Rising from the dead

My title isn't referring to something awesome. It's more of a reference to the fact that I'm posting on here again. I looked back and found that the last time I posted anything was in August and it was a stupid youtube video that is actually a dead link now. Yay. Deleted.

I've been reading Steve's posts and every time I think that I should post something about my parallel experiences since we're both in medical school. So I've heard. (Although he has to do short writing assignments for school.) But this is generally how things go for me I guess as all of my posts seem to start with "So I haven't written in a while..."

The inherent issue with publicly writing about experiences within medical school are the obvious HIPAA, or confidentiality difficulties. We have to watch out for 'patient identifiers' but they can be pretty damn vague sometimes so in the past I've attempted to write about something wild and crazy in the hospital, but I was hesitant to post at that time because, however ridiculously unlikely, someone could figure out location, time of year, and specific problem to a specific patient. I just didn't want the potential conflict. At least I wasn't posting pictures on facebook.

Anyway, in April I finished taking my last rotation exit exam, which are called our 'shelf exams' - they're a group of standardized questions for each specialty developed by the National Board of Medical Education (NBME) and they're pretty damn hard. What this really means though is that I'm done with all of my third year rotations and now I'm starting up fourth year. It's really hard to believe that I've finished all of my core rotations and that 5 of 12 months were spent at away sites like Roanoke Memorial, Salem VA Hospital, and Shore Memorial. In no particular order:

Psychiatry (Roanoke)
Internal Medicine
Ambulatory Internal Medicine (Eastern Shore)
Family Medicine (Fairfax)
Pediatrics (Roanoke)
Pediatric rehab
Plastics
Orthopedics
General Surgery (Salem)
Hepatobiliary Surgery
Neurology
OB-Gyn
Geriatrics/Anesthesia/Emergency (kind of a weird mutant hybrid rotation)

So far for my fourth year I've taken my big Step 2 Clinical Knowledge exam, rotated through the MICU (medical ICU), hematology consult, and now I'm in Sacramento working for a month in the UC Davis Medical Center Emergency Department. It's funny that this post comes right after Steve's post about complaining about the Emergency Department because that actually was a big hesitation for me until I finally decided to pursue Emergency Medicine for my future. In short, I didn't realize that people complained about everything and that the ED was just a natural target and so I just kind of saw EM docs to be shitty doctors. Well, I didn't want to be a shitty doctor, but now I really realize that it isn't up to the specialty that I pick, but rather it's more up to me anyway. Plus I love working in the ED. I'm currently in California trying to get a foothold out here and getting my face and name recognized so that when residency match comes along, hopefully I'll land a position somewhere out here.

Anyway, future posts will be rather quick and I'll probably go back and tell some funny or engaging stories from my third year rotations, like the guy who thought he was one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the 650 lb lady that I was assigned to deliver her baby (how did she get pregnant?!), or 13 hour surgery that I was scrubbed into, unable to eat, piss, or bring my arms below my waist. Forget sitting down.

Bright futures, bitches! Rising from the dead! Zombie medical student! Working hard to be a zombie doctor! "I CARE ABOUT YOU!!! GARRRARGGHHH!!"