Charlotte

I have definitely lost track of time. I have been back home for a little over a week and it has been very hectic getting back into the swing of things. There is so much going on in my life right now that it is hard to find a moment to write about it.
Charlotte was absolutely wonderful and as my grandpa put it, "well worth my time(and money.)" I truly believe that the experience reminded me of who I am as a person and really drove home why I am going to be an Emergency Medicine doctor.
Charlotte is a very young and healthy city which brought that out in me. I did a lot of socializing, saw the sights, and kept busy. In my high school years, I was a daily runner. My favorite runs were always trail runs. There are lots of runners in Charlotte and a ton of ultra runners(meaning lots of miles per day.) I even witnessed people crossing the finish line of a 50 miles race. No joke. Being in Charlotte reawakened my love for being active and doing trail runs. The weather definitely helped! I did my longest and prettiest run out at the Whitewater Center. I had a minor mishap and banged up my knee a bit. 3 weeks out, I am getting pretty close to having a normal looking knee again. It was well worth it though.
The Whitewater Center was an amazing experience! I did my running before they opened and then did whitewater rafting, paddle boarding, obstacle courses, and some ziplining. It was incredible and a ton of fun. And I literally couldn't move the next day. Luckily for me it was a sunday and I find no reason to leave the couch on football sunday anyway!
The hospital was incredible and my actual learning experience was invaluable. It really gave me some perspective on what I should be looking for as I start interviewing for programs in the future. The physicians were all very dedicated and I loved every minute of it. The amount of energy I had everyday was invigorating.
One of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten was "find something you would do for free and do that for a living." I can say that I have truly found that. I look forward to my shifts in the ED and can't wait to go back. My next time walking into an ER won't be until March unfortunately, but in the not so distant future I will get to spend every working day there.

Arrival

Night Shift

Just a little scratch

Whitewater Rafting

Whitewater Center

Walk to the hospital

Trail runs

All Packed up

Last Day

The First Adventure

I have only been in the city a little over a week and I can already tell that October is going to be an amazing month! The city is very young and healthy which has brought back my love for running. I have ran a few times since I have arrived and I even found some trails to run yesterday. Trail runs have always been my favorite! I have become so much more active over the last few days and my energy levels seem to have skyrocketed. 

I have had the opportunity to work in a couple of different areas on the Emergency Department here. It is very similar to my Pediatric Emergency Medicine experience, where I act as the first line physician for the patients I see. I have gotten into the trenches, learned some new techniques, and have already greatly expanded my experience level. Over the last few months, I have started to make the transition from the learning medical student role to feeling more like a "real doctor." My level of responsibility has changed and I have found that I enjoy the new expectations. 

This program has been incredibly welcoming from day one. Night 1, I went out with the other visiting students and several of the EM residents to a BBQ place for what they call cardiology rounds. Basically drinks, food, and laughing. Over the weekend, I checked out "uptown" with some of the other students who are rotating through the ER this month. I have really enjoyed getting to know them and checking out the city together. We went to a Sushi/Hibachi restaurant which was WONDERFUL and then walked the area. We found a little alley of local pubs, had a couple drinks, and plays darts. A very low-key, laid-back evening which is right up my alley.

Yesterday, I received my first interview for residency. Come mid-November, I will be headed to Texas to check out another program. It was a very exciting moment for me! Emergency Medicine is very different from many of the other specialties. Many started offering interviews shortly after we applied in September, but Emergency Medicine programs typically wait until October. The waiting was making me nervous, so the first offer was very exciting. I am hoping that I will get several more offers over the next couple of weeks. I am also expecting to get my step 2 score tomorrow afternoon. Lots of exciting events coming up and plenty of exploring to still do!

Out of the Comfort Zone

It has been a couple weeks since I have gotten a chance to really sit down and blog. I have done so much in the last few weeks and I will try to write about them soon.
This weekend was a perfect last weekend in Missouri. I watched the little ones play ball on Friday night and then spent the rest of the evening drinking wine with my mom, grandma, and sisters while enjoying some girl talk. Saturday I had lunch at my grandparents and of course played a last couple games of pitch(the family card game.) That was also the day I finished getting everything ready. I am very thankful for my step mom and dad helping me switch suitcases and making sure I was ready to go this morning. I was able to round out my evening on Saturday by having dinner with my Mom and Grandma. I spent my weekend surrounded with some of the most important people in my life. 

