It's May!

As I started this month, I thought a lot about countdowns. The countdown to my vacations. The countdown to the end of Intern year. And the countdown to finishing this ridiculously hard and yet, at then end of it, extremely educational stretch of 13 days without break. I know that many of my friends and fellow residents have worked much more than that, and maybe I am making a bigger deal of it than it needs to be, but it is actually spelled out in our duty hours requirements that we should only work 80 hours per week (I worked 83) and that we should be relieved to have mandatory day off every 6 days that we work. But reality and requirements are not often the same thing, and reality was that someone needed to be on call and work night shifts and weekends while my fellow residents took care of babies, attended weddings, worked on their marriages, and attended conferences. I cover for them, just as they will cover for me when I go to China to see my grandmother, and take care of her in the precious time that we have together.

I'm back on internal medicine this month, which means managed insanity. Insane schedules, insane work hours, and insanely noncompliant patients. While I completely understand autonomy for the patient, I am also somewhat perplexed sometimes why patients who refuse all medical care come to the ER and want to be admitted to the hospital. There are cheaper ways of obtaining 3 meals a day and an air conditioned room with crappy television service.

Knitting has been interesting, as I start working on the Fairy Hill Shawl!

I'm excitedly waiting for my beads to arrive. I have the perfect yarn that I bought at Stitches Midwest 2016 last summer, from Dramatic Knits, in their Cherry Blossom Colorway. It screams spring in the most polite manner, and will be elegantly paired with citron colored beads. It will be the perfect thing to work on during the long plane rides, though at the same time, perhaps sleep deprivation is leading me to insanity, as the thought of hundreds of tiny beads scattering throughout a trans-Pacific airliner jet when we hit turbulence sickens me to my stomach.  Stayed tuned!

August/Sept, and Into The Wool Fiber Retreat!

I discovered this in my drafts folder, and felt so embarrassed I hadn't published this! I had meant to! ~ZT

Ya'll, August was a tough month. I was on my surgery rotation, and it was rough. The hours were technically 5:30am-ish to 5:30pm, but that also meant that I was getting up early to round on the patients, and there were more days than not where I stayed until 7 or 8pm to do double rounds with the OMT team. It was by choice, but it was still a bit rough. I felt bad for my OMT preceptor as well, since she also had to stay late to make sure that I got my numbers in. The surgical team typically does not do surgical consults, and so it makes things a bit difficult when my graduation requirements state that I must treat at least 50 surgical patients with OMT over 4 years. Thankfully, since I was on surgery, every patient I treated with OMT was one more that I could count towards that number. Most days, I came home too tired to do much more than cook, eat, and sleep. A few days, I didn't even make it to the bed and fell asleep on the couch.

Of course, Olympic season also did bad things to my sleeping schedule. I love the Olympics. I love the sportsmanship (or lack thereof), the competitions, and the general joy of celebrating athleticism and the power of the human body. As a former media translator who helped cover the Beijing Olympics, I think it is safe to say that I am obsessed with the Olympics. Thus, the fact that I had to get up at 5AM and the fact that most of the interesting events were broadcasted at 9pm primetime did my sleep no favors.  NBC, you are the bane of my existence. I understand you need the numbers of viewership for your commercial sponsors, but still.

Thus, it was with great relief that surgery rotation ended and I was able to look forward to something I've been waiting for a long time: my first knitting retreat!

I was so privileged to attend the Into the Wool Fiber Retreat 2016, hosted by Dana of Unwind Yarn Company and Just One More Row podcast, Wendy/Sillyfru of Sassy Pants Knitter podcast, and Ashley of Twist Fiber Studios. I've been watching Dana and Fru's podcasts for a long time, and I was also a big fan of the Caffeinated Knitting podcast, whose co-host Daniela was one of the former hosts of the ITW retreat. For the past 2 years, as I watched all of the fun and shenanigans reported on the podcasts, I promised myself that if I got through the craziness of medical school alive and found a residency, I would find a way to get to ITW. ZK, SSK, and Rhinebeck are on my list of yarny things to do, but ITW seemed such a special retreat to be able to go to, and it was hosted by some of my favorite podcasters.

Indeed, the retreat was spectacular. I had so much fun, and made so many friends, and I just feel so lucky that I got to be a part of something special. I drove 18 hours roundtrip, but I don't mind it a bit.

The beginning of the retreat was a bit hectic. I arrived just barely in time (at 4:45pm) for check-in, which closed at 5pm, but the Ashley and Fru who checked me in were gracious and so nice. I found my way to my cabin, said a quick hello to my fellow cabinmates and unpacked my stuff, then ran my car back to the parking lot. I couldn't find a single person afterwards, and I panicked a bit as I walked around trying to find the opening ceremony gathering area. Fortunately, I ran into two lovely individuals, Jen of Daizie Knits, and Willow they set me straight. They took me to the gathering area, and I was able to find people to sit with.

