Moving forward

I am a fourth year medical student. It’s kind of nice because for the first time, patients and residents trust my judgment. Perhaps it is because I exude more confidence or perhaps it’s because the interns are not so far ahead of me.  Or (I suspect this is the main reason) I just don’t care. I don’t care what others think of me. I don’t worry about not passing and thankfully there are no exams at the end of my rotations for me to pass.

I started fourth year with a rotation on Safe and Healthy Families. The doctors there diagnose and facilitate treatment for child abuse. It was very interesting and one of the pediatric subspecialties I could really see myself doing but I did have some trouble stomaching the extreme nature of certain cases. If I were a CAP (Child Abuse Pediatrician) I would worry about missing things and I am not sure I could live with the guilt of not catching something major.

This last month. I worked as a Sub-I on general pediatrics. It was hard. I worked from 5:30am every day to at least 6pm with call every fourth night. I hated call nights because it meant I couldn’t see Caila for 30-35 hours. I got one day off a week and I scheduled it during a weekday so I could give my sister-in-law a break from taking care of Caila. This meant I got no weekends with Dave and that was hard too. I am not sure I would survive a residency with such a schedule.

Now, I am doing a Care of Refugee rotation and it is very nice. I only have to work 60hours in 4 weeks, which is good because I am concurrently taking a Strategy class and I am doing a rotation with the Occupational Medicine department here. The extra time has allowed me to finally finish my ERAS application and submit it. I can’t believe in one short month, I will be going on a bunch of interviews. Even though I still don’t know what I will do with my life, I am excited to be moving forward.