Today marks my first day on my Out-of-Town rotation in Charlotte, NC. I have been looking forward to this experience since I applied for it last spring. I scheduled my flight and arranged where I was going to stay months ago and so this week when I actually had to start getting ready to go it felt like it crept up on me. This is a whole new experience for me and as my grandpa said, "a chance to get out of my comfort zone." I grew up in Missouri and have always lived within a couple hours of my family. I have never been on a plane alone, been without my a vehicle/depended on public transportation, or been away from my own bed for longer than a week. This month all of that changes.
My plane took off at 6 am this morning and I was lucky to have my dad see me off and make sure I got through security. My layover was in Atlanta which is a huge airport that requires you to take a tram from terminal to terminal. I managed to get through my morning without any major events and was picked up by my shuttle service in Charlotte. I have spent the day unpacking, walking the neighborhood, and trying out what will be my daily walk to the hospital. The area is absolutely beautiful and the walk is peaceful. I look forward to everything getting started tomorrow.
I have been incredibly lucky to have so much support from friends and family(and friends of family) through my adventures. It is overwhelming how many people are excited for me. So far, everything has been very smooth and I feel at peace. I look forward to continuing to get out of my normal comfort zone over the next couple of week and sharing this adventure with everyone else!

Pediatric Emergency Medicine

What an amazing, stressful, crazy month this has been. I have seen so many different illnesses, helped so many families, and grown as a future physician. As I finished up my last night in the ER, I left feeling accomplished. My final day, I left right around an hour late. I saw 15 kids during my shift which is quite a few for a medical student and worked as hard as I could. The virus going around town has really kept the hospital hopping and the ER super busy.
On my last day I saw a collection of everything. A girl who cut most of the tip of a finger off, kids struggling to breath, appendicitis, lacerations, fractures, a kid who swallowed a penny, babies with fevers, motor vehicle accidents. From spinal taps to stitches to casting to breathing treatments. One by one I got to take care of them.
It has been an incredible journey and I am very thankful to those who made it a good experience for me. 
Next I prepare for my upcoming licensing exam on the 15th and start preparing to leave for North Carolina at the end of the month. I have to find luggage, a suit, business-casual dresses, and more scrubs. I'm working on getting better at curling my hair and trying different looks. It is all about making a good first impression as I start doing interviews in the upcoming months.
Today was the first day of a new month and it started with a little bump in the road. After making my balanced breakfast, I headed off to the gym. Half way there, I realized I had gotten a flat tire! I wasn't too worried initially and pulled over to the side to call AAA for assistance and realized I had left my cell phone at home. Something I do all too often. I learned to change a tire when I first started driving and so I set to work. Turns out I'm not very strong and couldn't get the lug nuts off. A couple driving by took pity on me and stopped to give me a hand. We got the tire off, the temporary tire on, and they offered to follow me all the way to the tire shop to make sure I got there. In a mean world, I have been helped by complete strangers several times while living in the city. I am constantly thankful for those who offer to help others even when they get nothing back in return. With the help of a couple strangers, I got my day back on track and still got my workout in!

Oh Happiness

I am a between freaking out and absolutely excited about everything that is about to happen in my life. The next stage of my life truly begins on September 15th. I will be taking my USMLE Step 2 exam and applying for residency that day(all in the same day of course!) AHHHHHHH!!!! I am putting together the list of programs I am going to apply to and putting on the final touches to my application. Oh yeah...and I'm writing my personal statement. In the next week I hope to finish up getting it all together so I am ready to hit the submit button when the day comes. From there I will hopefully be offered interviews all over the country. I am hoping to do 11-12 interviews total. Which means tons of traveling and new experiences. I've only been a few places in my life so far and I'm about to triple that in the next few months. It will be the first time I am going to travel alone.

My first flight out will be to Charlotte, NC where I will be spending a month working in their ER. I am extremely excited about the experience and I am feeling more and more that I am ready for it. I'm a little nervous about living with someone I've never met and learning a whole new city, but life is all about adventures!

It has been the last few weeks in the ER at the Children's hospital that have really made me feel ready for this. This week I did my first lumbar puncture and after it was all over the supervising physician who did it with me said "how many of those have you done now?" I was like, "oh, um 1." His response? "Really? Awesome! Sprite for your first tap!" You are supposed to get champagne, but...well...we had kids to take care of. I got my first "slam-dunk" appendicitis this week too! Which means it was the first time I got to call surgery and say "I'm confident this child definitely has an appendicitis, will you come get 'em?" Typically, I say something like, "um...this kid has tummy pain can you come look at them?" I also put stitches in a squirming kiddo a few days ago. Thanks to the ER residents who taught me how to stitch so many months ago! Everyday I am growing more and more and have gain confidence in my skills. I am starting to feel like I can function on the same level as a resident which is very exciting!

I continue to prepare for my SimWar competition which I will one day explain. For now I will just say that it is also better preparing me for my future career and teaching me how to take charge of a situation.

