Day 3

A Brand-New Doctor

First day as a real doctor seeing real patients.  F***.  Why does this scare me so much?  Sort of mini-flipping out.  Had to read Up-to-date summaries in advance of every problem on the list.  Which meant I got up an hour earlier than I needed to.  This is not normal, certainly. All I see in my mind is a graph of y = 1/x.  This is an approximation of how much you remember of what you learned in medical school, where y = stuff you know and x  = time.  I know I don't remember anything about being a doctor.  How do people even do this job?  Also, I'm doing it with a new system of insurances, charts, computers and people.  It's like moving to another country. 

Should I drink coffee?  Would that just make matters worse?  I would either be a. more enthusiastic and forget about my panic or b. have a panic attack.

Tough to decide.  I'll give it another 90 seconds.

Today feels like a day of reckoninng.  What if I went to the wrong residency and I didn't really learn what medicine was all about?  What if my brain has developed an abnormal lesion or metabolic syndrome in the 3 months since I last worked as a doctor, which has caused me to be incapable of this job?  It feels like it, anyway.

Ok.  Calm.  Down.  When I walk in the room, it will still just be me and the patient.  I can still smile at them and do my best to take care of what they need.  Even if I need to look everything up.

OK.  Going to look for coffee.