Doctor Psychobabble

Today was my very last day of residency orientation. It ended on a good note, as we received a very nice and inspirational talk from the director of psychiatry at the hospital where I’ll be doing my very first rotation as a psychiatry resident.

I also managed to complete the one billion hospital paperwork activities and finished running many of my personal/residency-oriented errands. I now have two hospital IDs, a health insurance plan, a pager, two new email addresses, a retirement plan, and about 8 billion other things.

I’m now trying to catch up on my overflowing email inbox and relaxing before tomorrow, which will be my first official work-day as a doctor.

It’s taken so much work to get to this point. I am maximally excited right now!

Part of My “Trash Talkin” Photo Series

Today I had my departmental (psychiatry) orientation. I finally got one hospital ID!! (Seems simple enough in theory, but it’s taken a lot of work to achieve this one small goal.) And I have to get another ID for a different hospital tomorrow. I also received my very first PAGER!!! It’s strange, because right now I’m so happy and excited to have a pager, but I’m sure I will grow to hate this little piece of electronics in the near future.

I also received my SCHEDULE for my intern year. That’s right, I finally know what I will be doing for the next year of my life. I will share more on that later, but I will say now that the first three months of my residency will be inpatient psychiatry at a very close hospital, so I’m PSYCHED!! (pun intended)

I have so much more to share, but I have a billion things to do right now, so I will have to share at a later date.

Right now I’m just very excited! I will start my first day of residency the day after tomorrow!

This is why I love where I am completing my psychiatry residency. A hospital sign, in four different languages, including Creole (a very common language spoken in this area)!

Please do check out my latest post on “The Ink Blot” at Medscape/WebMD. It sums up the last few days of my life.

Click Here to View the Original Post on Medscape

I am fairly pooped right now. My day started out pretty early, as I went for an 8-mile run this morning. I then jumped in the shower and raced to the hospital for a full day of more “orientation.”

There were times today where I thought, “hey, I’d like to blog about that!” But it turns out that I am pretty tired right now, and lack the mental energy to do so.

In short, I enjoyed some of the presentations, but some of them were too dreadfully long. More than anything else, I realized that I CAN NOT sit on my butt for 8 hours a day. It’s as simple as that. I’ve learned this lesson many times before, but let me just say that I don’t enjoy sitting for long periods of time. I don’t mind working for long periods of time, but SITTING makes me tired, anxious, and numb.

The second half of my day involved hearing about the 8 trillion (really, I’m not exaggerating) different forms I needed to fill out and decisions that I had to make about things, including: health insurance, dental insurance, state union membership, life insurance, retirement funds, donating my organs, etc., etc.

I had a bit of a realization when people starting raising their hands during the Q&A about the retirement fund contributions. I discovered (by listening to the questions) that the majority of the people in the room had never had a JOB, and hence had no idea what a retirement fund was, or how they even worked. That was quite an eye opener. A room full of doctors, yes indeedy!

When I came home I realized that I had one million things that needed to be done, including filling my very hungry belly with food, and also including replying to my overflowing inbox.

But I then thought, “hey, I’d like to blog right now.” And that made me remember why I blog. I do use my blog as a diary, and in that capacity, writing in it is very therapeutic for me. In all honesty, I doubt many people will give a fart about everything that I just said. But it made me feel better to type it. So, I’m sorry world, but this helped me, and I’m feeling tired and selfish right now.

Time to do 8 billion things before getting up in the morning to “certify” myself (long story).

Nitey!

Photo: Taken this past Cinco de Mayo. I wish I were there right now.

I am incredibly pooped right now. And it’s definitely out of proportion to the amount of energy (physical, at least) that I expended today.

Today, I had to get up early and went to the hospital wide resident orientation Day 1. It was a loooong day. I’m mostly just not used to sitting on my butt for that many hours a day. I don’t think I’ve sat for that long of a stretch of time since perhaps undergrad. My tooshy is still numb.

And the “stuff” we learned today was really not all that special. About 95% of it was not specific to the hospital, but was rather “stuff” we all should already know like remembering to wash our hands and how to handle emergency evacuations.

I don’t like sitting. In fact, I rather despise it. Give me work on my feet all day long, and I will be tired, but not as tired as I am after sitting down all day long and listening to redundant information.

I don’t mean to complain. I know all of this stuff is important, and they have to introduce us new interns to all of it, per policy.

I did get to meet most of my fellow psychiatry interns, however, and that was definitely cool and exciting. I will be spending ungodly hours with these folks, so it’s good to know that I like them!

I’d write more, but my brain is rather dead. Need to walk the doggies and put together a dinner plan. More to come soon!

Today has been a stressful day for me. It really didn’t have to be, but I made it one because of my “OCD-ness” (more on that in a sec). I woke up early this morning with about a million things to get accomplished. You see, today is the last day before the first day of the rest of my life.

I go in for my first day of residency orientation tomorrow. And I will be busy almost every day after that for the next year. No, not “really,” but it certainly does feel that way right now. I can be an anxious person, and the anxiety has been adding up lately.

I will refrain from giving you all the grueling details, but let’s just say it’s been “one of those days” where nothing goes like it’s supposed to. I had to print out a passport photo for my medical license application so I could get it signed by a notary. But my printer was out of ink, and all of the notaries were closed. I had to buy a “snake” to unclog my toilet but when I got it home, not only did it not work, but it totally scratched up my toilet. I needed to buy some professional “work” clothes, but nothing I tried on fit right. I had to do my laundry, but all of the dryers were full and it was about 8 billion degrees in the laundromat. Anyway, I complain a lot.

I received an email from a reader of my blog today. The subject of her email was “trainwrecked before a rotation.” Of course, I’m not sharing the details, but the gist was that she has been on an emotional roller coaster lately, and she’s scared of starting her next rotation.

