Nope, D2 is not a surgery kind of kid. She says surgeons are just not “her people”.
D1 is the one who liked slicing 'n sawing.
Different kids, different interests.
If I were to guess right now–I’d say D2 will likely go into hematology-oncology. She’s been doing continuity clinic in hem-onc this past semester and has enjoyed it a great deal. She’s also getting a lot of mentoring & encouragement from her own oncologist(s). (D2 was diagnosed with cancer last summer and is still in treatment.) She scored very well on her STEP 1 (higher than her sister–which is all that really mattered to D2) so I can see her matching at a top academic IM program and going onto a hem-onc fellowship from there.
I wish your D2 complete recovery! She is a hero! Congrats on Step 1!
It is amazing to read the same opinions on CC as I hear from my own D.
“Nope, D2 is not a surgery kind of kid. She says surgeons are just not “her people”.
D1 is the one who liked slicing 'n sawing”
My D. would not mind " slicing 'n sawing" at all. But she is with your D2, wowm, this is right from my D’s mouth: " surgeons are just not my kind of people". She disagree with the whole social atmosphere in the OR. She believes that the perfection could be accomplished without having put anybody down. But she is extremely sensitive about human interactions and she had to overcome this sensitivity many times while in medical school and more so while rotating in surgery. Not everybody would feel this way. She feels like fish out of water around people like this. Not feeling intimidated, but rather being put down. We keep working on this sensitivity, but, fortunately enough, she did not notice anything like this in other specialties.
Just like your D2, mine liked IM a lot. It is not her specialty though. Her first year of residency, which is a required Prelim year for her specialty, was in fact IM, while she had a lot of electives in other specialties and also ran her own clinic with about 25 - 30 patients.
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If I were to guess right now–I’d say D2 will likely go into hematology-oncology. She’s been doing continuity clinic in hem-onc this past semester and has enjoyed it a great deal. She’s also getting a lot of mentoring & encouragement from her own oncologist(s). (D2 was diagnosed with cancer last summer and is still in treatment.)
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Continued prayers for a complete recovery.
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She scored very well on her STEP 1 (higher than her sister–which is all that really mattered to D2) so I can see her matching at a top academic IM program and going onto a hem-onc fellowship from there.
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Welp, all those dinners in the fridge must have helped (or at least I like to think so). D2 just texted–she got her grades from her surgery rotation. High honors on the rotation; high honors on the shelf.
Looks like I have a gunner. @-) (I sort of knew that about her.)
Not going to do a self-aggrandizing retirement thread like last time I took a hiatus but wanted to say that a few weeks ago I officially became Dr. IWBB, PhD, and starting next week I will officially be an MS3. The order of my rotations is thankfully almost exactly what I wanted. Not worried about the length of hours (the final few months of the PhD were typically 14+ hour days) but I was just emailed that orientation for my first rotation starts at 7:30am and I imagine that is gonna be a relatively late start from here on out and I almost never woke up before 7:30am during my PhD.
Thank you all for the entertainment. Writing on here was a good way to take a break from the dissertation while still keeping my mind actively producing content. Don’t tell your kids, but I would have happily studied/taken step 1 again than wrap up a PhD. Looking forward to not being in an environment where essentially you’re the first/only person who’s been there (http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/), but I imagine a whole new crop of challenges will pop up. Starting immediately with having to integrate myself into a new medical school class (most of whom were college freshman the year I started) and probably getting reminded how little I know by kids who used to turn to me for advice on how to study for our exams.
Who knows when my official final post will be, but it will certainly be soon.
Congratulations on reaching a milestone, Dr. IWBB!
(And I remember when DH was in dissertation hell. It was…not fun. And made worse because everything had to be written out longhand in the bad old pre-word processing days.)
P.S. I’m sure you’ll do fine on the wards. Two pieces of advice-- wear comfortable shoes and carry snacks in your coat pocket. You’ll be glad you did.
Congratulations and best wishes, Dr. IWBB! (I keep thinking that there is absolutely no reason for me to still be on this board but I continue to check in from time to time, regardless D is beginning PGY-3. @-) )
A beginning third year residency vent, written by a mom:
Hooray to only two years left (before fellowship). The kid is tired. Really tired. She is happy to have more responsibility. Of course there are higher ups about but she now independently handles some ob/gyn surgeries. She continues to like her co-workers and raves about some of the attendings. She has enough experience that she now has a real sense of what sort of academic practice she would like to be with in the future.
Third year has some perks - only eleven weeks of nights this year as compared to seventeen last year. Sheesh.
This ain’t business or law school folks. Her friends in those fields are finished with their educations, buying homes and living their lives. My only real knowledge is Ob/Gyn and they are rock stars. That being said, I think that anyone who goes into medicine is remarkable. It is a long, long haul. D has never expressed regrets at her path and even when she is exhausted she loves the work. Her research looks interesting and she is getting positive feed back.
One comment she HAS made is that she is truly sick of being broke. She looks forward to when she is able to put a few dollars in the bank. Her co-workers with partners who work have a bit of an easier time financially so it isn’t tight for everyone and I should mention that her residency is in NYC, not an easy place to live on the cheap. Yes, you know what you are getting into in theory but with one day off a week there are times you are just keeping your head above water.
Props to all of you out there doing this. You are the greatest.
