Oh my goodness has it really been since February since my last post?!?!?! Where has the time gone? So much has happened since then. So let's take a quick trip back in time for an overview of the past 5 months. March was spent in my second month of Family Practice. My doctor was known in town as being the family doc that delivered babies. He probably delivered over half of Pueblo. He also spent one day a week in the OR doing OB/GYN procedures and surgeries. I had a lot of fun with him. He was an older doc who liked to joke around and tease. He was very professional with his patients but totally not PC every other time. It made coming to work really entertaining. He was really easy going and let me participate as much as I wanted to.
April was a challenging month for me. I worked with an Internal Medicine Residency team. This was very different from all my other rotations. I was use to it being just me and my attending everyday. Now, I only saw the attending during rounds and spent all the other time with residents. It was challenging switching between the residents from day to day because they had such different teaching styles and expectations of my role. For whatever reason, no matter how hard I tried some of the residents could just not be pleased. At times it felt very much like high school with all the drama. I admit to struggling through this rotation mostly due to the social issues. Luckily the majority of the residents I worked with were awesome and nice. The hours were long (5:30am - 7:00pm) and the work was constant. There were no breaks or downtime. Even the lunch hour was spent in a noon lecture. It seemed more difficult than even my surgery rotation at times. But in the end I survived and learned a lot about myself. It was a good experience for me because I'm sure there will be times in the future where I won't be completely happy with my work environment.
May was just an awesome month! I got to do a month of adult Heme/Onc! There is only one group in Pueblo with 4 doctors. I rotated between them all. It was great seeing the different approaches to patient care. It was amazing! I loved the patients and office staff. Everyday I got to meet and work with incredible people who taught me so much about life! I loved every minute of it, the highs and the lows. But I do feel the need to step onto a soap box for a minute here...consider yourself forewarned. Please please please get your colonoscopy at age 50! Colon cancer is called the silent killer for a reason. Is it fun? - No. Could it save your life? - Most definitely. I don't know about you but I would trade one day of discomfort and misery for 10 more years. Also, mammograms! Again, not fun but necessary. Alright, I'm done and stepping off my soap box now.
At the end of May, my daily routine was thrown for a loop. As many of you know, I gave myself a pretty nasty concussion. It was a fluke event. For unclear reasons, I passed out one night in my kitchen and hit my head on the granite counter-top. My post-concussion symptoms were more extreme than I would have liked and unfortunately decided to hang around for several weeks. Because of this, I had to postpone my board exams since I was unable to study. I was able to go home for a few weeks to heal. It took some time, but I finally started to feel like myself again after 6 weeks of struggling with headaches, vision changes, dizziness, fatigue, cognitive slowness, and emotional instability. Really I was probably not much fun to be around. But my friends and family were saintlike and took care of me through it all. I'm over the bitterness and anger now and can see the good that has come from this experience. I was able to go home and see my family which is always nice. Also, I believe it has made me be a more compassionate person/doctor towards people with head injuries.
So that took up most of June and early July. I went back to Pueblo for some intense broad prep, took my exams, and then popped on an overnight flight to Tucson, Arizona. So I'm here now doing a rotation in Pediatric Cardiology at the University of Arizona. And I'll let you know all about it in a few weeks :)
I have spent these last few weeks in Tucson, Arizona on a pediatric cardiology rotation at Diamond Children's Hospital and I can honestly say I have loved every minute of it. The people here at this residency program are awesome! They have been so friendly and welcoming. Being attached to a university does have it's pros and cons. During the past year, I have worked mostly one-on-one with attendings. I was use to having individual and private teaching. I was not competing with other students or residents for attention or procedures. Most of my rotations were great mostly because my attendings were great. Some though left something to be desired and I felt like I wasn't challenged enough or I didn't learn enough. Being at a university with residency programs in pediatrics, internal medicine, ER, surgery, and family practice is very different. There are 3rd and 4th year medical students all over the hospital. Because of this, every attending is use to teaching and really knows what is important for the students to learn. Also, the pediatric residents have all been so patient with me. It might just be the peds environment, but no one in this program is fighting for procedures. They share taking the lead in patient care and take turns doing the hands on stuff. They seem to really believe in the statement "sharing is caring". They also enjoy teaching med students and sharing advice from their med school days (which were more recent than the attendings). I am constantly being challenged and pushed to think things through to the next step and beyond. 
I have been exposed to so many kinds of congential heart disease and conduction disorders during this rotation. I have learned how to read EKGs (which is very different in children than adults) and ECHOs. I even got to see some fetal ECHOs were the babies' heart defect was diagnosed at 20 weeks while still in mom's tummy. This helps the doctors prepare appropriately for when the baby is born and some bigger hospitals are researching ways to fix these defects before the baby is born. I scrubbed in on cardiac catheterization and ablations. My ears have gotten much better at detecting innocent murmurs verses pathological ones. I met kids who are thriving with only one ventricle due to modern interventions. I met adults who had open heart surgery as children who are still followed by a pediatric cardiologist because adult docs aren't trained how to care for them. The cath lab is one of my favorite places. It just blows my mind that we can close holes in the heart, redirect blood flow, repair blood vessels and even replace valves all through vessels in the groin! Most patients can go home the same day as the procedure. My least favorite part is wearing the lead. Because xray is used, all people in the room have to wear a lead vest and skirt plus a thyroid guard. By the end of the case it is so heavy and hot!
