical student, and if I end up returning to the same place for residency, then I'll return as a physician. Quite fitting if I say so myself.

Snuggling with my little man.

So now I'm home hanging out with my boy and basking in the fact that I get to spend the next few months just being a mom. I don't think it's actually hit me yet that I'm really really done, but maybe after The Match tomorrow, reality will hit me a little harder. Or maybe it won't even be until graduation (see countdown ticker on right side of page). Either way, the next time I step foot in a hospital, I'll be a resident physician. I'll get a tour, get my ID picture taken, and get sized for my (long) white coat. Sound familiar?

Black Monday? Not so much :)

Today is what is known in the med-school community as "Black Monday". Today is the day that fourth year med students find out if they matched at a residency program or not. Here's how the day goes.... at exactly 12pm you get an email from the NRMP saying either, "Congratulations! You have matched!" or "Sorry, you have not matched :( " Well, I don't exactly know what they say if you don't match, and nor do I think they put a frowny face, because I was lucky enough to get the happier of the two emails. Yes, my friends. I will be spending the next three years happily employed as a family medicine resident. However, here's the messed up part: If you do match somewhere, then you won't find out until Friday (4 days from now!) where in fact you did match. If you think that's nuts, then try being an actual med student and having to go through it yourself.

So you may be asking, what happens if you don't match? If you don't match, then you have an hour before the electronic residency application service opens up for you to submit your application to programs that have unfilled positions. And unfortunately, there may or may not have positions available in the field in which you were originally applying to. Meaning, that competitive specialties like Dermatology or Anesthesiology most likely have all their spots filled, and you'd be stuck applying for a Family Medicine residency (which in my mind would be a good thing, but I'm biased). Even worse is that you probably will end up in a location not exactly where you were hoping to be in the first place. So not an ideal situation if you don't match.

Thankfully, I did not have to endure the kind of torture involved in scrambling for a spot. Like I said, I got the good email. The minutes before my iphone ticked down to 12:00, I literally thought I was going to vomit in the doctors lounge at the hospital. Every horrible thought and scenario ran through my head, and I completely forgot all the good feedback I got from programs I interviewed at. Then when I finally got one of the greatest emails of my life, I literally screamed with joy (no one else was in the doctor's lounge with me, but even if someone was I probably still would've screamed). The relief that overcame me was incredible. All the hard work put in over the past five years paid off. 

So I did what any good medical student would do. I took the afternoon off. I went home and high-fived my husband. Went for an amazing run with him and our dog on this beautiful day. Then I played with my wonderful little boy outside all afternoon. It was literally one of the most perfect days. Now I just have to endure four more days before finding out where exactly I matched at and where I'll be spending the next three years as a resident. Strangely, I'm not as anxious as I thought I'd be because I'll honestly be happy at any of the programs. Of course, I'm really hoping to get my #1 choice, but I didn't rank any program I knew I'd be unhappy at. 

So come Friday I'll share with all of you where I matched for residency. And I'm sure that day will be just as perfect as today's. 

No "Butts" About It!

My final two weeks as a medical student I'm working with a team of gastroenterologists. And I have to say, I have never seen more butts in my life! Of course, the bread and butter of a GI doc is doing colonoscopies. So naturally they see a lot of "behinds" before taking an interesting journey up the rectum and through the colon with a snazzy camera. I akin it to watching an episode of the Magic School Bus and playing a video game at the same time. If you've never seen a colonoscopy before, check this video out on youtube:

Of course, I've been doing a lot more than just traveling up people's colons. I've seen my share of GI bleeds and pancreatitis (which is a true reflection of the plight of today's society, aka: everyone's an alcoholic these days). Then you have the run of the mill gallstones and cholecystitis, meaning people eat too much fat. And of course there's lots of other cool disease. What I like so much about the gastrointestinal system is that everything is so mechanical. Something breaks and you can just go in and patch it up. Polyp in the colon? Remove it. Stricture in the esophagus? Stretch it. Simple. Easy. Saving lives.

So this week will now be my last as a medical student. I'm trying to take in as much as possible and really learn instead of slack off (kind of like cramming in as much as you can right before a big test). But I might be working a little harder to try to distract myself from the upcoming residency Match. Five days my friends. Five days. And hopefully at that point I'll have some good news for you all. In the meantime, enjoy my little video and if you're 50 years or older or have a family history of colon cancer, please schedule a screening colonoscopy.  1 in 20 people are diagnosed with colon cancer, and a colonoscopy could save your life!

March Madness

Cheers to what I hope the be one of the greatest months ever! And it's not because of college basketball. This month I will complete my last few weeks of clinical rotations, which means that in 12 days I will have successfully finished my very long and tortuous training as a medical student. I spent last month fulfilling my surgery elective requirement working with an ENT doctor. I have to admit that I was seriously dreading doing a surgery rotation, mainly because that was the one block during third year that I absolutely hated. It may have had something to do with the fact that I was in my first trimester of pregnancy and got banned from scrubbing into long procedures because I frequently had to leave the OR to puke or pee.

A happy pair of tonsils!

Anyways, as I was saying... I was not looking forward to four weeks of surgery, but I made a resolution to try to make the best of it and really learn from it. So I picked a specialty that I thought would be particularly useful to me as a family physician. What better than ENT? Seriously. So I geared up for what I thought would be a month of long hours, lots of work, and getting constantly pimped (not in a hooker way, in a getting asked medical questions to try to stump you kind of way). Turns out that I was lucky enough to find a surgeon who doesn't at all have that surgeon personality- and by that I mean doesn't make a comment that women shouldn't be doctors because they get pregnant (true story), and thankfully took pity on me as a fourth year medical student at the end of her final year. I learned how to really diagnose an ear infection, and got to watch many many tonsillectomies.

The next two weeks I'll be doing gastroenterology as an elective. And of course with any new rotation, I'm nervous just to start working with new docs, but quite frankly I'm just so excited to almost be done that I'm not as anxious as I usually am. Two more weeks left to learn all that there is to learn during my medical school career. Then to top it off, the last day of my rotations will culminate in The Match where my future as a physician will be determined, and I'll find out which residency program I'll be gracing with my presence for the next three years. A fitting end to a half a decade of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. And hopefully if I'll be celebrating having a real job after it's all over.

Turns out the day after The Match is actually St. Patty's day, which if you're Irish like me, is kind of a big deal. So my celebration will extend well into the next day. Can't get better than that. Oh wait, yes it can! Because just five days later will be my 28th birthday. Even more reason to celebrate! Actually, the surgeon I just worked with thought it was rather funny that I always tried to find an excuse to celebrate. Why not? With a life like mine, I think every day's a reason to celebrate. Oh, and let's not forget that spring is just around the corner....