Make sure you know what you are getting into... [part one]

One of the pieces of advice I was given as a pre-med, and that I frequently give to pre-med students (it's #7 on my Top 10 list of advice for pre-med students) is,

"Make sure you know what medicine is like before you sign up for it."

That was ringing quite loudly in my mind when I started my call shift the other night. I had had a busy week in surgery. There were some really long days of showing up on the ward at 7am then a full day of office then going straight to the hospital at 5pm and seeing emergency patients and eventually taking them to the operating room and getting home well into the wee hours of the morning... with a full day in the office after that.


Most of the surgeries were routine, but some came with the emotional stress of having to tell a patient and their family they had a 50% chance of dying on the operating table, and a 50% chance of us opening them up, finding that we could do nothing, and closing them up to face their death within the next few days. (One patient's response to that speech? "Bloody hell." Yeah, no kidding.)

I also had a long academic half-day full of lectures on things that I need to know but had no energy to learn, that also went late into what was going to be my evening relaxation time.

I had to try and fit in studying for my two upcoming exams in between all that, and then on top of that I tried hard to make time to get some exercise and spend some quality time, either on the phone, online or in person, with the people in my life who mean a lot to me. And no, there was no time for going to my buddy's poker game, watching the Leafs get their butts kicked (I haven't watched one game this season!), an afternoon round of golf, or any of the other things I would have enjoyed doing that resemble this "having a life" thing I've heard so much about.


As soon as I finished work in the surgeon's office for the last day of this tough week, I headed to the hospital to get my pager and start call - and within five minutes of my call shift starting, my resident and I had five patients to see, all of whom were pretty sick. Just as we were trying to figure out who to see first, the pager went off two more times. We didn't get a break longer than ten minutes until 2am, when I got a bit of sleep before the pager started going off again (getting a bit of sleep means it was a lucky call night).

I'll admit when all those pages were coming in right at the start of the shift, I was feeling the stress of the whole week on top of having a lot on my plate all at once, and I fell into a rut I find myself in once every year or so when all the negative thoughts come rushing to me. I find myself seriously asking if I am in the right place, if I made the right career decision, if I will ever be able to treat patients on my own, if I really knew that medicine was like this before I invested all that effort and money into pursuing it.


Fortunately, the five minutes the resident gave me before I had to meet up with him on the ward was just enough time to break down, almost re neg on my no-crying policy, and beg for some strength from heaven.

Fortunately, God was listening and obliged. And all in all it ended up being a really good call shift. For me, that means a night with some varied, useful cases that are important for me to learn how to manage, and with some good opportunities for me to see patients on my own, evaluate their situations, and develop a plan and present it to the resident for their approval and questioning. We triaged those first cases well, and got through them and all the other calls throughout the night, and put off studying for just a few more hours in order to do those therapeutic things like write this post and sleep in late for the first time in a while.

::: part two to come... :::