Typically I'm rock-alternative kind of girl when it comes to music, but my guilty pleasure is Taylor Swift. I am so in love with her new song. I'm also in love with The Bleachers song "I Wanna Get Better." I definitely suggest checking them both out!

I'm a true believer that happiness is all about your attitude. We are all responsible for our own happiness and right now I couldn't be happier. I'm about to go through some amazing experience and the whole world is ahead of me! I have no doubt there will be a bump or two ahead in all the chaos, but Bring Them On! I am totally ready for it. :)

Saving the World

I decided I wanted to be a physician so many years ago. I was about 8 in the backseat of my grandparent's car.  Around the same I decided I was going to save the world. I held on to both dreams for many years, but when adulthood hit I struggled to hold on to both goals. I quickly realized there was so much pain and suffering in the world and trying to save the world was not a very realistic goal. It was something that I struggled to give up on. Instead I quit watching the news and avoided sad situations.

I had decided that even though there was so much pain, becoming a physician would allow me to save people one at a time. There are days that this holds so true and then there are other days when I can't save someone. Sometimes I can't save their physical life and many times I can't save them from themselves or their situation. I care for some of the poorest people and many of these people have never had any stability and have never felt safe inside their own home.

Over the last couple of weeks I have spent over a 100 hours taking care of sick children and even in a children's hospital I have seen pain and death. I have seen children thrown from cars because they were not in seat belts or car seats, chronically ill children in cardiac arrest, and more abuse than I ever care to imagine happening in one city. Some days are emotionally exhausting.

 I no longer believe that I can save the world single handed, but I do believe that I can make a difference. I can help people in both my career and in my everyday life. While my life may not be easy, I become increasingly more thankful for what I do have, because there are those who have so much less. I have found life is much happier if you love more and are angry less.

Note: I have had some absolutely amazing and beautiful things happen during the last couple of weeks as well and I promise to write all about them very soon! Today my heart is just heavy as I see all the pain in the world.  

Peds EM: The experience

I don't even know where to start. This week has been one of the most challenging, exciting, and wonderful experiences I have had while in med school. I have never been so sure that Emergency Medicine is exactly where I belong and where I will be the happiest. In my first four 10 hour shifts, I haven't seen the same thing twice. The variety is unbelievable and I have already learned so much.
The thing about this experience is that it is so different for me. On most of my rotations, my role as the medical student is to see patients and present my ideas to the attending physician(the boss doctor) based off of the information that I collected. The attendings put in for medications and tests and are the main provider for patients. They talk to the other specialties like surgery or admit the patient. My role is to learn from what they do with the information that I collected. On this rotation it is very different. I act as the provider. I put in for medications and tests. I am the main person who talks with the patient and families. It is my job to call surgery or the admitting team to discuss a patient. As well as do all of the charting and paperwork. It is a challenging experience as I start to really learn the dosing on medications, the tests to order, and the art of talking to other specialties. I am taking on a new set of responsibilities which is exciting and scary all at the same time.
My very first day, I was paged overhead and I remember thinking "who the heck wants to talk to me? I'm just a medical student." But that wasn't my last page of the day and most certainly not the last page for the month. When something happens, the nurses come to look for me. All of a sudden I have so much more autonomy and responsibility as I step into this new role.
Some days are easier than others emotionally. Seeing kids who are sick can be very challenging, but I love knowing that I can help them feel better and get well. Keeping that in mind allows me to love what I'm doing and keep moving forward even when a child is very sick or I have to make them cry, most of the time. Sometimes we see terrible things and children who are in excruciating pain which can be very heartbreaking. Thursday was one of those days for almost everyone staffing the ER. I think everyone was emotionally and physically exhausted when the walked out on Thursday. In medicine, some days are bad days.

After 4 solid days of 10(more like 11-12) hour shifts and actually 16 hours on Monday if you count orientation, I was ready for a couple of days away. The key to a happy and successful life is balance. Medicine is my life and I love that, but I still have to get away for a few days to recuperate. I spent my first day off in my normal fashion, going 100 mph. I had 2 different family get-togethers on different sides of the family. My baby brother is in town visiting from Arizona and my cousin has joined the Marines and leaves for California on Monday. After a couple of different cookouts, catching up with some family on both sides, and running around town, I settled at my grandparents for cards. Playing pitch is a family tradition on my dad's side of the family and I learned to play when I was 9ish. A visit to the grandparent's is never complete without a game of pitch. My family is very complicated, but I am the only child that my parents had together. Typically I spend time with each side of the family individually, but yesterday my younger sister(my mom's daughter) joined us at my grandparents and learned how to play pitch. She was a natural! It was the perfect way to end a perfect Saturday. Tomorrow it is back to the ER and I can't wait. I've gotten some rest and giggling in and I'm ready to go!