Is there a doctor in the house?

I know it has been a long time since I last posted but I am back. I finished medical school and am now officially a doctor. It is strange to have MD behind my name. I guess it has been so many years and such a circuitous route to this point that the whole thing is kind of surreal. It has not sunk in completely but it quickly is becoming a reality as I have started residency in Emergency medicine and I just finished my first night of call where I worked 32 hours straight and I was anything but excited to be called doctor or have any initials behind my name.

We need to get caught up. I applied for residency in emergency medicine which is a 3 - 4 year training program depending on where you do the residency. I applied to over 40 programs, as emergency medicine has become more competitive. In order to get enough interviews to get an acceptance I had to cover all the bases and apply to enough programs. I ended up with 15 interviews and attended 12 total. I then ranked the 12 programs from 1 (my top choice) to my 12th (last choice) and waited for the programs to rank their applicants. Finally once everyone's lists were submitted the computer matches the programs with the applicants and you hope to get as close to the top choice as possible.

I was lucky enough to match at my top choice which is an inner-city trauma level 1 center. I officially started on July 1. My first rotation is on the CCU, Cardiac Care Unit. It is an ICU for heart patients. It is an intense rotation and a difficult one to start on. You get thrown into the fire day one. I am on call every 4th night. Last week my first day was Thursday and I worked from 6am to 7pm and then on Friday I worked from 6am to 7pm and then Saturday I was on call, so I started at 6am on Saturday and worked straight until Sunday at 2pm. It was some intense long hours and much of the night I was the only doctor on the floor with lots of sick patients.

It has been a hectic, exciting and good start to residency. I have lots of great stories and cases already. I will have many more to come. So you can check back to see how things go. This week I will work about 80 hours all on the CCU.