I. Freaking. Love. My. Life.

Ok, well not all of it. I would love to be in MD, for example. I would love to be getting a paycheck. And while I'm at it, I would LOVE to be able to eat whatever I want and still lose weight, to be able to afford nice clothes, to be able to afford to travel... but that's all superfluous stuff, and I'm sure I can get by without it in the immediate future. :-)

But at least my professional life, well, is just freaking glorious. *huge grin*

I finish up six weeks on Pediatrics this week. The first few weeks were on outpatient, essentially clinic pediatrics, an I was bored to TEARS. By my 37th sports physical I was ready to gouge my eyeballs out simply to have something INTERESTING happen. I'm not kidding; I got straight desperate by the end of it. My fourth week was spent in the nursery, and hell that was just fun. All I did for a week straight was play with newborns. And who wouldn't love to play with babies all day long? But as much of a blast as it was, it wasn't all that intellectually stimulating. For these last two weeks, however, I've been on inpatient medicine. And holy hell. For the first time in a very, very long time, I'm completely, irrevocably, unequivocally in love with medicine.

What it really comes down to is this: I like sick and complicated patients. I don't want to see another case of otitis media in an otherwise healthy kid; I want a kid with hyperinsulinemia who had 95% of his pancreas removed, was still having hypoglycemic episodes complicated by the fact that he wasn't eating well (had that patient today). I want a case of croup so bad to require nebulized epinephrine to keep him from desat'ing (a patient yesterday). I want a baby born at 27 weeks with necrotizing enterocolitis who required TPN (a baby I've been following for the past week- they've taught me how to write orders for total parenteral nutrition!). I LOVE asthma, and failure to thrive, and congenital heart defects. The more complicated the medicine, the faster my thoughts start to race, the harder my heart pumps, and I canNOT for the life of my stifle the childish "Awwweeessoommmeee" that comes out when I contemplate the amazing mechanisms at work in my patients. I'm infatuated with the pathophysiology of incredibly sick bodies, and no one is sicker than the patient that needs to be admitted to the hospital, or, occasionally, critical care.

So, of course, I'm enjoying inpatient medicine. But to make the experience all that much sweeter, I'm learning from an amazing attending physician. He's an incredibly good teacher, and unfailingly patient when I take an hour and a half to write up an H&P. And the most amazing thing about him is that he employs this trial-by-fire method of learning in which he says to me: "We have a patient in the ER with asthma. He's yours. Go do an H&P, write the admission orders for him, and tell me how you want to manage his care over the next few days." There is magic in that statement: "He's your patient." By making a patient my responsibility, it pushes my motivation, my stamina, my desire to learn, my attention to detail, to a level I've never experienced before. It also makes the experience much more rewarding, as well as makes the information STICK far better than reading it out of a book.

As if THAT wasn't great enough, after doing the complete admission on a little guy with cellulitis of his upper lip, my attending says to me the other day, "Bethany, you're ready to be a resident."

*tear*

I love being an almost-doctor. :-)