Transition
I.I.V
TRANSITION
As much as the work varied, days started to blend in. What at the very beginning seemed so out of reach had become somewhat routine as time went by. In fact, by the time I got used to this routine, my rotation in emergency surgery was about to be over.
And by the end? Let’s just say that my expectations didn’t quite live up to reality. I wasn’t Cristina Yang – I could never be that good. And Valentina was nowhere close to being my Meredith Grey, or my person. I wasn’t scrubbing in every single day and pulling off crazy, life-saving stunts like they do on Grey’s Anatomy. Hell, I was lucky if I even got to go down to the operating room. I traded my idea of holding scalpels and clamps for inserting IV lines and drawing blood. I traded on-call room romance for office quarrels. And, worst of all, I traded the idea of being a surgeon in training for being a glorified clerk. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as I thought it’d be. But, in more ways than one, it was even better.
Those three months marked the transition between med student and junior doctor. And while the transition wasn’t seamless, it was a baptism of fire every single doctor has to go through.
From being overly cautious whilst prescribing my first IV fluids on my very first on-call shift, to learning how to balance stacks of patient notes on one arm whilst writing with the other during ward rounds. From being paged about unstable patients on the brink of death, requiring immediate management, to being paged about patients who haven’t crapped in a dozen days and suddenly it’s not just a problem, it’s also my problem. From doing my first cannula, to incising and draining my first perianal abscess (figures my first surgery ever would be as unglamorous as I am). From being shocked and amused by every little thing, to becoming accustomed to all the craziness and weirdness that comes with working in a hospital. In just three months, I got used to it. I got used to the idea that you never quite get used to it.
Then there was the emotional component. All the highs that come with the job – like successfully treating a patient and sending them on their merry way home, having a senior agree with my management plan, managing to successfully update my pager’s ringtone to the Grey’s Anatomy theme song, or having earned the title of “Cannulator”, given that my cannulation skills were now top notch. All the lows – like having to tell a patient their cancer was inoperable, having to declare someone dead, realising I’d made a mistake, or feeling like a ghost at the end of every on-call shift. And all the colleagues I was now dealing with. From my classmates who joined me in this trial by fire, bonding us in a way unlike any other, to nurses with whom I’d spend much of my idle time chatting, to seniors I slowly started to look up to as mentors.
Three whole months had flown by and I barely noticed. Three months that, in hindsight, felt like a lifetime. So many experiences, so much growth, so much change. So much so that, looking back on that rotation, I find it difficult to remember the specifics. It’s all a blur. Things were happening at light speed and I barely had any time to journal and document everything I was going through.