July 1st….Oh the joy! (no, not really).
I read this today and a flood of memories surfaced.
Polonius’ well-known words to his son from Shakespeare’s Hamlet resound in my mind when I reflect on the challenges during those intense clinical training years.
So - here we are. My husband and I just moved to Jacksonville, Florida where I will start my Ophthalmology residency on July 1st. And then, I will give birth to our first born, sometime around September 1st…should be interesting.
Overall, I’m excited and grateful for the change in direction (I left the “80 hr work week” of a plastic surgery resident, which really consisted more of 95 to 125 hrs a week and the complete sacrifice of everything else in my life except for the unhealthy, out of balance reality that consisted of a few hours of sleep here and there - probably 4 hours on the good nights, resulting in major memory loss - a hit and miss exercise routine - mostly miss, with a hit or two a month - and the absolute inability to provide my body with proper quality, quantity or interval of nourishment).
Our world is a world of instant gratification from cell phones, blackberries, high speed internet, overnight mail, faxes, air planes, highways, and fast food. This fast paced world has spread even into our medical world with CT scans, EMR, urgent care centers.
No, not the LDS (Mormon) man that we all know working out of Albany for the state, but the City one.
After reading about Dr. Tom Frieden I thought I’d share the article. Most of the men in my med school class selected surgical fields or medical sub-specialties with a surgical element. Most of them weren’t all that interested in ‘helping others’ - that’s an actual observation in addition to verbal expressions, not a judgment. (Choosing a certain field based on lifestyle and ‘being a provider’ gets to be a pretty lame & boring conversation). I can count on one hand the few that impressed me with their sense of altruism, genuine dedication to the profession of Medicine, and social responsibility.
I don’t spend nearly enough time understanding ‘who’ our local leaders are and what principles they reflect. I’ll have to learn more about him. The part about not hesitating to ‘use public health policy to kind of step all over civil liberties’ *kind of* disturbs me (but also intrigues me)…