The next few days passed in a blur, and I had a wonderful time.

Seasons of Love

You know the song: 525600 minutes...

Now that we have that earworm going in the background. I just wanted to take a moment and think about the fact that I have been a doctor officially for a year. It has been an amazing process, and I am constantly learning more about what I need to learn, but somehow, in the past 6 months, I have stopped feeling embarrassed when people call me doctor. I have learned to proudly step into the role and instead of shrinking back because I don't know something, I step forward and state that though I don't know everything, here is the information that we have and here is the plan going forward.

Somewhere, in the past 3 months, I have learned how to better deal with patients. How to tell them I need to go in the most polite terms, and how to look and them and ask questions to get a better answer and get the answer that I was looking for.

I learned to stand up to nurses, and that even the best nurse does not have the same knowledge base that a doctor does. We learn and approach patients from different standpoints, and while I constantly learn from my nurses, I also learned that sometimes it does take a physician's standpoint and critical thinking skills to say that no, this patient does not require this drug and yes, really, they do need this lab value.

Somewhere in the last month, I learned that present myself with the passion, compassion, and composure of a physician. I stopped thinking of myself as a glorified medical student and started becoming a little less scared that I would be found out as a fraud and be sent back to medical school.

Somewhere in the last 12 hours, the clocked ticked past midnight, and the Seasons passed by, to make me an official 2nd year resident, a "senior".

I have had to excuse myself out of a room to cry after I gave the patient their cancer diagnosis. I have watched as patients I performed CPR on die in front of my eyes. I have intubated patients who appeared in front of me and could not breathe. I have called patients with the good news that they were losing weight, and counseled patients as their HbA1c continued to climb despite their best efforts. I have delivered babies and put their mothers pelvis back together after delivery. I have injected patients' knees and watched as they walked out of the room pain free without a limp. I have performed OMM on patients who swear they had 10/10 chest pain, and watch their face in amazement when their pain resolved.

It has been quite a year. Here is to another great year, and to the incoming interns, good luck. You got this. You can do it.

End of March: Convocation 2017, Sweater and Teaching Dr. K to knit!

March ended so quickly, and it was a much better finish than the start. I learned that I passed my COMLEX 3 boards (medical boards step 3), which meant that I was pretty much done with standardized tests until my licensure examinations in 4th year of residency. I am so relieved to finally be done, as I had visions of failing. And yet, I actually did better in my step 3 than I did in my Step 1, finalizing that my experience is always more than I imagined.

I had such a great time in March, more than I had initially expected for my orthopedics rotation. I learned to read Xrays, and how to vocalize the reads, I learned how to do knee injections quickly and efficiently, and I learned how to be faster in doing clinic encounters. I did not enjoy the 6am start times, but I learned that getting for cases was much better than trying to get up just for clinic. I liked having that little jumpstart to the day, learning about the different cases that orthopedics managed. I peeked into a few OR cases, and renewed my love for the OR, but was happy that I didn't have to scrub in for too many cases. My suturing skills were quite rusty.

I was also happy with the generosity of the orthopedics residents, in allowing me to go to Convocation, the premier and ultimate annual conference for the American Academy of Osteopathy. I had a blast, getting to see my OMM friends and colleagues again.

Now the Knitting content:
I am almost done with my sweater!

I worked on it quite a bit when attending the lectures, and it actually made me pay attention more. I was alert and listening instead of getting bored or frustrated that I could not take down the information fast enough. I listened to what was being presented, and only took notes on the pertinent topics. 

I brought yarn and needles, and accomplished the impossible: I taught my advisor how to knit! She picked it up pretty quickly, in fact, and it was so fun to do that. On the other hand, I also tried to teach my senior resident to knit, and that turned out hilariously bad, as he slipped all the stitches in an attempt to "knit more quickly", however I suspect he was trying to do it badly so that he would get out of further knitting lessons. I took the hint rather quickly, and settled for making him things in the future instead of making him create his own.

 In addition, I spotted some knitters and crocheters in the wild! A spouse of one of the physicians had a baby blanket she was working on, and she stated that she always brought along a blanket to work on "at these types of events".

 In addition, I spotted another physician working on a hat on the first day, so I quickly snapped a picture during lecture. I should have known, as osteopaths are fairly tactile people, but it was good to have proof nevertheless.

 All in all, March was a wonderful month.