weekend? I'm confused

Today I slept in until 8am (which feels very late after waking up at 5:30ish all week)! I laid in bed for a while playing candy crush on my phone, then I did yoga, took a shower, played candy crush again while watching 30Rock, walked a few blocks to my favorite coffee shop to buy coffee beans, and when I got back to my apartment it still wasn't even noon yet! Who are you weekend? Have we met before? You feel too much like vacation. I don't even know what to do with myself.

Ok, so I know my weekend activities aren't really what is interesting about my life, but the whole phenomenon of having a weekend is very strange to me. The first two years of medical school my weekends went something like this:

Wake up, study, eat, study, planned activity that usually involves eating so you feel less guilty for taking a break, study. Sleep, repeat.

I know, I'm exaggerating a little. I still occasionally participated in fun weekend-y activities like beer fests or brunch or going out every once in a while, but I really can't remember a Saturday where I woke up without an alarm and didn't have a huge amount of things on my to-do list. I feel like a real working person, even though I still can't quite nudge the nagging thoughts out of my head - "shouldn't you be studying Chelsea? I'm sure you should be doing something productive right now - like studying! Study!" I decided to ignore them for today - however, now I have no idea what to do with myself.

So enough about that. I'm sure you'd rather hear about my experience this week in the hospital. It's really difficult to use words sometimes after learning what often feels like a whole new language. As cliche as that is, it's happening to me! I have to think really hard not to use weird words or expressions that have already become commonplace.

On anesthesia I am assigned to a different service with a different resident every day, so my life is always changing. The only thing that doesn't seem to change are my aching feet. I'm so glad I started off on a "easy" rotation because working from 6:30am to 4pm this week exhausted me. Most of the time we are standing. Going from having to sit very still at a desk all day to standing all day wearing weird orthopedic shoes while being quizzed, trying to perform procedures that you have never done before, and constantly trying to be helpful and look interested when you have no idea what the hell you are doing is a whole new kind of crazy.

But it really is awesome. So far I've already placed 5 IVs (4 of them were asleep, but it still counts!), tried to intubate three times (maybe I'll be successful next week!), learned how to hook up EKG leads, learned a lot about medications, watched 3 epidural placements, gone to 8 lectures and held a scared patient's hand. I've been sprayed in the eyes with lidocaine (accidentally of course) and I've gotten maybe 30% of the questions that I've been asked right, so I feel stupid pretty consistently, but all my residents so far have been nice and genuinely interested in teaching me. The amount of knowledge I could gain is so vast, and even though I try to read about what I'll be doing the next day I'm mostly asked questions about things I've either never learned or learned and already forgotten. But I'm so happy I've finally reached this stage in my training. Even though the days are exhausting and I am certain there will be many harder days (and nights) in the coming year, I cannot wait to transform into a person who might actually someday deserve to be called doctor.

ending and beginning

Well, it has been 40 weeks since I last posted. Many things have happened since then, so here are some highlights:

 -   Took (and passed!) the equivalent of around 20 semester-long science classes.

 -   Took (and probably...hopefully...can't know soon enough if I passed) the longest and reportedly hardest of my boards exams, the infamous USMLE Step 1. (Yes, they can't just give us one exam, with a catchy name like "the bar" or something; we get to take 3 "baby" steps!) The actual test consisted of 8 hours of misery and over three hundred multi-choice and multi-media questions... To give you just a preview of what my studying looked like: I did over 2,000 practice questions and read the 400 page prep book approximately three times. I also watched about 70 hours of videos explaining pathology. In the last three weeks I was studying 8-10 hours per day and still didn't feel like I was accomplishing enough. Laying it out like I just did makes it seem like I did a lot - but believe me I am not being overly modest or something when I tell you that at least half my classmates studied much harder than I did. The importance of this score is that it basically determines your residency placement - either whether or not you can get a competitive residency or maybe if you would be able to get into the top programs in your specialty choice, even if it's not considered "competitive."

 -  After 19 years of dedicated classroom learning, I am leaving the classroom behind. Do you think my butt will start to look different?

 -  I am now going to live in the same location for two years in a row for the first time since going to college. Is this what growing up feels like? Sitting in air conditioning instead of moving boxes in 100 degree heat... If so, this adulthood thing is growing on me.

 -  My brother got married! I now have a new and wonderful sister-in-law. I am so happy they live in the same city as me so I get to hang out with non-medical students every once in a while. I would probably go insane if it wasn't for them and my weekly session watching Dance Moms with a good friend.

 -  I failed to blog... I guess my life just seemed insanely boring/depressing and I just didn't feel like blogging about my giant never-ending to-do list. But I am starting back up because now I get to do exciting things like: talk to people! walk around all day! do procedures! look things up that might actually help someone!

 -  I received a pager! I can't figure out how to use it and someone had to tell me that my pager number was on the back, but knowing how to work it doesn't matter right? I have a pager! Page me maybe...?

Well, if I haven't lost all my faithful readers (aka my family and a few friends when I bug you), hopefully you are in for a treat this year. I get to interact with people! While the hours will be long and there will still be plenty of tests and studying to keep me busy, I am finally getting to the part of my training that hopefully will make all this worth it!

Let me try to explain my schedule to you. I'm starting off with surgery! I will also be explaining things as I go along so hopefully this will make more sense later. Third year is the year where we're supposed to be exposed to the most things and make a decision about what specialty we would like to pursue.

• Surgery (12 weeks total) - big test called a "shelf" at the end
• Surgical subspecialty (4 weeks) - Anesthesia! (pretty excited because the hours are beautiful - I'll tell you more about it in a post soon)
• General Surgery (4 weeks) - Endocrine/Oncology
• Musculoskeletal (4 weeks) 
• "Wild Card" (12 weeks)
• Elective - Radiology
• Neurology
• Psychiatry
• OB/GYN (6 weeks) - shelf at the end
• Pediatrics (6 weeks) - shelf at the end
• Medicine (12 weeks total) - shelf at the end
• Cardiology
• Ambulatory (fancy word for "outpatient")
• General hospital floor

So I've packed the pockets of my white coat (which basically serves as hold-all/lunchbox/professional attire all at once) and I start my birth by fire tomorrow!