May 10, 2010

As soon as it was over...

it begins again!

Except this time, I'm chasing the specialty that I want... ah, the beginning of fourth year. It seems like not too long ago (Friday), I was a lowly third year, new in the ways of the world before a new day dawned (Saturday) and all the wisdom of the profession was passed down to me.

Or something. Plus I went to Fat Cat so that Lori and I had a contest over who could suck more at pool. Then my boyfriend stepped up and was gracious enough to not destroy me immediately.

Whenever I feel like I don't know enough in medicine and I'm not studying enough and I'm dumb and stupid and I'll never be a real doctor, I need to play pool, because holy crap, I can cram decent knowledge into my brain when I have to, but I have the hand-eye coordination of a brain damaged rhesus monkey. Another good reason not to go into surgery. My real life scratch on the eight ball could have me jamming a kelly clamp into someone's hypothalamus, and I'm told the hospital's insurance company frowns on that.

But I started my pathology rotation at a new hospital! The path part was cool, but I'm discovering a few things... I'd say that being at a new hospital is like being the new kid in school, except it's more like being the new kid in school if you started in the middle of summer vacation. The crop of third year clinicals don't start at that hospital for another one or two weeks and most of my now fourth year colleagues were smart enough to give themselves a break now, so I was virtually the only medical student wandering around this giant hospital, and the only one in my rotation.

I'm also discovering that while I love love love looking at slides while attendings teach me (!!!), I need some damn Bonine or something because I was getting seasick. I actually had to close my eyes a few times while we were reviewing pap smear slides because I had that icky feeling I got when I went up the windy road to Fish Friday. Is there any way to man up your middle ear? That's pathetic.

The attendings are really nice so far, and they already know that I'm almost certain I want to go into their profession. This lays on the extra pressure of my being the only student *and* I don't have the "I don't need to know this" excuse, because even if it is too high tech for the boards, I'm going to need it in the long run.

I'm already mourning the loss of our free meal passes at my old hospital too. I was bone dead tired this morning so ran down to the cafeteria to pay for my coffee... later pay for my lunch... the horror! After nearly a year of running to the grocery store virtually never, the first thing I did on my way home was stop and get portable lunches. Momma needs rent money, and that is not going to go to paying 8 dollars a day for crappy hospital food.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

congrats, ishie with finishing 3rd year. =) i have a question since i'm gonna become one. do all the students in a core rotation with you at the beginning rotate with you in the rest of the rotations, too? and would all the students in the same core rotation do everything together? or would we be all spread about on the floor? thanks so much ishie. btw, path rocks. lol

Ishie said...

Thanks!!

Uhhh depends on the hospital and the rotation. You're frequently paired off with someone for each 'section' of a core, so you'd get a lot of time with that one person and not as much time with others. In some, you don't get much other student contact. In ED, there were two of us on a shift, and each would take a side.

Fourth years are on a different schedule, so they'll come and go, and won't have a lot of the responsibilities that the third years have. Students from the same school in third year will start and end rotations at the same time. There may be some overlap if you're with other schools (we had a couple Cornell students off schedule with us when we were doing IM)

If you go to a clinical center, the group you start with should be the group of you finish with (Brooklyn, Coney Island, Kern). If you go to anywhere else for cores, you're on your own to try and grab whatever you can that's open and available.

Anonymous said...

thank you, ishie =) that helped a lot. i think i'll be at your previous hospital because you mentioned free meals.hehe

just to clarify, so say if i start Medicine, followed by Surgery, Peds, Psych, ER, Family.. all the students who started Medicine with me (at the hospital) would also have Surgery, Peds, Psych, Er, & Family in that order,too? i wonder if we actually get to pick rotations? i really don't want to have Surgery early on in case i do get it. but then again, i have to look for places to live at & that is so stressful. :\