How are we already six weeks into the New Year??

It feels like we were just counting down the seconds left in 2023 to bring in 2024. January just done came and went in the blink of an eye.

We're now almost halfway through February a.k.a Black History Month ✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿and before we know it, spring will be here!

When I was a kid, people used to tell me that time really starts to fly by when you're an adult. Boy, they weren't kidding. It's frightening just how fast time can pass you by while you're busy grinding day in and day out. If you aren't intentional about how you spend your time, you'll look up one day and realize that life has passed you by as you've monotonously spent the last however many years carrying on with your daily routine. If there's anything I'm afraid of, it's that I will get stuck in the grind and not realize the opportunities that have come and went because I failed to be intentional with how I spent my time. I don't want to look back and have regrets on the choices I made or how I lived my life. The medical field makes it really easy to get lost in your work, so it is all the more important for us in medicine to pause and focus on spending quality time on other things that are just as, if not more important than, our studies and our work. You just never know what opportunities are out there waiting for you to serendipitously run into. As we all know, tomorrow isn't guaranteed and our lives can change in the blink of an eye. We really shouldn't take it for granted under any circumstances.

Now that I'm off the soapbox that I sporadically climbed onto, I'm ready to update you on what life has been like for me over the past six weeks. 😊

In the time between the start of the new year and now, I've worked two busy inpatient weeks with some call nights sprinkled throughout these weeks, an inpatient weekend on call that was also ridiculously busy, and have had four manageable outpatient weeks where I focused on providing care to patients in transplant clinic, dialysis clinic, and in my general nephrology continuity clinic. Now that I'm 6+ months into my training, I definitely do feel more comfortable managing kids with kidney-related ailments and don't feel as lost in the sauce as I once did. That being said, I'm still working just as hard as ever, especially in the inpatient setting where the volume of patients we're managing is just outrageous. There are so many sick kids that need specialty care here and in a forever-growing city like Atlanta, that number is just going to continue to skyrocket. Because of the high number of patients I'm caring for, I am certainly seeing a wide variety of rare pathologies and am also becoming very familiar with the common nephrological issues that we are usually consulted for. I have another two weeks of inpatient service headed my way starting tomorrow, so tonight I'm going to take a deep breath, send a prayer up, and get me as much of a good night's sleep as I can (the Super Bowl is on tonight though and I'm NOT about to miss that 🙃) so that I can provide high-quality patient care these next couple of weeks while also continuing to learn as much as I can about being a nephrologist.

As I mentioned before, I spent a considerable amount of time these past six weeks on the outpatient side, which can be busy but also affords me more time outside of the clinical setting. When I wasn't fulfilling clinical duties during these weeks, I found myself spending a considerable amount of time preparing two separate lectures that I was scheduled to give. The first one was a joint nephrology/rheumatology journal club in mid-January, where I presented and led a discussion on an article pertaining to the diagnosis and management of silent lupus nephritis in children. The second lecture was a presentation I gave during a joint nephrology/urology learning session earlier this month, where I focused on the evaluation and management of genitourinary tract trauma in children. I'm happy and thankful to say that both were well-received, especially since I spent a good chunk of my free time preparing for both of these presentations, plus the delivery of my second presentation was handicapped by the fact that I was post-call (I was running on fumes after a busy call night 🥴), and that I had to present from memory since I couldn't get my PowerPoint notes to stay on the screen as I was presenting. I have yet another presentation to prepare for that I will be giving to my division in early March, where I will focus on lupus nephritis as a whole. I've got to make time to work on that within these next few weeks because we all know that March will be here in a heartbeat 😅.

Apart from preparing for presentations I've been scheduled to give, I spent time perfecting my kidney biopsy skills via a biopsy simulation (practicing my skills really boosted my confidence in performing this procedure), listening in on a public policy committee call hosted by the American Society of Pediatric Nephrology, attending required ethics seminars that popped up last minute on my schedule (very important and interesting discussions were had during these seminars, but having six required seminar sessions appear out of nowhere with little advance notice…..😐), and taking my first ever specialty in-training exam to assess my current knowledge base in pediatric nephrology. That exam was NOT easy…..but then again, it wasn't supposed to be. I did my best and that's all anyone can ask for 🤷🏿‍♂️.

Outside of work, I've made sure to spend a good amount of quality time with my wife and close friends. From a blog standpoint, I've been working on revamping the scholarship for this upcoming year and have been continuing to fundraise for it. It has been getting more and more expensive to continue running the scholarship…but I refuse to be priced out. I plan to continue giving out scholarships for the foreseeable future, so I'm just going to have to get real creative with how to keep funding this effort. I've also been watching a lot of playoff football and an ungodly amount of Suits. I seriously can't get enough of that show; I haven't been this addicted to a show since I watched Breaking Bad all those years ago. It also reminds me of when I spent dedicated time keeping up with other shows like House, The Office, and Scandal…but I digress. I need to start slowing my role before I finish the series and run out of episodes to watch! 😅

Those are all the updates I have for you today! Glad I could keep the post relatively short this time around lol.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope that you all have a lovely rest of the month!

“Our time in this life is limited. And how we respect that time will create a greater possibility for fulfillment.” – Ruben Papian

– Black Man, M.D.