Rotation 4: Internal Medicine

Oh IM. Both a blessing and a curse. Universally known to be one of the more intense rotations, both in terms of hours, caseload, complexity, you name it. I worked incredibly hard during these 8 weeks, and learned an incredible amount. And I think I came very far, even achieving one of my goals which was to present (mostly) from memory during rounds. Win!

I really really liked the intellectual challenges and the way I was pushed during this rotation. I totally believe in tough love. But did I love the rotation? I'm not so sure. It was my last rotation before the holidays and I was thinking I might have been burned out (was literally counting down to vacation, like I had a countdown on my whiteboard which I updated on the daily !!), but then again I wasn't waking up every morning excited like I had been on some other rotations (cough, Peds, cough). You could say we had an "I love you but I'm not in love with you" type of relationship.

The most striking moment for me was that I lost my very first patient on this rotation. Sure, patients had died before, but they hadn't been patients I had been *directly* caring for. This was hard. I started taking care of her as soon as she was admitted. Seeing her getting weaker and weaker as the days went by was hard in itself, especially when she kept conveying how uncomfortable it was. We had many conversations with the family, and it was hard seeing how everyone was in a different place regarding accepting her condition. I was so impressed by how my senior resident led those meetings. Death and dying is definitely something I struggle with. I hope I can be even moderately as good as he was handling those discussions. And just like that, by the end of the week she was gone. I was actually watching the monitor as it flatlined. Her family surrounded her and everyone was crying. That was so hard for me to see too. I had to excuse myself to the bathroom and cry in there for some time. It was an experience and I hope I'm stronger for it.

This beauty had case discussion with us students every Wednesday morning. MD stands for Medical Dog-tor. Ha!

Appropriate. Also it was Halloween.

Finagled a 36-hour trip home for Thanksgiving to see all these kiddos! Promptly got sick for 2 weeks afterwards. So worth it.

Running into classmates in the cafeteria. Yes, there is a pizza slice in there. Somewhere.

After my IM shelf, I was blessed with Winter Break. Like 2 whole weeks off?!? With the prospect that I had maybe only 2 more weekends to work during the 3rd year because I so smartly front-loaded my schedule? It's like Christmas morning! Literally.

Med school friend A and I drove down home (well, he drove. I annoyed him). We talked. We sang 90s songs. We stopped by Merced to check out the Hmong New Year Festival. Cool stuff.

Hmong Festival food. If only I could remember the names of these.

Annual Christmas brunch with the high school BFFs.

OMG it snowed in LA! JK.

Peace out, IM. It was real.