July update

Getting this month's update in just under the wire :) Ashley M is to thank for the facebook nudge to get an update in!  It has been a good month - busy, but good!  I have finished my first rotation of residency - a little hard to believe... it was only a 3 week rotation bc of orientation. Normally we have 4wk rotations.  I was on OB, which meant I spent most of my time up on labor and delivery, with a little time spent in clinic.  Overall it was a really good month - largely because my senior residents are AWESOME.  Seriously, the most important thing are your seniors as far as I'm concerned because that is who we work closely with and they can pretty much make or break your day.  Lucky for me, all of ours are really great, and they go out of their way to help you learn.  I had my first shift July 7th which was a call shift. I was lucky enough to have that with the resident who was my senior on my sub-i last year, so I know her well (and she happens to now be one of my friends), so it was as fun as a first shift could be I suppose.  I will say the last week was probably the best week - just because by then I felt like I was starting to catch on.  There is A LOT of documentation on L&D, and it's really feast or famine.  Well apparently July is sort of a feast sort of month, so we kept pretty busy.  Which was ok by me because it means I got to deliver 10 or 11 babies.  My call shift Saturday I got to deliver  4 babies, which was fun.  It was a crazy, insane day, but a lot of fun as I felt like I finally was catching on.  So as an intern you basically get to do all the normal vaginal deliveries.  You are supervised by your senior resident and staff, who usually help out by handing you hemostats for the cord and such, but you get to do the actual delivering and putting baby on mom or to peds, etc.  So anyway, it was a fun month.  I also got to go to the main OR with my fave senior resident and got to first assist on a laparoscopic cystectomy because it was a patient i'd seen in clinic and there were 3 of us on L&D and it wasn't too busy, so I was able to go to the OR with her for that, which was SO fun!!  Anyway, now i'm on to benign gyn, which has better hours than L&D (shift work 8-6, but with rounding and sign-out was working 6a-6:30/7p).  The downside of gyn is the clinic. I really don't like clinic, especially all the clinic notes.  And we get quite the special social situations in clinic sometimes, which makes it even less enjoyable.  So i have like 2-3 days of clinic a week, and then the rest of the time is OR time. I have my own cases on Fridays, which I get to basically do/assist the senior resident on. So that will be fun.  Then Mondays I go to the main OR just to be an extra set of hands for other cases.  Ok, i'm not sure if all of my rambling is making any sense, but it has been a fun month.  Crazy crazy busy though.  It's gonna be a loooong 4yrs - I think it will go fast, but it will be busy.  Have gotten to socialize with my fellow residents a few times, which has been great. Work hard, play hard, right??  Ok, well i better get to bed because I have to get clinic stuff ready before we round at 7:30 in the morning.  Hope everyone is having a good summer! Not too much besides work to report!  Brendan did a couple of days of RABGRAI and enjoyed that.  He has been pretty busy, too, so we haven't seen much of each other.  He's very understanding of my crazy hours and socializing with the residents, so I'm pretty lucky there.  Poor Wrigs has been a little more neglected with us working so much, but we still try to get her to doggie daycare once a week.  We may bump it to twice a week if this craziness keeps up!  I do have a week of vacation the week of Aug 5th, so that will be very nice.  I am going to do a few work things then some stuff around the house.  Hoping to get to DSM to see some people since it's been awhile! Otherwise have a couple appointments here and plan to get caught up on sleep!  We have a wedding in Milwaukee (fellow resident) the 11th, so that will be fun to get away for.  Alright, now it really is time for bed.  Got to see the gold medal wins for the US in swimming and gymnastics, so that is a good time to head to bed!  Sorry for the disjointed rambling update, but that's about how my month has been i suppose!!!  Hope everyone is doing well!!  See ya next month (Ash you have my permission to request an update in a month if I haven't written one!)