Hello Lamppost

As school goes huffing and puffing along, I feel as if I am falling farther and father behind, wrestling with this humongous beast called "research". Now, don't get me wrong, I love research. It keeps an otherwise dull school term lively, ennumerating my to-do lists, filling my spare thoughts, taking up real estate on my desktop.

The thing is I've never been that great of a writer. Sure, maybe I did decently on those elementary/high school essays on occasion, but these papers are a different species. There's a specific lexicon I haven't quite adapted. I am reluctant to let go of my imperfect drafts for review by supervisors. Then, when edits and comments come in, I am not confident in my revisions.

Draft after draft, insecurity after insecurity...finally, the day comes to submit. It is, to me, like taking that jump off the diving board. No, I haven't quite adequately mentally prepared, but with the 7 kids in line behind me, I have nowhere to go but forward. Then, while in the air, all I can think about is the eventual impact of hitting the water (i.e. accepted, accepted with revisions, rejected). Then, research never ends. After every submission, I breathe a sigh of relief (yay! I can knit for a night as a reward now!), but am quickly snapped back to reality: there's another project that needs to be done yesterday.

For the sake of balance, I have tried to pace myself. I think of it like some mob on WoW. You get close enough to aggro it, but since you want to pull it elsewhere, you run in front of it - just fast enough to keep 'em coming without accruing too much damage, but just slow enough that it doesn't run away. Of course, since I am meanwhile not paying any attention exactly where I'm running, I aggro another mob I like to call "school".


Then as an aside, I planned to talk about personality disorders and my schizoid tendencies, but this is getting too long. Basically, my boyfriend has been bugging me about getting Facebook for a little while. One night, he decided it was time to sign up, so we did it (I made him stay with me while I did it - it was scary). Then I got much too stressed out, looking at all those familiar faces, and deactivated the account. I relayed this to my sister a little while later, sheepishly, and she demanded I let her make me an account. She bugged me for 12 hours. I swear, she actually kept insisting until I relented. And thus, I have Facebook now. It still took me two weeks to let it sink in before I added my first friends. Really, this in uncharted territory for me, I am terrified.

TL;DR: I got Facebook. Add me if you'd like.

I remember when my parents first taught me about the point of no return (PONR) while I was learning to drive. I think it is a funny term, based on how resolute it sounds (I imagine a Benjamin Franklin-esque gentleman, waving his frilly sleeve, declaring, "Hereafter, I shalt not return!"). Also, the acronym, said phonetically, is kind of funny (I pronounce it "pawner").

Anyway, the reason why I am talking about this is because of a late night social Coke I drank which renders me uncomfortably alert, even in early hours such as this. I usually drink water, juice or milk, and, despite dating an "ex-Starbucks barista but continuing faithful patron", I can't handle my caffeine. I feel I have reached my point of no return tonight: I used to wake up this early in the summer when I wanted to do work - it doesn't make sense to sleep now.

The interesting thing about these caffeine-induced periods of wakefulness is that the wakefulness is not correlated with productivity. I have sat at this desk, clicky-clicking away at random news events; knitting more and more rows of this wonderfully addictive and satisfying mitten (yummy...stranded knitting...); typing this blog. Meanwhile, there is a pile of papers, patiently waiting to be read, and a long list of citations waiting to be filtered.

These papers need to be read so I can write the paper that needs to be written...gwar - time to buckle down.


In other news, I have a shift in labour and delivery this weekend. I have so far enjoyed gynecology a lot (the anatomy is, to me, wonderfully difficult to memorize - all those branches off the internal iliacs? I need to review them yet again...). Maybe/hopefully, I'll be able to welcome some babies into the world - yay, childbirth?

Today marks the first day in half a year that I don't have to take my medications (or have to feel guilty about missing it). I know - a half year course does not compare to the medications for chronic conditions some patients need to take indefinitely, but it still feels good : )

Through these months, I have learned a couple things:
- I am horrible at keeping a regular schedule, especially when it involves doing anything between the hours of 8am and 9pm. Mealtimes are very variable, both in their timing and presence. Medications to be taken at the same time - often forgotten.
- Getting bloodwork while working at a hospital is difficult. you wouldn't expect it, seeing that you easily order in-house bloodwork on all the patients, but, most often, you can't get it done in-house. Getting regular bloodwork done is very inconvenient given my nomadic habits.

