As pediatrics comes to a close...

I'm going to miss a lot of it, but I'm also going to not miss certain aspects of it.  As I typed that, I realized how this is going to be true for everything that I'm going to decide not to do.  For example, surgery didn't sit all too well with me, but the fact that I will never see the OR again after residency is somewhat disheartening.  The fact that I will never work up a patient all the way through the course of a stroke from a Neuro ICU standpoint is also not that great.  I wish I could do it all, but I can't.  I have to choose, and whatever I'll choose, I'll have a tiny bit of regret that I didn't choose everything else I didn't choose.  Med school is tough not because of the learning that we have to do.  The learning happens whether we like it or not, one way or another, through good and bad experiences.  The reason medical school is tough is because of the difficult choices that we have to make and the not-so-medical questions we have to answer.  Do I choose to follow through with this action?  How will this impact me? Others? My future patients?  Do I even want to stay in medical school?  Did I make the right decision in the first place to become a doctor?

EM, FM, Pediatrics

Haven't posted in a while, and to be honest, I don't know if I have too much to post.  The main thing is that this year is blowing past.  I went through a month of emergency medicine research in January, a month of Family medicine in february, and now I'm currently on 2 months of Pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Michigan.  The experience and patient exposure that I'm getting is great.  I'm seeing a lot of classic pathologies like Diabetes, Down's syndrome, asthma, etc., and then I'm seeing a lot of rare things like spinal cord compression syndrome, Devic's disease (aka Neuromyelitis optica) and Pierre Robin Syndrome.  Honestly, I think I am getting the best medical education that I can get.  In terms of patient population and the clinical exposure, I'm not sure what can beat this.

I loved EM.  Hands down.  Nothing comes close to the experience I had on EM.

I loved FM as well.  But the thing that made me like it so much was my preceptor.  He was probably one of the coolest guys that I know, and one of the all-around best human beings probably alive today.

I am ambivalent about Pediatrics.  I am currently on the inpatient service and I am not so keen on the schedule.  My roommate is on the outpatient side of things and he seems to be sleeping very well at night (and into the morning).