Just another day

Here is a typical day in my life as a surgery intern on call:
Get to the hospital by 5 or 6am (sometimes 4am depending on the service)
Round on all of our patients with residents/fellows/med students- for us right now we have 23 patients, most of whom are critically ill so this takes a couple of hours
Meet with attending to round again
Write orders on all patients, schedule tests and procedures, contact consultants and discuss plans
Go to OR (this isn't happening much yet for me, but it will on other rotations)
Inhale food
See patients, follow up on tests, write more orders
Go back to OR
Admit new patients to hospital
Meet with intern from every other surgical service when they go home to get my "to-do list" from them on their patients
Answer unending pages (literally 100-200/night) from trivial questions to emergencies
Do post-op checks on everyone's patients
Admit new patients
Put out fires/crises
Eat
See more new patients
Try and lay down for a bit- get interrupted by a page every 5-15 minutes
Get up and talk with every other intern when they show up in the morning to tell them what I did with their patients overnight
Go see all of my patients again
Round with other residents/fellows on my team
Go to morbidity and mortality conference and resident education hours
Round with our attending
Write orders, call consultants, ensure tests and procedures are still happening
Take sutures out of patients, pull drains and tubes
Go home after 32 nearly non-stop hours
Go for a long bike ride to unwind- still answering pages while biking down the road
Continue to get pages every hour for the rest of the day
Go to sleep early to start it all over again the next day

It's been pretty wild, but I love what I am doing!

Courage

I'm studying Joshua right now and used the Quotationary that Tara gave me to find some neat quotes on courage:

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened. Billy Graham

Few persons have courage to appear as good as they really are. J.C. Hare

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Anais Nin

I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to incur it. William Tecumseh Sherman

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear- not absence of fear. Mark Twain

What does courage mean in my daily life right now?

Being an advocate for others when it isn't the popular thing to do. Taking the high road when I want to fight back. Submitting to the authority over me. Stepping up to new challenges instead of leaving them for others more experienced and confident. Working with excellence- not holding back from my potential. Calling out the good in others and not allowing them to shrink back.

What does courage mean for you?

Voices

Recently I heard someone ask, "Who are you going to allow to speak into your life?". It's a privilege to have a voice of influence in someone's life and I am learning to carefully screen those who are speaking into my life. Working with surgeons who are brash and quick to put others down I am quickly working on filtering out a lot of negativity. It's not that I am doing a horrible job or that the negativity is always directed at me, but it influences me if I allow it. So here are a few of the voices I am choosing to listen to:

• My parents- they love me, they love Jesus and they want what is best for me.
  
• My inner circles of friends- they know me as well as anyone and their words are like a breath of fresh air.
  
• My mentors- they are an unbelievable blessing and I'll have much more to say on them later
• My house church- this is a group of men and women I am privileged to share life with whom I respect deeply and treasure more and more.
• A myriad of other friends and relatives that I share a unique connection with

So who is speaking into your life? Do they deserve the privilege? Whose life are you speaking into? Are you honoring that privilege?

TriIndy

Well I survived the triathlon on Sunday. There were over 900 participants. I did the olympic distance which is a 1500m swim, 40km bike and 10km run. I actually came in 9th for my age group which I was thrilled about. I finished faster than my goal time and as a result I can hardly walk.

• The swim in the canal was fun in that miserable "when is this going to end" sense. It took me 35 minutes to swim the 1500 meters ( plus another several hundred meters from all of my zigzagging from one side of the canal to the other). Yes, the water was nasty, but no more than lake water. The picture might give the appearance that I had the canal to myself and it seemed like I did for part of the race but I dealt with plenty of people swimming on top of me.
  
• The bike was my strongest leg by far. I averaged 18.6 mph and felt like I could have gone faster.
  
• The run was painful since I didn't train for it at all. I averaged 9 minutes/mile with the frequent stops for gatorade so I was pleased with that.

Overall it took me 2 hours and 55 minutes. I am really glad I did the triathlon. It was much more enjoyable than the first one I did! My goal is to do at least one per year to keep me motivated during my workouts. Maybe I'll aim to win a trophy next year. Goals really do help me push myself harder and farther than I otherwise would.

Things I'm Excited About

1. A deep-fried Snickers at the State Fair tomorrow
2. My new Bosch dishwasher- it really is that amazing. In fact it is so incredible that I can't even hear it running right now.
3. The Olympics. Seriously I love them. I just wish I could watch more than a few minutes/day of them.
   
4. Having survived my first appearance at Morbidity and Mortality conference unscathed and apparently seeming quite calm and confident (although I was shaking like crazy on the inside)
5. Swimming in the canal in Indy this weekend during the TriIndy triathlon I am participating in
6. Mom coming this weekend. Not only will she cheer me on at the triathlon but she will bring good Michigan peaches and will help me with curtain selections for my house- plus she's just fun to hang out with.
   
7. Actually becoming friends with some nurses on the Organ Transplant unit
8. Some relationships that are molding and refining me (more to come later)
   
9. Sleep. I'm going to bed now. Have a great night!
   

Fastest and Shortest Trip

Today I went with a transplant surgeon on an organ procurement. After we finished a prior surgery we hustled off to the airport where a team was waiting for us. We immediately jumped on a waiting jet, quickly taxied and took off without a second of delay. It was crazy. I felt like I was traveling with the President or something because everything stopped for us to come through. When we arrived we were quickly taken straight to the hospital and were escorted to the OR where we got the organs. I won't say anything about what we took or the situation in which the organs were available but let me just say it was incredible! The transplant surgeon and I worked together to get everything done. The atmosphere was professional and respectful. As soon as we had what we needed we were whisked back to the airport and immediately took off. The jet was amazing, they had great food for us, and I was able to learn a lot about the ins and outs of the transplant world. All in all it was an incredible day. I'm not saying I'm going to become a transplant surgeon, but I am an organ donor and I think everyone should be. One life was lost today but several were saved.

Great Quote

I have a book that I write down quotes that inspire me from time to time. I was looking through it today and came across this one by Dr. Crawford Loritts that sums up my feelings on life right now:

You are never to be held hostage in life based on what you don't have. It is who you have and His calling on your life that determines what you do. It is not always due to your giftings, talents, abilities, and personality. When Paul said, "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine," it is as if Paul is grabbing the Church in Ephesus by the lapels and saying, ' You have got to believe that you have a big God.' You must believe that.

Highlights of being a surgeon for a month

• Listening to "Viva La Vida" while operating for the first time and then singing it to my team for the rest of the day. They really appreciated it.
  
• Having my attending tell me that the skin graft I did was the best he had seen in years
• Working with a fellow who has made it clear that she wants to mentor me long term. She has been an incredible blessing as she has taught me a ton in an environment that is safe and edifying.
  
• Saving a life. Yeah there's nothing like it and I feel comfortable saying that I've done this several times. Sure someone else would have done it had they been there, but I was and it was incredible.
  
• Seeing the parents of a young girl who I resuscitated afterwards and seeing their gratitude. It was pretty incredible to walk with them through what were the scariest hours of their lives. They threw the "f bomb" at me in the heat of the moment but redeemed themselves afterwards. I can't blame them. It was a really bad situation, but she is 100% better now.
  
• Having a nurse approach me to tell me that all of the nurses have really good things to say about me. It is really important to me to get along well with other hospital staff and sometimes as a female physician it is a little more challenging. So far so good I guess.
  
• Working with colleagues that already are or are becoming my friends