#general surgery

Day 12-13/18 (22 + 23rd of january)

took some time off from plastic surgery to focus on my general surgery exam, or better said to switch between the two. it was the perfect time to start using this whiteboard my friend got me for my birthday. :)

General Surgery - "Necrology" - 1991 Sweden

As of today, I completed PGY-2, and therefore the core training part of my residency!

It has been absolutely wild. I am so thankful that I get to learn and grow and practice medicine every single day. The fact that people people put their lives in my hands is still absolutely mind-blowing to me. It’s a huge priviledge.

Is it still hard? Hell yeah! I think in some regards, PGY-2 was even harder for me than PGY-1. I didn‘t exactly have the best time during my ICU rotation, which took up most of the year. While I had great colleagues, I did miss surgery a lot, and the „better“ work-life-balance gave me a lot of time to deal with some personal issues that I had been successfully repressing before. I experienced my first major complication on a procedure that I did, and I took that very hard. But, and I guess that’s what counts, I came back stronger.

Coming home to surgery in December, I now feel so much more confident in my clinical decision making. I am much more self-accountable, within the limits of my training stage of course. And with being back in surgery, and finishing up my core training, of course one question, which people had been asking me way before my ICU rotation, resurfaced: where to go from here?

Choosing a subspecialty has been a very anxiety-inducing topic for me for quite a while. While I applied to my residency with the goal of becoming an abdominal surgeon, there has been some pressure quite early on to focus on a specific field within abdominal surgery from the respective attendings. And as our department includes not only abdominal surgery, but also thoracic and vascular surgery, those were no exception as well. Now being the good old people pleaser that I am, I spend all of PGY-1 trying to build good relationships with everyone and so during PGY-2 I became an absolute master in not committing to anything in order to not step on anybodies toes. Meanwhile though, I slowly figured out, in many long talks, on many long on-calls, and in many exciting surgeries, that there in fact is a subspecialty that I am more drawn to than all the others. One that I came to love because of the creativity and the delicacy of the surgeries, its acute nature, and the fact that there were not one, but two attendings who always motivated and encouraged me, not only professionally, but personally as well. That subspecialty though was not the one I initially applied for. So for a long time, I thought far too much about what others might think and who I might disappoint, instead of what’s best for me.

But, two weeks ago, I finally came up with the courage to talk to my program director, and, unsurprisingly to everyone but me, it wasn’t a big deal whatsoever. So, starting tomorrow, I will continue my specialty training as a vascular surgery resident.

Was it a popular decision? Nope! Most of the abdominal surgeons seem to think I’m some kind of alien. But those I care about most have been supportive. And, most importantly, the whole vascular team so far has been even more welcoming and motivated to train me than I could have dreamed of. Every day that goes by I feel more confident in my decision, and I am so excited for everything to come.