My most recent two rotations (orthopedics and anesthesiology) were back at Royal Columbian Hospital. I hadn't had any work at RCH since my Internal Medicine Rotation, which was the very first rotation of my entire year and seemed like a long, long time ago even though less than one year had passed.
Returning to the to the same skytrain stop, same uphill walk, same locker, same smells of RCH provided a strong reminder of my first, first day, and how strikingly different it was, and I found myself reflecting on how much had happened between then and my ninth first day of the year. I have learned SO MUCH since then - about medicine, and myself, and the combination of these things. That first morning in September was one of the most anxiety-filled times of maybe my whole life - I had absolutely no idea what to expect, what my role would be, how to talk to patients, how the hospital worked, how to read a chart, or find a lab value or how to find anything for that matter. Perhaps most significantly, I had no idea why I even wanted to be doing this whole medicine thing in the first place - and whether I would make it through to even my second first day. It seems dramatic to say that now, but I don't think I am embellishing the fact that I was lost in more ways than one.
Fast forward ten months, six rotations, seven hospitals, and many a call shift, break-down and break through. I am now a pro at first days. I found the place and the person, asked the right questions to get the right information. I knew how to find the OR, and how the get scrubs, and the difference between the blue things for your shoes and the ones for your head. I knew how to find the slate (and what it was), and what room I should go to, how to introduce myself to the nurses, and what gloves size I was. I didn't know how to find the surgeon I was working with - but I knew how to figure that out, and how to answer questions, and how not to cry (on the outside or even the inside) when I felt stupid - which was inevitable. I could 'scrub in' and even suture if someone asked me. I got asked to do a consult - and I knew what that meant too! I knew how to find out where the patient was and how to find out where their chart was, and what to ask, and what my staff would ask me, and how to talk to the ER doc that saw them.
I also knew that even though I didn't want to be an orthopedic surgeon, that I would still learn very useful things by participating fully in my rotation, I knew I enjoy meeting patients, and trying to make them as comfortable as possible. I knew that I love the operating room, but not enough to spend my life there, and, I knew that even if my ninth first day was disasterous, I would survive, and then there would be a tenth first day... and then hundreds more.
Lastly, I knew that I am going to enjoy a career in medicine. Good.
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