My alarm blares before the sun contemplates the day ahead. Another alarm follows shortly and another. My bed looks barely slept in as I hobble out to get ready for the day. I grab some coffee and drive in, thoughts percolating in about the day’s discharges and cases. I show up to my windowless workspace, neurosurgical junk from before I was born lines the shelves: expired EVD kit for training purposes, TLSO braces no longer in production.
I stare at two monitors and click away as I check in on each of the patients and piece together their night. What surprises are waiting for me? Sigh. Labs not drawn, hemovac outputs not charted. Yet again, fingers jab the keypad as I call the floor. Onto the next patient. Carefully our list is curated to tell a story. The paper is still warm when the chief storms in the room.
Line by line we go though my clinical reasoning as it is refined and critiqued. I know my tasks for the day, but getting into the operating room is the ultimate marker of a successful day. I systematically complete the floor work, check on all of our patients and when things are quiet on the front lines, I scrub in to be humbled further.
My movements are awkward as I’m still translating observational knowledge to operative dexterity. I’m thankful for the guard rails put around me by my fellow residents or attendings, even if sometimes those rails seem far away. Every day the central and peripheral nervous systems become both more and less mystifying as I begin to get my bearings. I’m less thankful for the constant barrage of pages that interrupt my concentration. I scrub out humbled, motivated, sweaty and hungry.
I walk back down to a snack and my dual monitors to find what Easter eggs await me in preparation for afternoon rounds. Transfer to medicine, delegate tasks to the interns and medical students, call nurses for updates, around and around the wheel goes. All the while the pager chirps as I cross my fingers for something operative and educational.
Hours later, patients are tucked in, and I am heading home. As I drive home, I am thinking of all the things I have neglected to do today. Research projects on the back burner, didactics I hoped to get through with the medical students, clinical questions for my seniors. Another deep sigh. I arrive home. Deep exhale. Now the clock is racing to read, eat, facetime my husband, cuddle my cat, shower, sleep and do it all over again the next day.
