the underwear drawer

running in place

Got home last night at around 11pm after my shift in the ER, just in time to catch the tail-end of Kerry's acceptance speech.  "Help is on the way."  Catchy slogan.  Reminds me of this elevator in one of the main administrative buildings in my med school.  There was a little panel near the buttons with light-up letter reading just that same message.  I guess it was supposed to light up in case the elevator got stuck, to let you know that the firemen were coming so you wouldn't start freaking out and cannibalizing your fellow passengers.

As I was signing out my patients to Allison yesterday night--I only had one left that I hadn't discharged, a boy who got hit in the eye by a line drive at a baseball game--she asked me if it was hard to go through this year (meaning this extra nine months of Pediatrics that I agreed to before switching to Anesthesia) knowing that I didn't have to.  I told her that I tried not to think about it too much--working in Pediatrics is just my life as I know it right now, it's not the change that Anesthesia will be, so it's easier for me to put out of my mind the fact that I'm basically running in place for almost a year. 

I finished what amounts to my prelim year last year.  I was offered a place in Anesthesia to start this past July 1st.  But I'm staying for an extra nine months essentially because my Peds program director asked--begged--me to.  I'm staying on to do the work, to take the calls, to do the cross-cover, basically to help out.  I didn't have to.  Part of me didn't want to.  But another, larger part of me feels obligated.  This is my home, these are my friends.  And I want to be good to them.  Even if it means basically staying in a holding pattern until April.

But talk to me again about this in the dead of winter, after I'm NICU/PICU/Wards/Onc cross-cover, Q4  for six months straight, and see how much goodwill I feel then.  Oy.  

Currently reading: "Running With Scissors."  I think one of the readers of this website had recommended this book to me a long while back, and I'm giving it a reread.  It's David Sedaris meets John Irving.

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