In the home stretch

Tuesday is officially my last night of call on the thoracic foregut service. This service is one of those classic malignant surgery services. I guess the best way to describe it is to imagine 6 Dr. Pevecs operating like crazy and ripping into you at every opportunity. It's only been 30 days and I'll never be the same again.

I had a nice weekend on call so I'm starting to detox slowly from this experience. Overall, I've got to say that I'm honestly a little disappointed in myself. I let the service turn me into a malignant doctor. All of the residents on the service become this way at some point or another. You don't really think about it until you start listening to yourself talk, or you see the reaction on people's faces...family members of patients.

You can't have sympathy for patients when you're completely engrossed in how miserable your own experience is. That leads to dehumanizing the patients on your service. They become "mustache girl," "retard boy," "mute guy," or "female genitals" for anyone that complains of pain. It seems like such a unreasonable thing, to have pain, especially after we ripped out their esophagus through their chest and cut open their stomachs and pulled it up to their throat. I have become unable to empathize with my patients. I love my intubed ICU patients because they can't talk to me, extra kudos if they're sedated. Vomit guy has metastatic gastric cancer and most of the lung guys have lung cancer. I've lost 4 in the last 2 weeks, took one off of life support this morning. Who knew viagra could be life saving?

I think for the most part, I've been able to grin and bear it. The nurses always ask me why I'm always so happy. hmm...do I seem that way? I'm not a good enough person to come out showing compassion to these folks. I'm tired of the cracked out lady with the bag of methadone under her bed. Sometimes I say half-jokingly, stick fentanyl patches to any exposed skin so that I can get some sleep. I need god, so I've been trying to keep going to church. I'm not a big enough person to get through this on my own without becoming an asshole.

My two best memories from this service

1) giving a patient xanax, then seeing him run down the hall naked 5 minutes later, then seeing cops in his room 5 minutes later when his scrawny roommate accuses him of sexually molesting him.

2) My co-interns and I were getting absolutely reamed in the lobby by an attending when a pretty lady happened to walk by. All of the interns stared at the lady and the attending stopped screaming once he realized none of us were listening to him. He then turned and stared at the lady, forgot what he was so mad about and decided to go home.

-bender is post-call and going to bed

whew...one more week left

Just one more week of this stupid rotation. It's been a daily beatdown my friend. The long hours don't bother me that much. It's the constant stress of getting yelled at, messing up and having patients die or waiting to die. Ags reminds me that there are a lot of people who can't get into surgery and would do anything to get in...true, but it doesn't make this service any less painful. I'm actually looking forward to being at the county hospital starting from next week. word..

-bender

ugh...

I'm disappearing for the next month. I'm stuck on thoracic-foregut surgery = pain. Chest surgery on really really sick people. Everyone is in the ICU and it's scary whenever someone comes out of the OR...lines/tubes everywhere, bagging like crazy, barely alive. I survived my first call night. 9 more to go...wheee...

On a sidenote, this is crazy

http://www.heartattackgrill.com/index.html



If you're 350 pounds or over, it's all you can eat for free. Pretty disgusting. As much as I love my greasy eats, I'd rather not be encouraging this. Although the nurses do intrigue me...

Yo rabbit, I know the dating scene has been sucking. How about some speed dating?

http://www.dateanddash.com/

eh? Chat up some west side guys?

-bender is in a world of pain...

Stay Focused.... Listen to your mentors....

So I guess there is one thing that I have to keep in mind at all times. Don't get comfortable, don't relax and never let up. If that's the lifestyle I wanted, I should have stayed behind a computer. But I don't want that, I want to be on the move and hustling. I must say that I am blessed to be in the situation I am in for now. I've got a great chef who is willing to teach me all he knows and is a mellow guy. He and I had a long talk after I had a severe blowup with my GM and was almost at the point of launching a plate at her face (gee can you think of what I would have done had I not been more mature and mellow) and he let me know that

1) we are not in a normal business
2) I have to stay hungry and can't get comfortable
3) Fuck em all it's about what you know you're worth and you take from life's lessons.
4) Never be scared to pick up and move to the next place after a while because there is always a bigger paycheck for the guy who can get the shit done in this business.

This was probably exactly what I needed to hear at that exact moment. I was so caught up with getting comfortable with my discounts, PTO and other bullshit that I forgot what the goal was, why I am working for someone... so I can be my own man someday and not some fucking robot reading recipes out of a book but spitting em out my own mouth.

Mentors are a necessity that you must take advantage of, remember that at all times. You will never be top dog, it's a myth just like perfection.

Joe out