The thing is, this exact scenario has happened to me. I also do not want to share my personal details, but the gist is that I was also on an emotional roller coaster immediately before an elective rotation about a year ago, and I ended up canceling it to take some time to “gather myself.”

The point of all this is that we all have are an emotional train wreck at some point in our lives. We wouldn’t be human if we weren’t. And it can make functioning (especially in a work environment) incredibly challenging. Sometimes, it’s too challenging, and we have to take some time for ourself. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, we are able to “overcome” and press on, and do our very best to maintain.

Today was crappy, but not so bad that I can’t overcome it. In fact, I’ve now completed almost all of the tasks that I wanted to accomplish today. So, I feel confident that I can start my first day of orientation/residency tomorrow with relative “ease.”

But what I wanted this reader of my blog to know is that she is not alone. We all face these moments. And there need be no shame in taking time off if that’s what we have to do. But sometimes we also have to “pull ourselves up by our boot straps” and continue on our journey. And sometimes, distraction can even help us to do so.

To quickly (I still have so much to do tonight) elaborate on what I meant earlier in my post. I used the term “psychobabble” quite intentionally in the name of my website. I consider it to be a double, and backwards entendre. (Okay, I’ll explain that later.) But many people use the term “OCD” to mean “perfectionistic.” Technically, obsessive compulsive disorder is just that…a disorder. And to meet the DSM criteria means that it has to significantly interfere with your daily life. For me, it can cause a lot of anxiety, but does not “significantly” interfere with my daily life. In fact, it usually helps me get stuff done. Okay, that’s the short story. More on that to come later.

Time to finish my “daily crap!”

Photos:
1) An interesting “trash pile” seen on my walk today.
2) A dead pigeon seen on my walk today.

Part of My “Trash Talkin” Photo Series

It’s been a very fruitful day for me today. I’ve managed to cross quite a few items off of my “to-do” list. The biggest, however, was figuring out a way to support my colossal tomato plants. I purchased some small tomato plants a few weeks ago, and in a very short amount of time, they have become a juggernaut to deal with.

I’ve tried using a variety of objects to support their rapid growth, including: chopsticks, chopsticks taped together, rulers, and sticks. But no matter what I did, the tomato plants kept ‘on a growin, and kept toppling over because of their weight.

So, today I went for a very long walk to the closest gardening store to buy wire cages for them. However, when I got home, I realized after many failed attempts (and some fallen ‘maters) that the cages were too small for my huge plants.

So, I did what I commonly do in this kind of scenario and called my mother (Bob). She had a lot of recommendations, but the most feasible one was to create a “tripod” system of supports, and use panty hose to tie the plants to the support system (it turns out that panty hose don’t damage the stems like other “stringy” items do).

So, (I like “so”) I went to the 99 cents store a block away and surveyed the place for “support items.” I considered buying mops, toilet plungers, and a variety of other gadgets. And then I found some super cheap gold colored curtain rods!

I came home, and set up the curtain rods in a tripod position (and the cool thing is that you can lengthen them!) and then cut up an old pair of panty hose to tie the whole contraption together. And voila! I now have two awesome tomato towers.

T-minus two days until my pre-residency vacation (and having the luxury of spending 3 hours creating tomato towers) is over!

Photos:
1) My new ‘mater towers.
2) The Parkside Avenue subway station (beside my apartment) in Brooklyn.

Part of My “Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series

I finished taking the USMLE Step 3 a few hours ago. I have to say, it wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be. I won’t find out if I passed for another few weeks, so I can’t completely celebrate yet. But I’m hoping that I passed, and if I did, I will never have to sit for another USMLE exam for the rest of my life! Sweet!

After the exam, I pampered myself with a pedicure and eyebrow waxing. Then I came home and shaved my head bald. Yes, I have decided to lose the mohawk for the time being. For one reason, I thought it might be a bit more professional (yes, you all probably know I have a lot of thoughts on that). And the other reason is that my bald head is totally low maintenance, and I feel that a low maintenance haircut is the best way to approach my intern year.

I plan on going out in a bit to have some dinner and drinks with my friends in celebration of finishing my exam. Then I have four days until I have to begin “residency activities.”

My orientation and other training begins on Monday. My first official day of residency “work” is on July 1st.

So, I really only have four more days to enjoy my freedom. And enjoying it is what I plan on doing!

Photo: Taken outside my kitchen window a few days ago.

It’s 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday. I have returned from taking the first part of the two day exam, the USMLE Step 3. You are allowed up to 8 hours to take the exam. I finished in a little over 3 hours. No, this is not abnormal for me. Actually, it’s about average as far as my exams go.

The first day of testing includes 336 multiple-choice items divided into 7 blocks of 48 items; 60 minutes are allotted for completion of each block of test items.

When I walked out of the exam, all of the proctors’ jaws dropped to the floor in disbelief. They couldn’t believe that I had finished in so little time. Actually, one of the proctors even implied that I had somehow managed to cheat on the exam. Luckily, I eventually convinced her that I was not a cheater, but merely a fast reader and exam taker.

Anyway, I’m halfway finished with the Step 3!

How do I think I did? Well, I always think that I did worse then I actually do. So hopefully, that is true this time around as well. There were definitely a few questions where I totally guessed and quite a few questions where I couldn’t quite narrow down the best answer!

Oh well, only time will tell. No use stressing over it now. I just hope that I did as well as I did on the practice exams.

I’m going to mostly relax for the rest of the day today and run a few errands. I think I earned it. No studying for me, though. My brain is tired.

Tomorrow my relationship with the United States Medical Licensing Exams will hopefully be over forever! Yay!

Photo: My doggy Scope wearing my socks while sleeping in his doggy bed. Yes, I like to torture him sometimes for my own personal amusement.