Giving birth is one of the most unglamorous things to which anyone can bear witness. A woman is forced to bear down on a group of muscles that force a 6 and a half pound human being through an otherwise deceivingly small orifice. I do not believe the brain can isolate the necessary muscles required to do just that, which is why half the women I've delivered in the last week on obstetrics service defecate on delivery. Again, unglamorous.
It's more or less the same as any other tough rotation I've had (they have, quite honestly, all been tough so far). I don't know as much as I probably should by now, the other residents are likely better than me, I'm not getting any extraneous reading done, and my feet hurt every single day. Significant changes have occurred in the time surrounding the rotation, though. I have been forcing myself to work out after work for the last 3 days. I've been eating well, I even played my guitar last night. Tonight I might do some reading if I manage to quickly arrange my patient data for Wednesday's clinic, so that I have a good idea of who I'm seeing before I see them.
This may all have something to do with me having just had a birthday. It was my birthday on Saturday, and while there was much partying on Friday (honestly it was more tame than I expected, but most people had to work the next day, residents on call and whatnot, and I don't drink), Saturday was spent in personal reflection over the year as a whole, the start of residency, and how I should proceed if I'm to live to see another 73 birthdays (I forgot to mention, the goal is to live to 100).
I may have had some of these thoughts while on vacation. I've noticed I've managed to reign in a lot of my "stress" feeling, and replace it with "yeah, okay, cool" feeling. As in "I don't know, and that's fine, and I'm doing my best" sort of thing. I think it's called positive thinking. It's quite the concept, I'm just starting to wrap my head around it. It doesn't mean I don't care about what happens, it means I try to be more confident that I can roll with changes and acknowledge my shortcomings and deal with them like a man. It's more or less believing in myself, if I had to rephrase it for the fourth time in 6 lines of type.
I seem to be fairly good at racking up deliveries. Thus far I've assisted in the delivery of 6 children. Obstetrics is very different from other services in that patients generally don't have a multitude of chronic problems. If they do, they're handled by the "complicated delivery" group, with whom a lowly family medicine resident like myself doesn't work. Others will have some obstetric issues, but there are only so many of those (and yet I still don't know them all, but I'm not worried about that!) On inpatient family medicine service, most of the patients in the hospital will be 75, 70 , 83, 64 , 58 years old, and will have ruined themselves with poor choices. I came out of the labour room exhausted Friday afternoon, ready to soak my feet in one of those whirlpool foot baths (no I've never done it, it just sounds soothing for some reason) and I made my way to the computer to write my note. Patient name? Baby boy blank. Room? Same room number as the mother. Age? Two hours and ten minutes.
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