Season finale of “As the Residency Turns”

* DISCLAIMER: I meant to post this back in June as I finished residency but it got put aside as I filled out my umpteenth credentialing application. Here it is now. I wrote it 2 days before finishing my last primary care rotation of residency:

After 3 years of residency I have had some amazing interactions with patients. Amazing in the wonderful way the 9 month old whose well child checks you have always performed smiles and babbles when you walk in way and reaches out for you to hold her. Your heart opens wide, the parents are at ease and you think to yourself, “yeah, this is why I do this!” Or amazing in the way things go when a developmental delay I picked up is being addressed by Early Intervention and we can all see how the affected child is flourishing. Or when you talk that sexually active teen into being more assertive in communication with partners and you get her to get a Nexplanon.

Then I have had some intense interactions of the other kind. Intense in the I was so concerned that I called Child Protective Services and now a CPS worker is here with you and you are yelling at me and I am crying and I want to work with you so much but you hate me right now and won’t listen to anything I have to say kind of way. Intense in the way things go when a parent has what appears to be bipolar disorder and splits on providers and one minute says our hospital saved his/her child’s life and the next is cursing about how several of our providers did them wrong.

During the amazing ones, my heart soars, during the intense ones my heart plummets and I often get palpitations. I have been having a few day run of extreme highs and pitiful lows. I have 2 more days in clinic before my last day of residency at the end of June and there are so many loose ends. I realize that clinic is the only part of residency that resembles continuity; we do other rotations for a month at a time and are essentially visitors but in clinic you are like the cousin who comes home regularly for major holidays and family gatherings.  The end is in sight and I feel like I need some closure - so much so that I helped draft a letter to our patients from the graduating seniors updating our patients on where we would be going and now parents come in and say “Dr. Bee - you’re really leaving us?!?”.

There are so many amazing patients who will continue to grow and I will miss their new developments. And I have a few difficult patients who once I’m gone will literally have no one else who wants to work with them. 2 more days. What can and will I do? Why does it feel like such a huge deal? I think I’m scared and sad that things are coming to an end, it’s for the best, right? Why do I feel like a success and a failure all at the same time?

Intern of the Year

Eight years ago this month, I entered the hospital for the first time with the label "MD". My assignment was a prestigious transitional year internship at a large private/academic hybrid hospital. Amongst my rotations would be Internal Medicine, Surgery, ICU, and some electives.

My internship year was wonderful. I relished in the new freedom of managing patients and writing orders. I thrived on the stress of the endless to-do lists; each time I checked a box on my paper, I got a sense of thrill. The learning curve was so steep, and I became addicted to finding ways to be efficient. I enjoyed my co-interns, the staff, and the attendings. At the end of the year, they voted me Intern of the Year!

Then I started my residency in anesthesiology. I had done no anesthesia rotations during my transitional year and had instead chosen to focus on getting exposure to things that I was likely to not see much in the future. The change was abrupt and was not exactly smooth. Like the swipe of an eraser on a white board, all the positivity and excitement quietly vanished. The sheer volume of material to learn was overwhelming, not to mention the technical parts of the job – placing IV’s, preparing and dosing drugs, mastering the anesthesia monitors and ventilators, patient positioning, and the delicate dance of the patient consent process that is unique to anesthesia. Every day was a great battle to keep wits and stay calm while learning the academic and procedural aspects of the specialty.

As the fall months spread into winter and the days became shorter, a gloom washed over me. Rushing to work in the dark and returning home in the dark… was this what I had signed up for? Were other residents feeling the same way? How did I compare? These questions never really get answered since we don’t work together in the same OR. Come wintertime, performance evaluations from faculty started to trickle in. Some comments were positive, but the negative ones cut deeply into my motivation and self-esteem. But I was the "Intern of the Year"; what was wrong with me?

I continued to struggle with procedures, and my In Training Examination scores were well below average. I suffered from incredible fatigue and knew deep down that something was wrong. It took many months, over half of my residency, to figure out what it was: a pituitary macroademona had taken residence in my sella and was wrapping its tentacles around my optic nerve. I was going blind and didn't even notice! Within a week after my MRI, I was on the OR table being anesthetized by one of my attendings. What followed was a long hospital stay and complications of hyponatremia requiring readmission. After a long period of healing, I returned to residency and finished my training.

A stay in a hospital ICU will change you forever. My achievement record during residency, despite having been crowned Intern of the Year, may have ended up being quite lackluster... but my experience as a patient was a priceless learning experience that I'm grateful to have had. It helps me connect with my scared and vulnerable patients every day, and it is a constant reminder of how lucky I really am. And as an attending, I now thoroughly enjoy the practice of anesthesia.

I'm shortening and simplifying a very long and detailed story, but I write this to inspire all the new interns and residents with their sights set on perfect ITE scores, accolades, votes, and awards. In the end, none of that matters. Your years of training will hold a mix of times of difficulty, times of gratitude and times of great learning. Do your best to navigate these times with balance, and make sure to take care of yourself!