Ok 4 months worth to update...have your glass of wine ready?! I'm drinking a Guinness so let's sit down and relax together. Ok Google Speech is ready.
September. When you last saw me I had just finished my vascular surgery acting internship in August. After that I spent a month in the surgical intensive care unit in Vermont. I loved it. I made friends with some more great residents here in Vermont. And the ICU nurses and I meshed like crazy...to the point I spent a night (or two...) on the dance floor getting down with a couple of them. Needless to say I had a great time in the ICU. Oh and the patient care aspect was great too. In fact, the chief resident on another team had me scrub in on cases to cover their shortage when she was gone (ahhhh!) and I got to do an open appendectomy by myself form start to finish!!! AHHHH! Seriously the best moment of my life (well you know not counting Mimi's birth and all... of my career life...oh don't judge). Then it ended. On my last day in the ICU, I was very sad because it was my last surgery rotation in Vermont. I really immediately missed this place and couldn't believe I was leaving. And my gut wrenched thinking, I may be leaving this surgical environment period. I was sad.
October. But c'est la vie. I left and headed to Baltimore. Ooo the mid-atlantic! It's feels more like my home than Florida. I went there for trauma surgery because Baltimore, Maryland has a nickname: Bodymore, Murderland. And let me tell you it was SO AWESOME! I had an amazing time at the Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland. By the end of my first week there, I was in love!!! And please don't think with a guy because ugh puh-leeeze, is there really a boy man enough out there to handle me? Exactly. I was in love with TRAUMA Surgery guys!!! So surgeons are "my people" and it's the only thing I am good at and I didn't think it got any closer than that but surgery is a big field and so micro aspects of personalities find each other in sub specialty. Boy oh boy the trauma team was ME! And I was in the BEST trauma center in the world (yup, I thought in the nation but I found out it's number 1 internationally...best thing is I found out by accident while reading a wall...the people there were not gloating or pretentious at all!!!Ugh love that) but I don't think it has anything to do with that. Trauma surgery makes sense for Mimi too, trauma surgeons work shift schedules and ICU weeks thus you can have a life in surgery! Of course surgical oncology (what I had been thinking for like ever) is a lifestyle friendly field so in way my interests feeds my love for family life. But after meeting more and more surgical oncologists, I seriously wonder if I am..well...geeky enough for them. My filter fails work well in trauma settings and all the trauma surgeons and fellows were "say it as you see it" people. It was like finding a hospital full of my soulmates. Anyway my October was crazy with every 3rd day being 28 hour shifts (well usually 32 hours in my case...36 hours one day ...by choice! yeah yeah call me crazy.) I found some time for fun there surprisingly too though I truly didn't get to see most of the people I wanted to! I made a new friend in my neighbor and lived in like the best neighborhood, Mount Vernon. Which I was told was like the artsy area...which was code for a Hipster's paradise (cue in Coolio's song Gangsta's Paradise..replace gangsta with hipster...and voila! That was the song in my head every morning ).
November.Once I ended my awesome 4 weeks in trauma surgery, I started my long November road trip for the INTERVIEW season. I have done 12 interviews and my final exam of medical school the USMLE STEP 2 clinical skills exam (in Philly..not LA like I originally wanted) from November -December. I was going to do 20 interviews and now I can't even think of doing another one. They are exhausting and too long! Every interview is basically a 2 day process because there is a "get to know the resident etc" event the night before and every interview has been about a 6:30am-2pm event. It is not even the long day of multiple interviews, saying the same thing over and over again and trying to "sell" yourself that gets to me. I used to manage couture clothing boutiques..if I can convince the average woman to buy a $1000 shirt, I can convince a program to want me(..I hope!). But what is exhausting is the night before. You have to be "on" for these people when you don't even know if you like their program yet but yet have to socialize and put on a show to these residents. Sorry but I hate social events with a bunch of people I don't know, and I hate being fake. I don't like be the center of attention and let's face in a group of applicants, ALL applicants are the center of attention. Turns out I can do that maybe 5 times and even all the alcohol hasn't helped me continue the fakeness for the rest. It is even worse when you can immediately tell you don't like mesh with residents or in some cases know you can't live in the area. Ugh, keeping face is exhausting. I wish I could find a fake reality star that resembles me to go to these pre-interview dinners and act like me for me...but let's honest, those girls can't act.
December. So now I have been home in Vermont for all of December and I have canceled most January interviews. I did programs I thought I would like early on and I just can't do the fakeness anymore. So I won't. Besides I know my top choice(s). So it feels like a waste of effort and money. Instead I have been hanging around this
lots of ice and snow! I have been taking a lot of pictures! It has been beautiful. And I have been loving it. I went out in "feels like NEGATIVE 36 degrees" the other night and didn't screech!!! I have even gotten myself to the hospital for the past two weeks to work on my research. Like my friend Gabe said the other day "[I]Adapted well to the Northern way of doing things, only took her four years" He's an ass, it's the truth and I lurve him for it...reminds me of a certain sassy girl who is currently now out of Guinness.
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