I love my job

It's 11:21pm, I'm home blogging instead of working on a case report that is due soon, and I love it. It's my day off today and honestly it hasn't really felt like a day off. Nights have been going relatively well. It is crazy busy and I feel like I'm running around like a pager carrying chicken that just had its head chopped that's trying to find it's way around a hospital. After the first night of getting lost, asking nurses how to do pretty much everything, and figuring a small amount of things on my own, I feel like I have the hang of things. By the hang of things, I mean that I know where  to find my patients in the hospital and can stumble my way through the calls I get from nurses. I haven't had anything too crazy happen just yet but last night was a close one. I came within a couple hours of having to pronounce somebody dead :(  I was pretty sure she was going to die last night but she (or somebody else) kept her with her family for a bit longer. I talked to her family and prepared them for the end that was very much in sight. It was really tough. As a medical student I've seen very sick people before, but never on my own. I was never the ONLY person that was in the room with a family and their dying loved one. I kept her comfortable and just let things play out. I'm not sure if she made it through the day today,  I guess I'll find out tomorrow.  It just made me really think about how fragile we all are. Here one day, and gone the next.

But overall its going well, I can't complain. I'm learning a lot and I think I'm actually getting to closer to the day when I actually FEEL like a real doctor. One thing I have noticed that I hadn't really thought about was the amount of young, drastically injured people coming to the hospital for rehab. I see them as i'm walking into work everyday. On a daily basis I see no less than 5 kids wheeling themselves and their newly amputated stump around the hospital. WHen I see them all I can think about is everything that landed them here. The process from being wounded in theatre to being able to wheel or crutch around a hospital on your lunch break form rehab. I  can't even begin to imagine the battles they fight everyday.  So it does make me sad to see so many young people like that. But it does make me re-evaluate things when I get frustrated and feel overworked or tired. I'm incredibly lucky and I can't forget that.

I think it's pretty amazing that I get to experience all of these things for a living and even better, get paid for it. The hours are long and it's a lot of sacrifice. But in no other career would I be able to actually make an impact on people and truly give back as much as I do. It's a special gift to be able to be here and good or bad, I wouldn't change it.