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....