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| My big plant, this time last year (it doesn't look like this now, unfortunately) |
I am two months away from finishing my third year of medical school: two months of internal medicine before I take Step 2 CK, take a one month pit stop in anesthesia, and then four months of orthopedic surgery. Home and three away rotations I am (yet) applying to. Research has been stagnant. My mentor believes in me more than I believe in myself. I scarcely feel ready to apply for residency, but here I am, at the edge of it.
I agonize enough over this process on my own, so I won't belabor it here. Essentially, I haven't changed my mind about orthopedic surgery. I haven't changed my mind about orthopedic trauma, specifically. I am more afflicted now with impostor syndrome than ever before. I have never been more uncertain of my abilities and my talents and every other qualification I may or may not have than right now. At the same time, I have toured most of medicine as a student and determined that nothing is close to orthopedics, and that it must be my future.
I finished my neurology clerkship, which was one of the good ones. Unfortunately, I saw three people die in one day in the Neuro ICU/SICU. All were inevitable. Two were peaceful, with family around them. The third was a futile, but all hands on deck resuscitation attempt of a gentleman who was hemorrhaging all his blood and bags upon bags of more blood from his dural venous sinuses (could not be repaired). I felt kind of useless because of my inexperience and because of the futility, but I made myself helpful by running supplies around, measuring and dumping blood from his hemovac, cleaning up, and finding chairs and tissue.
I've withdrawn a lot from my first friends in medical school and leaned in to others, namely my roommate and our mutual friends, and other students applying in orthopedic surgery. I take care of my plants. I clean my room. I make food for myself, ignore my other roommate, and sleep when I can. Two of my patients on internal medicine are dying, one in a matter of days and the other in weeks. Time just moves on.
I've withdrawn a lot from my first friends in medical school and leaned in to others, namely my roommate and our mutual friends, and other students applying in orthopedic surgery. I take care of my plants. I clean my room. I make food for myself, ignore my other roommate, and sleep when I can. Two of my patients on internal medicine are dying, one in a matter of days and the other in weeks. Time just moves on.
