You know, having to be on the wards this morning wasn’t that bad at all. Yes, it was weird having to go to sleep around 9PM on a Saturday night and having to work at the hospital today all the while reminding myself that tomorrow was actually Monday and not Tuesday…

But having to work a weekend day wasn’t bad at all! It was actually relatively chill, or as “chill” as being on the Renal unit can be I guess. I have absolutely no complaints and I absolutely enjoyed the more intimate atmosphere that I had with the smaller team that I was working with for the day. The interns I worked with this morning even let me go home quite early. However, my concept of a weekend is now a bit discombobulated lol. It now feels like I have “hospital-time” and “free-time” during the week as opposed to “a work-week” and “a weekend”. Thank God I’m actually having a great time while at the hospital and am not dreading spending my days there! The fact that time just continues to fly by while working just proves to me how much I’m loving my experience in third-year so far, even if I’m exhausted by 7:30 PM just about every day and have zero willpower to continue studying. Overall, I just feel very lucky and blessed to be able to love what I’m learning and doing enough to be perfectly okay with going in to work on the weekend.

This past week on the Renal service has really been an interesting one. (I know I’ve probably said that about the last two weeks already but darn it, all of third-year has been interesting so far!) During my second-year, I learned about how renal patients tend to have multiple co-morbidities and how the ones with end-stage renal disease have to rely on dialysis to keep themselves relatively healthy. But it’s one thing to learn about it from PowerPoint slides and another thing to witness these real-life patients with your own eyes. These patients are truly sick with multiple conditions and dialysis is required for many of them to survive. I felt really bad for the patients that I interacted with this past week, but I also got a sense of the strength that these patients possessed in order to battle the multiple conditions that they were afflicted with. I’ve also felt the deep appreciation from a patient who was just grateful that I came in to listen to her talk for an hour. That experience reminded me just how lonely being a patient in the hospital can be and just how appreciative some patients are when someone comes in to spend more than a few minutes with them. With another week in this unit, I’ll be granted the opportunity to continue processing the difficult lives that these patients live as well as the complex care that is necessary to adequately care for this patient population.

Along with learning more about this patient population, I also had the opportunity to observe and perform a few procedures! Yeah, I said it. You read that right. I PERFORMED SOME PROCEDURES! (With supervision of course.) I wasn’t doing brain surgery or anything, but I had a direct, physical impact on patient care for the first time since I started medical school! Well that is if you don’t count physical exam manuevers, because I guess that also qualifies as having a physical impact on patient care. But that ain’t as direct as pulling out vascular catheters from the necks of patients or placing an IV line into someone’s arm! Yeahhh that’s pretty lit, ain’t it? I did pretty well with removing the catheters, but I could use some more practice on placing IV lines though 😅. I also was able to observe a couple of blood draws and a procedure called a thoracentesis, where a doctor works to remove excess fluid from the pleural space surrounding the lungs. Wild, huh?

Alright, I gotta get back to studying/tackling my to-do list now that I have a bit of free time to do so, especially since I’m getting ready to attend an Internal Medicine Clerkship dinner in a couple of hours where I’ll be socializing with other students, faculty and residents working in Internal Medicine. Should be a good time!

Make sure to have a spectacular week!

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. Please remember that your difficulties do not define you. They simply strengthen your ability to overcome.” – Maya Angelou

– Black Man, M.D.

P.S. – I’m trying not to let the ridiculousness currently taking place in the government kill my mood on a daily basis, but it’s getting REALLY hard to helplessly go on about my day while our country is being actively driven to the ground. There’s only so much phone calls can do, especially when your “so-called” representative isn’t even listening to what you have to say.