The Speed of Trees: Ellis Paul is a musician that I have been recently listening to. I highly recommend that you check out his CD “The Speed of Trees .” It was suggested to me by a friend who lives in a small Colorado mountain in town. Johnny K is a through hiker on the Appalachian Trail (AT), That I met a little over a week ago during an overnight backpack trip.
How do these two things relate? I decided that I desperately needed to get into the mountains for a little down time. I was still trying to recover from the insanity of July. So I took a Friday afternoon off, packed up my backpack, and hit the AT. I hiked 9 miles (a fucking tough 9 miles I might add) and camped at a backcountry campground that was populated with AT through hikers. I was listening to Ellis Paul on the way to the trailhead and as I was hiking along I kept thinking of the title of the CD, “The Speed of Trees,” and how I have been so caught up in my daily resident life that I was missing out on the speed of the trees. Meaning, that in the blink of an eye, I realize that it was already mid August and I had yet to go backpacking/camping or even hiking. And that if I didn't make it a priority to spend some more time outdoors, before I know it, I would miss seeing the trees change colors in the fall. And let me tell you about Johnny K. 45, ex-Marine, decided he would hike the entire Appalachian trail this summer. Johnny K didn't just give me pieces of lightweight backpacking advice, but also suggested I slow down and spend more time hiking. Of course I gave him some advice to basically to take care of the healing wound on his ankle.
Daily Grind: it has taken me a bit of time to recover from July. Looking back, I think that July was much more difficult than I had anticipated it would be. The transition from intern to “senior” resident was a bit of a bigger jump than I thought it would be. So I was responsible for supervising both an intern and a medical student. It was pleasurable teaching for the first few weeks but when things were busy teaching was the first thing that was dropped, and it probably should not have it. Also, I realized that I am not good at delegating. I often found it easier to just to do the work myself than to delegate it to the intern or medical student. When my team was on call, I was also the pediatric admit resident which meant that all pediatric patients admitted to the wards came through me. Which means that more than once I found myself stuck on the phone for insane periods of time trying to coordinate admissions to the hospital. This month, I am doing pediatric outpatient surgery clinic. It is fairly relaxed. I have a week of vacation starting Saturday and am looking forward to my time off, as well as looking forward to seeing dad and Janice. September and October will be fairly busy as I am in the pediatric ICU in September and then the adult ICU in October.
My Home: I don't think that I am settling in here as well as I thought I would. I find that I really wish there were better (taller, more mountanous) mountains close by (part of why I don't go hiking as much as I could/should). At this point, I feel fairly certain that I will be leaving this area after residency.
After Residency… kind of the million-dollar question, or the future job du jour. Some days I see myself spending a year or two in the Indian health service, some days I see myself settling down in a bigger city (Denver, Chicago, New York, Seattle, San Francisco), some days I see myself doing three month locum tenems jobs. All I know at this point is that I am fairly certain I will be staying in primary care, providing care for both children and adults (and the occasional geriatric patients, ie, dad and Janice).
So, there you have it for now. I leave you with this quote to think about:
“Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."-Susan Sontag-
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