How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Yes, I realize it has been quite a while since I last updated my blog, and I apologize to my faithful readers. All three of them. :-) But, in my defense, quite a lot has happened in the last few weeks, such that blogging was relegated to the dusty corners of my brain, to be pulled out and cleaned up as time allowed. So I present for your consideration the main highlights of late:

I wrapped up my stint at MGH, which ended in a whirlwind of training the new staff, bidding farewells/see-you-laters to my co-workers and supervisors, and making sure all loose ends were addressed. It was a great year, but definitely confirmed my place in clinical medicine, and not in research.

Along the theme of whirlwinds, my mother and I traveled to India in the last week of June to deal with some ongoing family drama. We're trying to sell her family home and it would be a lot simpler if her brother wasn't the psychotic freak that he is. The whole thing has devolved into legalities and contracts, and my uncle refuses to communicate directly with my mother so they have two lawyers and a real estate broker relaying messages back and forth. Aside from that, the trip was great. Delhi is a lot cleaner than it was three years ago and the weather was quite pleasant since the monsoons have started. My aunt, Nandini, is a riot and it's always great to see her. And we got plenty of retail therapy amidst our stressful meetings and jet-lagged naps. Actually, the jetlag wasn't that bad because I took melatonin to put myself on IST and then back onto EST when we returned. Also, we took a direct flight on Continental from Newark to Delhi, which perhaps counterintuitively, was far more comfortable and stress-free than stopping in Paris or London. After a while you forget you're on a plane and you just nap, eat, watch movies, and walk around as if you were in a tiny house. Seriously.

I have re-entered the wards, working at Memorial Hospital in high-risk obstetrics. It has been incredible. I really missed being in the hospital so it feels great to be back and having real patient interaction. I also forgot how much fun the OR is! This past week I worked the night shift since students typically get to do more and there's more time for teaching. It was exhausting but a great experience. I had one difficult night during which I assisted in the delivery of a 24-week old baby who is currently in the NICU, the delivery of deceased twins who had died at 16 weeks in utero, and a very easy delivery of a perfect baby boy after which the placenta resolutely remained in the uterus, resulting in an OR procedure to remove it. I chose Ob/Gyn because it is on the whole a happy specialty: healthy women with healthy babies. This has been my first exposure to the small but intense area of obstetrics when things go wrong. And the reality is that when things go wrong in a place where things usually go right, it can be devastatingly sad.

Finally, I have begun the application process for residency! There's this whole online rigmarole called ERAS which is used to enter all your information and then you send it off to all the programs you're interested in. My goal is to have it sent off by September. The biggest hurdle is writing my personal statement. I have a rough draft but it's so hard writing something that isn't cheesy/trite/dumb. So I'm putting it aside for now and will come back to it with a fresh outlook in a bit.

Well, that's it in a nutshell. I have one more week of high-risk obstetrics and then I switch to gynecologic oncology which will be a very different patient population and workday. Hopefully I'll have more time to blog and catch up with friends in general. In the meantime, please accept my apologies for being incommunicado. I pray that things are on a downswing...