Not having to pop those pills and get the subsequent bloodwork feels great. I don't mind getting poked now and then, but, as said before - real life happens while one is in class. Last term, there was A LOT of unavoidable missing of classes for appointments. Now I'll have no excuse (good or bad?).

Freedom is wonderful. Now, to binge on broccoli! No, that probably wouldn't be a good idea, I guess...

Not so surprisingly, summer has come to an end. I knew it when it was getting close, but didn't realize just how fast time passes, especially when you spend day and night thinking about papers. And so, a requisite "summer reflection" is in order. Yes, a week late, but maybe it takes me that much time to think, right?

My summer has been awesome. I have loved pretty much every moment of it and I can't think of a better way to spend my time. I have learned so much, met so many people, had the privilege to do so many things. At the beginning of the summer, one of my supervisors advised me to surround myself with positive people, to make sure my summer was a positive experience. The people I have spent time with are far more than positive - understanding, supportive, encouraging.

Coming back to school, I feel like I have so much free time - time to sit around and do nothing, time to buy groceries, time to do pleasure reading (read: ENT textbook) - what a luxury. I feel like this is the second term of school, rather than a whole new year. It feels great to be at "home". And I can see the ways the summer has changed me.

1. Since waking up for round in London, I have really come to appreciate early morning productivity. Back in London, I was waking up at 4am to do work on my paper because I was often too tired after the day's worth of learning to get much work done. Admittedly, I have been waking up later and later here, but even giving myself an hour or two before I need to start getting ready for school is wonderful. By the time class starts, I have already been productive with my day. Who knew that a life-long self-admitted night person could so rapidly change into a morning person?

2. I am much more decided about ENT. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is, but I think it is the broad and flexible nature of the specialty, the intricacies and beauty of the surgeries, and the patient outcomes that I love (how vague - that's pretty much everything). I remember a straight forward, unilateral FESS where the resident was suctioning a pus filled maxillary sinus. It's a funny angle so sometimes it's difficult to be effective with the suction, but he got the perfect angle and a whole bunch came out. There was a room-wide sigh of satisfaction - yummy. Something about these surgeries is so viscerally satisfying. Something about this specialty is just so appealing.

3. I met with my supervisor today. I am not sure whether it was because of the conference, me being more sure that I want to go into ENT, or just the fact that we've been working together for a bit, but I felt much more collegial with him. He talked to me about ENT like I understood it, and I did. And we "caught up" - weird - I "caught up" with my supervisor. It makes me happy.

4.5 months of holiday, spent exactly how I didn't expect to spend it. Loved every minutes of it; have been changed by it. And I haven't even talked about Manitoba...another post for another day.

Upon reflecting, this has been probably one of the busiest summers ever. In fact, I feel as if this summer has been busier even than my busiest school term. During school, I enjoyed many extracurricular activities, could commit to things outside of medicine, and had time to knit constantly. Now, however, I have little time to even collect myself at the end of the day and read up on the next day's cases. I've been running around trying to meet self-imposed deadlines so I can get some manuscripts and abstracts by the end of the summer, in hopes of a couple publications and presentations.

I am by no means complaining. I love this summer. Sure, the schedule of "rounds, clinic/OR, rounds" each day is a bit exhausting, especially when I am such a slow dictator, but despite this, I am excited each morning. I have met some wonderful people who have encouraged me in their own ways, and I feel much surer that this is what I want to do with my life. I love the anatomy, am curious and eager to treat the pathology, enjoy the patient population, am motivated to do the research. I felt so much joy seeing stapedotomies, debridements, laser excisions in the larynx...even tonsillectomies, myringotomies - but had a significantly smaller visceral reaction when the pit tumour came out, or when those odontoid screws went in.

I was a bit unlucky today (or lucky?) - a case got cancelled because of some administrative mess-up, the library was closed, and the next bus to Toronto isn't until 8:30 - I guess someone was telling me to take things a little easy today. Friday of the long weekend - my time to catch up on research - but first, a moment to bask in the joy of why I am here in the first place.




Rhinology the next 2.5 weeks - looking forward to some ESS and polypectomies - yummy : )