Last night was extraordinarily painful at work. Part of the pain is that the fun of doing night admissions is long gone. Scrap that previous post of thinking the life of a nocturist would be enjoyable. Working the night shift, doing admissions and cross-cover is not as fulfilling as it had seemed. On top of that, the night float team works with everybody. So part of the lack of joy is having to clean up other people's messes. Kind of scary really. ER doing half-ass work ups for people who need to be admitted (if I see one more patient to be admitted with a blood pressure in the 200s!!! I may go on a rampage). Medicine residents doing half-assed job of tucking in patients at night so they can get out right at sign out time. Attendings doing a half-assed job supervising residents. I do like the autonomy of working solo at night, but picking up the slack takes a toll.. .
There were a string of shitty events last night, so that when this morning rolled around, I couldn't wait to escape from the world. Sadly, the residents were 20 minutes late to relieve us this morning (it's becoming the norm), and then I had a dentist appt.
I needed mountain air and solitude.
I slept about 2 hours (post dentist, which was nice because then I could feel my mouth and suck on my platypus bag when hiking), and then made a break for the hills. I can't use the term mountains, they really are hills. That being said, the towns leading up to my usual trail head are really cool. The kind of remind me of Colorado Mtn Towns.
Had I had my daypack already packed when I got off of work, I would have just left after work and slept on the way when I got tired, or slept at the trailhead, or slept while hiking. It was a PERFECT hiking day. Cool, in the 60s, cloudless beautiful blue sky. Part of me wished that I had my overnight pack instead of the day pack, and I'd be out under the stars right now..
Lots of random thoughts came and went during the 5 hours I was hiking. I kept thinking it's a damn shame to not be getting out hiking more. I realized I was wishing that some day (maybe on return in a year) I just keep a day pack and overnight pack in the jeep, and make use of getting to the hills as much as possible. Which lead to the thought that I wished I lived somewhere that had lots of desirable hills to go hiking in.. which lead me to think about where I would want to work, which lead me to think about small mountain towns in Colorado (but obviously towns with hospitals) which made me think about this rural loan repayment program in Colorado, which after damn near tripping on a rock reminded me I was actually hiking not day-dreaming about my future life, and then thoughts of Northern Exposure popped into my head. And I thought back to the time when I thought I'd grow up to be Dr Joel Fleishman working in some small mountain community.
So, I made a mental list of what I want to do once I'm out of residency. These are in no order.
-Himalayan Base camp doctor
-Colorado mountain town doc, in oh say Telluride (aside from the lack of hospital)
-Med-Peds hospitalist at DG
-Cruise Ship doctor
-Repeated stints w/ MSF (aka Doctors w/o Borders)
-Be employed by WHO/UNICEF
-Take a tropical medicine course
-Spend time doing locum tenems
-Work 6-9 months a year in the US, and 3-6 months a year abroad
Seriously, I have not a clue what the hell I'll be doing, or where I'll be doing it.
It's probably a good thing I have an extra year to think about it.
So, back to the hike. I stopped in one of the small towns, picked up a bagel sandwich and a cold beer, and found myself enjoying dinner sitting on a rock, in the middle of a large stream, staring up at a waterfall. And all of a sudden, the bullshit of work was the furthest thing from my mind...
Maybe I should keep the packs in my car...
[And for the record, in 1993 on a road trip, we went through the town of Roslyn's, WA where Northern Exposure was filmed, and watched then film part of an episode, as well as walk in the gift shop where you could buy, among other things, part of the piano which was flung!). Oh yeah, I was addicted to that show..
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