Impostor

Almost overnight, my answer to “Are you more excited or nervous about residency?” went from the former to the latter.  Well, I should say it happened over the course of the morning on March 5^th.  Residency suddenly went from this nebulous, foggy concept with rainbows and gumdrops to a stark reality (with a metric tonne of paperwork, no less).  It’s one thing to pick a residency program, but quite another to prepare yourself for living it.

Everything is awesome

Temperature outside finally made it over 5 degrees – check.

Got some sick new kicks – check.

Ran in aforementioned kicks faster and longer than I have in a year – check.

Hit my 3-year anniversary on WordPress – check.

Rocked the resuscitation simulation with my stellar teammates today – check.

Tickling my creative brain with writing for the med school skit show – check.

 

 

Oh yeah.  And I matched to rural family medicine.

It’s AWESOOOOME, woot woot.  I’m unbelievably stoked.  Thanks for the support and love, y’all.

Atalanta out.

 – Atalanta

Things you learn… on vacation

As any med student knows, vacay is just as essential to our training as the blocks of learning we do.  Without a break here and there, your brain just… kinda melts.

Seriously, though, down time is important to mental well-being and how you perceive your education as a whole. (Part of the reason why I preferred a 4-year to a 3-year program.) A soft reset once in a while helps bring up your energy, your mood, and helps you reconnect with friends and family.  Plus this time I had a bit of extra thinking space to get my CaRMS rank list together.  (shudder)  My beautiful spreadsheet is glorious.

I was fortunate enough to spend the last 2 weeks in Maui, one of my favourite places in the whole world.  And while we did have a couple of pretty slow days, I still did a lot of learning.  Do read on.

CaRMS (AKA Gauntlet of Extreme Peril and Social Distress)

It’s time.

It’s here.

This fathermucker right here.

(All the 4th year med students are currently hissing at their screen.  Fear it.  Feeeeeeear it.)

The Canadian Residency Matching Service has been a necessarily evil part of every Canuck med student’s experience since 1970.  Matching about 1000 fourth year medical students to their preferred specialty and site of choice, while taking each program’s preferred students into account all through a centralized process is a logistical nightmare, and The Gauntlet somewhat reflects that.

(I want to stress how much I appreciate the work that the CaRMS folks do, whether it’s upgrading their system to a more user-friendly version or manning the phones for calming panicked med students.  It’s just a hilarious and ridiculous adventure I wanna share.)

So what is CaRMS exactly?

Merry Christmas!!

Hello again and a very happy holidays to you, whatever you happen to celebrate!

With Christmas comes another set of covers by yours truly (not quite the originals but, hey, girl’s gotta have dreams), this year the set’s called Gyroscope.  What with all the twists and turns in 3rd year, it’s been difficult to keep balanced.

I’ve got them all here for your viewing pleasure – enjoy!

 – Atalanta

Things you learn

 It’s been a busy two weeks in Halifax so far.  Physiatry isn’t general surgery, in terms of sheer volume, but it has a tendency to keep you late, writing long notes on complicated patients.

It’s been vastly helpful, though, in terms of my MSK and neuro skills, as well as getting me more comfortable with those scary drugs they like to use (BACLOFEN, DUN DUN DUNNNN).  Plus the patients all have remarkable stories; we deal with a lot of spinal cord injury patients, as well as stroke rehab and treatment of other neuromuscular disorders like Guillain-Barré and ALS.

I’ve learned a lot.  Not only about medicine, but also about the coast and the lovely city of Halifax.  Here are the highlights, for your viewing pleasure:

Abroad

When driving from the Halifax airport to the city itself, you follow a stretch of green, red, and orange forest until the city doesn’t so much come into view as burst in on your senses.  The last of the day’s light on the quiet bay, the city’s lights beginning to dance on it, the sky an opalescent mauve.

This is what welcomed me to Nova Scotia today.

It’s a remarkable place with classic architecture and timeless neighborhoods.  I could hardly believe that the other three 20-somethings I shared the bus with were absorbed in their phones instead of their lovely surroundings.

And now, finally fed and watered after a hell of a long flight, I’m excited to do a bit of exploring and see what else this city can surprise me with.

 – Atalanta

Crossing the line

So we had another charming half day spent discussing professional boundaries and how they have a rather irritating habit of colliding with other boundaries.  It comes up all the time in medicine, and we’ve all dealt with many cases that we either could identify as being oh-so-wrong, or maybe made us feel just… uncomfortable.

And with those discussions comes an assignment.  Insta-blog post, woot!

(It’s not cheating, mlehhhh.)

But I had something a bit different to write about than what I think they intended…