Blip!

This post was composed last week, but I got called to a trauma before I hit send. I'm leaving for NYC to meet up with my favourite people (Banana! Dan! Sally! Randy!) and will be back in 2 weeks, ready to tell you all the gory stories of baby-catching in Scarborough!

Suddenly, it is the last week of my surgical rotation. I am hiding in the call room at 9am, wearing 3 pagers (plus my phone). This is what I have learned after a month of surgical training:

1. Always hide in the call room. If you're on the floor, nurses, case managers, dieticians & patients can see you. And then they can ask you, "Just quickly, just one thing...". This will prevent you from doing your real job.

2. Your real job is paperwork. Every single patient needs an admission note, progress notes, prescriptions, diet plans & discharge summaries. If you are not a surgical resident it will be assumed that you love paperwork. This assumption is false. But you will do it all anyways.

3. You've got to carry the trauma pager. On my first call shift, I was terrified about being first to arrive at a trauma, which would obviously result in a spectacular and immediate patient death. Now, in my last week, I am trying to carry it as much as possible. Trauma work is teamwork (yep, there are tee-shirts) and there is always someone there to stop you from killing people. Well, so far.

To quote Strictly Ballroom; "A life lived in fear is a life half-lived". And that's just not on.

4. It is possible to get sick of Tim Horton's breakfast sandwiches. I never thought it could be true, but one a day for 21 days in a row (yes, that's how much I'm working) and I have started to feel ill at the thought. I am still eating them, but now I feel a little ill as I stand in line to order the next one.

5. I am not a surgeon. I love the cutting, love the blood, love the clean & decisive management. I do not love the hours, the turnover, the death rate or the hours. I am, for better or worse, a family doc. At least until my next rotation...