Springtime in Texas Again

I can't believe I've slacked off on writing since July. My friend called me out on it, and though sometimes I feel it's self-indulgent to write about myself, she said she actually reads these things, so here it is! You have missed so much!  As in mostly work, but also some fun concerts and dating stories. Since then I have turned into a full-fledged ophthalmologist, and by full-fledged I mean I finally have some idea of what I am doing. For the first 6 months, I'm not gonna lie, I would see patients but essentially have no clue what I was looking at in their eyes. That lead to a lot of frustration when on call, since I'm the only eye doc seeing the patient at that hour. I'd call my back up resident to ask questions, and when it was too difficult to explain or just had to be seen, they would come into the ER in the middle of the night. For some reason I was always paired with one upper-level resident, who frequently "forgot his badge" to get into the parking lot, and would take 1-2 hours to come in. So say it was 3 am, and you get a call for "eyeball hanging out of socket after a knife fight." This is all just hypothetical, of course. You say, "hm, that doesn't sound good," and come in quickly. You find said eyeball hanging out of socket, and nurses saying, "doctor, what are you going to do?" and realize they are looking at you. I quickly reply, "talk to my senior resident," since I'm thinking this guy will need surgery. I call my senior resident, who then takes 1.5 hours to come in. (He lives about 10 minutes away.) Now it's 4:30 and finally he comes to take a look and has to call our attending, seeing as how this guy will need surgery. Funny, I diagnosed that awhile back. My attending comes in much more quickly than my senior resident, and they head off to the OR. Spoiler alert: the eye was taken out. The delay in care didn't really affect the outcome, but it certainly affected my sleep that night and my confidence in my "colleague." 


Since then he's gotten better because we've all had similar issues with his timing, and I've gotten better with my exams.  I no longer get palpitations when I'm on call, and I feel like I can diagnose the vast majority of the eye complaints that come in. During the day I'm in clinic with an attending (experienced doc), and he lets me make most of the decisions, unless he disagrees with my plan. This has made me feel a lot more confident as an eye doctor.  There is still an overwhelming amount of material I have to learn, but I'm getting there. Oh and I was constantly in a bad mood for the first 6 months (I was warned I'd be depressed, but I didn't actually believe it), and now I just feel better in general about what I'm doing.  In January I called my parents crying, very serious, saying I couldn't take it anymore and it wasn't worth it- I'd go into research or start my bakery or become a consultant doc- residency was just too much. I now realize that there are intense periods on call, but it's still not as bad as when my sucker general surgery friends are on. :) Also it's nothing like when my dad was on call; he would go into the hospital Friday morning and leave Monday night. Guess that's why his first marriage didn't go so well. Lucky for me I ain't go nobody except for my Zoey beagle. She's so lovely, and I kind of like how confused she gets when I head into the hospital in the middle of the night. She's all loopy and beagly. 


You missed the 5th annual Beagle Egg Hunt! Another roaring success, and Zoey taught her cousin Winston how to break open the eggs. This year we featured salami and cheese. Big hit. 


You missed my super-busy dating life in February. Somehow it slowed after that, but I'll always have February. I was living in Houston for a month-long review course, and I managed to stack up my days and weekends with a confusing number of dates- locals and imports alike. I had a very sweet lawyer, a (later learned) douchebag general surgeon who talked constantly about his ex-gf, a bartender/ pediatric resident from Greece, another 36-year old lawyer who lived at home with his parents and some other miscellaneous boy sprinklings. Also the long-distance/ long-term ex still sends me flowers every Valentines. And Christmas. And for my birthday. I'm waiting for him to blossom, then he may come back around. You may look at that list and say, what happened to the very sweet lawyer? He's still around, but I don't feel that spark. My mom says it's because I don't think I deserve a nice boy, but I also need passion. Like the recent episode of New Girl- though I'm pissed that she dumped hottie Rupert Everett, she also needed the fire. Anyone else notice I'm like Zooey Deschanel on that show? Plus a combo of Eliot from Scrubs and Tina Fey on 30 Rock. It's healthy to have TV role models, no? I debated canceling my cable subscription due to my quickly shrinking bank account, but I just couldn't pull the plug. 


Anyways, I'm on call again this weekend... It's almost noon and I haven't heard from the ER for the past 5 hours. I'm feeling good for now. This will likely change when I'm up at an obscene hour of the night, but for now, we will take what we can get. 


You know you love me. Xoxo,
Dapper Girl ♣