Hard slogging

I am sorry that I have not been blogging much as of late. The fact of the matter is that I have tons of stuff to do, and there are some tough times ahead. All together things seem to have conspired against me to keep Domestic-6 and myself from enjoying this year.

Where to begin?

First, I just found out that my grandfather may be going to hospice soon. In many ways, I am more like him than my own father, and if you saw pictures of the two of us in uniform; myself in the Corps, him in the Army air corps, you would think that we were brothers. He is probably were I get my pugnaciousness. I love him with all of my heart, but his care is too much for his wife. Sometimes, you have to make some hard choices, and that time appears to have arrived. 

Second, residency has not been going well as of late. Someone at one of my rotations got hacked off at me, and raised a fuss. This, in turn snowballed into something bigger and bigger until I find myself basically being audited. This was done by me doing extra shifts in the EC with some senior attendings evaluating me. I did fine, but It managed to turn what was an easy off-service rotation into a high-workload affair. Also, there has been some recent changes at the program, not the least of which is that we have a new department chair who is also the head of the residency program, which has led to unfortunate things like a conflict of interest between someone who is both tasked with staffing the ER, and the resident rotations. This appears to have had detrimental effects on resident shifts since we are now fielding all of the shifts that the attendings don't want. Also, some of my certification is out of date, and while I had signed up for the recert course, and paid the department the money to attend, they went ahead and scheduled me for shifts during the course. Yes, they refunded the money, but then they haven't stopped riding my ass about the expired certification. It would appear that keeping the department staffed is of more value than taking what I consider reasonable steps to keep residents certified. So, basically I have given up on the program. There, I said it. I have given up on this program. I am going to just have to take care of shit myself, and carry on. I work these bullshit shifts, and because of the timing, I may go weeks without seeing my wife, though we sleep together most nights.

Speaking of which, my wife is having a rough time of things, herself. First, she has a Hell of a drive each day which is grinding her down, and absolutely murder on her when the snows come. More importantly, she is getting stressed out at work by performing anaesthesia for these patients who have not had a proper workup, and are getting operations that are of questionable wisdom. All of this has really thrown a wrench in our plans of working on having kids. Kind of hard to do with our schedules, if you know what I mean.

So,  right about now, I am getting pretty hacked off at life in general, and residency in particular. The little things are starting to piss me off way more than they used to. I just had an attending tell me to leave some paperwork in his mailbox when he left early from the shift. So, I stuck around and finished things up. I then dutifully proceeded to drop the paperwork off in his box, and guess what? He lost it. So, then he turns around and instructs me to spend a couple of hours re-generating it. This is an attending I kind of like, but what bullshit! He lost it, he should frikking deal with it. Clean up your own mess! 

I am getting so pissed off at everyone that I have to be careful at this years graduation. I better not drink, lest I start to let people know how I feel. Hell, they just asked for residents to be mentors for the interns next year, and I will be damned if I am going to do that. I have gotten minimal mentoring, if any, and frankly, there has been a real absence of leadership. They had it, but he got fired for not doing things the way the new boss wanted. What dumbasses to lose an asset like that!

I am not going to help out this program in any way, shape, or form. I am not going to welcome applicants, or give them tours. I am not going to host anything official, or volunteer for any duty. I am going to just try to take care of myself. Medicine really has become a culture that eats its young, and shoots its wounded. I hate the bullshit shifts. I hate the bullshit paperwork. I hate the feeling that my life is on indefinite hold, and that I am not living it.

I remember a close friend of mine telling me once that there is this hypothetical question he would ask his colleagues in residency.

"Imagine that you are transported back to your first day of medical school," he would start.

"The alarm just went off, and while you do not have any of the empirical knowledge (the actual education) of medical school, you know exactly what you are going to have to go through for the next seven to ten years."

"The question," he would ask, "is whether you get up and go to class, or do you roll over, hit the 'snooze' button, and do something else for a living?"

Right about now, I think that I would hit the snooze button, and do something else.

SIGH.

Unfortunately, unless someone knows of a job for a Marine turned doctor with a fascination for firearms that can pull down six figures a year (I have all those loans to pay off), I am kind of stuck.

So, it's time, yet again, to stand up, cowboy up, and fight my way to daylight. I'll take care of this certification, move us somewhere closer to where D-6 works to ease her burden, and stand strong while my family has to gut out trying times. If Marines in Iraq can continue kicking in doors, and suffer and sacrifice as they go toe to toe with the devil's children, then I can hump my own pack. 

So, if you don't hear from me for a while, and I only break the surface to gasp for air now and again, it doesn't mean I am drowning; it just means I am working in dark waters.

Respectfully Submitted,
-doc Russia