Mid January, and I was out of a regional hospital (which served population of 65,000 people), and into a metropolitan hospital. To say I was excited was definitely an understatement.
Having spent 2 years at the regional hospital, I felt I wasn’t being challenged enough. In a way, things became too routine. Education was still awful for second year residents. And beside the work aspects, I was starting to tire of the constant long drives back to my parents place at the city centre.
I must say, having a last rotation as relief, it put me everywhere and anywhere in the hospital. Medicine was absolutely the worst, in that they were so short staffed, that even though I told them weeks in advance that I could not work Friday, Saturday or Sunday on the last week of work, they still put me those days, and yet worse, put me on for night shift. I had to complain to them that it wasn’t possible before they did something about it, and told me not to worry. Yet, 4-5 days before I’m about to leave, they suddenly tell me that I will need to at least work Friday night shift. So, thinking I’ll help the hospital out one last time, I agree. This is on the condition that I have a 2 days to stay, since I would have handed my keys over to my land agent, and reduced hour from 8:30 pm to 5:30 am (since I needed to rest enough to drive back to the city region).
The night of work went much better than expected. I only got 2 calls to see 2 patients, so got a good 3-4 hours of sleep.
After work, I went to the hospital accommodation, and got in an extra 2-3 hours of sleep, and then the long one way drive back home to my parents place.
So it’s been about 10 days since I’ve been back home. Surprisingly, I don’t miss the town I left as much as I thought I would. I’m guessing it’s because of my bachelor life there, and the fact that there wasn’t really anything too personal for me to miss there. I always thought that being single was awesome in that regard – they won’t feel the pain of missing something whenever they live a town/city.
Anyway, I feel that a chapter has finished, and a new chapter starting – a life in the busy city again, where I’ll actually get to work. And perhaps I may find someone I like here – there’s definitely much more opportunities.
I think this year is going to be busy, but busy in a good way.
The Placebo Effect (and Medicine) 