Life Post-Residency

It’s awesome.

AWESOME.

If you want to truly, deeply appreciate life….torture yourself with a medical residency, and then take time off.

I’m blissing out.

Random fact: Trauma shears are fantastic for cutting stacks of notecards in half. You can do like twice as many at once as with a regular pair of scissors. Really helpful if you’re notecard-plotting an overcomplicated novel!

Another random fact: Needle drivers are the most versatile tools I’ve ever used. We should market them mainstream.

I now return you to your regular Monday activities.

Hope you have a great week!

Done.

So, I guess I should let you all know….

I’m done with residency.

Done.

DONE.

Wow.  Yeah.  So, that happened.

I’m also happy to announce that I have accepted an excellent fellowship position at an extremely high-powered institution.  I will be specializing in Palliative Care, which is a relatively new branch of medicine that focuses on pain control, non-pain symptom control, counseling for difficult medical decisions, end-of-life care, bioethics, and minimization of the trauma of hospitalization and critical/terminal illness.  This will all start next year.

What am I going to do with my year?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

I’m going to study for the boards, write a book, take a few classes toward an MBA, and help run a Phase I trial for a potential new treatment for sickle cell disease.  And if I’m alive, I’ll be moving to a new city around this time next year.

What will I not be doing?

I will not be sleeping in a call room.  And I will not be waking up in a panic, trying to figure out which of these objects woke me:

From top to bottom: The call room’s phone, the code pager, my personal pager, my personal cell phone (don’t judge), and the ER direct-line cell phone. Picture taken by my iPhone, which was also capable of waking me up.

Oh yeah, and maybe I’ll write an article or two for you guys.  Because you were so patient while I finished up my Resident Evil….I mean Evil Residency.

See you soon!

Dr. G