D1 is a now a second year–which mean fewer outside rotations and more time in her own department. She’s now handling only high acuity/critical patients. It’s just her and a 4th year–no attendings looking over her shoulder. She just started 8 weeks of nothing but 5 pm to 5 am overnight shifts 6 days per week. She gets off that hellish schedule just in time to have 4 days off for her wedding in September, then she goes right back to 5 weeks of rotating swing shifts. She’ll working 30+ hours shifts in SICU for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Eve. Lucky her.
She and her new husband (who is an established professional with a non-portable job–he’s a tenured professor at a major university) will not be able to live together until D1 finishes her residency. This also requires D1 & her husband to postpone having children for 3-4 years–something they are both anxious to get started on since they are somewhat older. (He’s 38; she’ll be 31 next month.)
So many sacrifices these young people make. I am so proud of every one of these young doctors.
True for me too. I think I just like to read people’s good news and remember all the good things. The challenges and struggles will make your kids great doctors.
Congratulations to D1 and D2, WayOutWestMom!
Congratulations Dr. IWBB!
@Elleneast and @WayOutWestMom, I was where you are. I understand. It is hard to watch your exhausted kids as they struggle through residency, and possibly fellowship. D is finished now. She has been out for a little more than a year. She still works extremely hard, but less than 75-80 hours a week! The rewards (professionally and financially) have been great. She is happily married, bought a new car, is paying back her loans in a big way, bought a new home, and is expecting her first baby in 2017. She has more time to be with family and friends, is able to donate time and money to a charity near and dear to her heart, and is HAPPY!
Yep, two years of residency left for DD, tired of working such long hours, tired of smelly patients (guess the specialty), tired of her friends getting married & her not yet (not 100% sure about current BF & future); tired of being broke. Tired, too, of seeing married residents or residents living with their SO having a cushier life than she has. Just grumbles, no real problems, but she has to vent somewhere. Also in an expensive city, not NYC, but it’s up there & her apartment storage unit got broken into, and she had to either move or find a new roommate, and everything to move to would have been hundreds more per month, so she found a roommate on an ad. Yep, all her friends are married or living together.
somemom,
I agree that girls tend to unload to their moms. Sorry to hear about various negative sides in your D’s life, but I have my load also once in awhile and I am glad that my D. feels comfortable sharing her troubles with me. What else we could tell them except for “Hang on, you are one day closer!”
Mine has 3 years left. Since her specialty is not covered much in medical school, there is a lot of basic academic learning to do in addition to normal resident’s duties. They have lectures and lots of reading, up to 200 pages / week, which they were told that are impossible to cover, so do your best. She said that is is like being back in medical school and doing your job at the same time.
However, her long hours are behind her, had lots of 30 hour hospital shifts in her first Prelim year. This is a big relief. She is not broke, she had to buy a new car, paying it off. Since everything in her specialty is so new to her, she is more excited than tired as of now and saying that the second years (in specialty, but actually the formal 3rd years because of Prelim year) know so much. She is looking forward to get to some kind of comfort level. The new discovery was that she actually enjoys the surgical procedures in her specialty, as she never was excited about surgery during medical school. You never know until you try!
Anyway, I do not know how she would feel a year from now. Obviously, she is not where your D. is now. However, few things may influence the way they feel. Living in the cheap city vs expensive one and the specialty itself.
The absolutely best wishes to your hard working D.!
DD struggled mightily in med school to decide about choosing a surgical specialty or not, she loved surgery, in her non-surgical specialty she does some surgical rotations and again loved being in the OR, watching the fellows in this field, though, the continued surgical hours, she is quite comfortable that she chose correctly for her future life. That was a god phone call, “oh, mom, I am loving the OR, loving Plastics, I would be so good at this” (cue: Mom’s stomach sinks), “but these people’s hours the residents, the fellows, and even the attendings, it’s just a crazy lifestyle, I am glad, now, that I did not choose the surgical specialty” (cue: Mom’s heart sings) I really did not want to psyche up for a change in residency program!
The nice thing is the rotations where the attendings notice how well the resident does in some aspect and suggests considering a fellowship in that area. It’s nice to get a wee compliment now & again
Same choice; same ultimate decision; same results.
D1 is stretched very, very thin financially. She’s supporting 2 households (hers, her spouse’s) both in high COL areas. (SIL is on sabbatical in the US this academic year and next so he and D1 can at least live on the same continent.) His income is going towards paying off her student loans and saving for a down payment on a house near where he works in another country (where 25% down to required to qualify for a mortgage and the COL is equivalent to Manhattan). An unfavorable exchange rate isn’t helping.
They are all so different. My D. absolutely hated “being in the OR” while in medical school, hated it much more than actually doing some “slicing” herself, not that she had a chance of any “slicing” while in medical school. The surgical procedures in D’s specialty are not done in regular OR and she said it is all different. The first relatively simple procedure that they let her doing under the supervision was “very satisfactory” - her expression, which she did not expect at all to feel. Maybe a slight change in the future Fellowship (if she decides on any?). She was thinking about the children sub specialty of her specialty, but I told her many times, that it was way too early to think about anything seriously before she actually starts experiencing different aspects of specialty.
On another hand, she happened to choose her specialty way back in HS, I believe in 10th grade. She had some doubts on the way, but everything else fell out while in medical school, so she basically plunged in into her 10th grade dream. At this point, she needs much more experience than just few weeks to see how it is working out for her. She definitely liked Internal Medicine a lot during her Prelim year, but she realized that the life style of the internist is not for her and there are a lot of non-medicine issues that were hard to deal with. She felt very comfortable with the “medicine” aspect of IM though. It will take some time to reach this level of comfort in her specialty, and that is what she is aiming for now.