The Pirates Have Landed

After moving among boxes and contractor size plastic bags of clothes for a week we have finally settled into our new home for the warmer months. We have not moved far from our previous abode. If I had to deal with moving more than twenty minutes away I think you would find me on that psych ward I rotated on a few months back. The beach needs to be cleaned up a little and it is pretty chilly in the mornings now but it is going to be a very nice place to come home to after staring at sick, leaking, coughing, infected people all day.

Moving

Moving for roughly the 19th time in my life.
Goodbye to river valley life.
To someday permanently affix a framed picture to the wall is a dream.

Learning How To Take Of

This Internal Medicine rotation is really great because I feel like I am learning, learning, learning a lot, all the time. I go see patients on my own, write notes, go back and see what the residents and attendings wrote, read about stuff, order something if I think it is necessary (have it cosigned of course), read some more, review the notes and the lab results, attend teaching rounds and conferences. There is a lot of repetition and that is good for me because I feel like it takes me awhile sometimes. I have to feel like I am experiencing something to learn it.
As I was driving home from my weekly 30+ hour "shift" I thought about how sometimes when I am presented with a question I sometimes have the right answer in mind, or a gut feeling about the right answer but I freeze when it come to actually saying the answer out loud. And then I thought about how this rotation feels like being a mom. I see patients in bed, during the day, at night, in the morning when they just wake up or I wake them up. I ask them about how they slept or ate or pooped. I look at their feet and then tuck them in again. Sometimes I check on their or their labs in the middle of the night. I walk down the halls past their rooms while they are sleeping, I peek in their rooms. I have a lot of confidence taking care of my daughter when she is sick and well. I can gage her fever and how she seems and decide if she needs medicine or not. I can assess her nutritional needs and what would be a healthy and good-tasting snack. I can tell if she needs to go to the bathroom or if she is a little constipated or hungry or tired or hurt or if she should drink some water. It took a while to gain that confidence and it is not there 100% of the time. So I realized that I need to just gain the confidence to make decisions about my patients in the hospital because I am taking care of them too, sort of like like a mom. Instead of deciding about a carb snack or a protein snack I am choosing an antibiotic. In addition to learning the medicine this rotation has taught me about my role as a caretaker and decision maker for my patients.
It has seemed scary in the past to let my then one year old go outside without enough clothes on for a clammy, rainy day and splash around in the puddles. And it is really scary to pick out drugs for people to take and invasive tests for people have but that is how they get taken care of in the hospital.