Checking

4 years later. 

I feel old. My life might as well be a soap opera. Too many things have happened and still happening.  

Relentless

 I need to start blogging again if I am going to survive this career. One of the reasons it has been hard to continue blogging is most of the things I want to blog about are work related and given HIPAA laws, I decided the safest thing to do is not blog about work at all. 

I've always been able to handle eccentricities of people.  You take it for what is it and work with it. Lately, I have been struggling a lot with certain patients types.. I had to make an urgent appointment with my therapist in December because there was a day that I wanted to pack my things and leave clinic in the middle of the day. I was done! 

There are certain patients that just suck you dry and they are relentless.  What is bad is that there is usually nothing major going on with them..but they take up so much time and space with visits and calls and messages, you don't even have time for the people who are really sick. 

What prompted this post was after bending over backwards... a patient looked me in the eye and said no one wants to listen to me they just want to blame everything on my anxiety.  "I was like, I don't see how you can say that to me because I have listened to you and never brushed you off. I have ordered studies and tests that I was certain were going to be normal just to provide reassurance. Some of these tests we have repeated multiple times,  once again so you are reassured. Not one has been abnormal.  

 I brought up anxiety only after  we had done an extensive workup  which was normal, and what I said  was your anxiety is not helping.  I did not say your anxiety is the course of your symptoms but it is not helping."  What I really wanted to say was "are you for real? Did you really fix your mouth to say that to me" if their spouse wasn't there... I probably would have. 

It is so frustrating to deal with people like that. I've been on the phone at 10 pm talking to this patient for 30 mins instead of going home to my child. I have seen this patient 5 times in 2 weeks at one point.  This is month 3 of this and they calmly says nobody wants to listen to them and want to blame their anxiety. 

I can't tell you how many patients show up saying nobody wants to listen to them. I always believe what they tell me because it's their experience but lord Jesus... some of them are blood sucking vampires. 

I give up. 

Torture

Worst experience... having to do a colposcopy on a recent rape victim...

My heart hurts and some men are scum.
As a boy mom, i feel the weight of raising a decent human male.

You need to receive consent everytime. NO is a complete sentence.

My heart hurts...

First day

I became a full fledged practicing board certified, licensed physician today. It felt like first day of residency all over for like the first 2 minutes, then it was business as usual. Like riding a bike, only this time a brand new bike you aren't used to. Even though I have used EPIC for years, every EPIC system is set up differently, so even though i knew what i was looking for, they were not were i was used to finding them. 

Everyone is so excited I'm here, mostly because they have been swamped with patients and they need another provider. Residency prepared me for this but it doesn't mean that i am looking forward to it. Thankfully, I have the weekend and labor day off, then Tuesday is my day off, so I don't go back to work until Wednesday. I should be fully situated by then. 

Welcome to the real world! 

All time low

I can't believe I blogged a total of 5 times in 2017 and my first post of 2018 is in August.

I' m trying to come up with my practice philosophy for my new job (they need it for marketing) and I ended up here...because procrastination.

So what has happened since my last post?

1. I was too burnt out to care about jobs so I interviewed at with one health care system, two locations and was done with that. I picked the location with a more clinic feel and no Saturday obligation. Not the advice I would give to anyone, but that's what I did. Whether i will regret not interviewing properly remains to be seen. I was just like what the heck, I interviewed at 19 programs for residency, ranked the program i ended up in number one because my spirit was like this is the best program for me blah blah!!! Lies! Big mistake!! Everyone puts their best foot forward during interviews. Unlike med school where the interview is mostly you trying to convince them to pick you, residency interviews are almost the opposite. They are trying to convince you to rank them for the most part also. Job interviews are even worse, they want you so they are definitely all out to try to get you. I figured it was a crapshoot and i'll get what I get. I can't pick my coworkers or patients. There are a million other things that go into picking a job, but like i said burn out is a bastard. I still think i did pretty decent with picking a job. It's interesting how pay was not part of my top three criteria for picking a job... I could have gotten way m0re money at other jobs or even same health system but different location, but certain things become more important in life. Like trying to get away from racism... 
2. I took boards, passed and became board certified
3. I finished residency
4. Survived a malignant residency program.
5. My weak ass program director who shall forever go down in history as fucktard puppet tried me on my very last day. He got exactly what he asked for. Punk! Those people will break you if you let them. Freaking con artists. You go for an interview and they put on a good show, bamboozle you into thinking they are a great program and then start to show themselves as soon as you get comfortable. I had to go above the program director and I told the director of graduate medical education that they shouldn't take black residents if they are not going to learn how to be culturally sensitive/competent. Those were my exact words. On May 1st 2018, they had their first cultural sensitivity training! I did that!! They won't forget me in a hurry in that program. I was not a trouble maker but I refused to roll over and God blessed me that the director of GMEC was my mentor in med school, otherwise those undercover racists were working overtime to frustrate me and make me quit or kick me out. 
6. June 29th 2018 could not come fast enough. I'm so glad to be done with those people. My co-residents in my class were Aces (minus one), that's that only reason I survived plus my "clanging balls of steel". LOL. One of my co residents told me I had clanging balls of steel. He kept saying I was his favorite residents, mostly because I said what everyone was thinking but too scared to say. We both got into "trouble" on June 29th, our very last day. He was my favorite resident also but I had to light some fire under his ass to start to speak up about stuff even though given his white male privilege which he initially tried to deny, he hardly ever got in trouble. Just because something doesn't directly affect you, doesn't mean you should turn a blind eye when other people are being mistreated. 
7. I bought a house. 
8. I got my dog back. A coresident had to keep him because my apartment did not allow dogs and my fiance bought him for me as a christmas gift, so I didn't want to give him away and the fiance couldn't keep him also. 
9. I have been enjoying my time off work. Slept for 1 week straight right after residency ended. I was so exhausted. I got sick of staying in bed all day on week 2, but really the whole month of July was spend doing nothing. I did end up making it to Atlanta the last week of July. Visited the in laws in Tennessee and Indiana. Will be going to California and Vegas to visit more in laws in a couple of weeks. 
10. I will be signing a piece of paper and not changing my last name sometime soon. 

What have you been up to? 

Blessed

God has blessed me. Thank you God! 

Those were the words that came into my mind a few seconds ago and this was brought on my the thought of my niece, Izzy. I feel so lucky to have my nieces in my life. They are so loving. They talk to me pretty regularly, at least once or twice a week. It used to be almost daily until I got so busy and their bed time is early and they are one hour ahead, so by the time I get a chance to call, they are already asleep. Anyway, no matter how often i call them, they are always so excited to hear from me. The older one has the way she says my name where and drags it out in excitement. The pure genuine excitment warms my heart. I just feel so blessed.

He liked it and he put a ring on it.... literally. The ring was on my finger before I realized what was going on because I thought we were just having a regular conversation, which I wasn't paying much attention to because I was tired. We were just joking around and the next thing I know, ring on finger.... I was like dude, you are going to have to say all of that over because I wasn't really paying attention and can't remember anything you said, except changing my diaper when we are old....

Other people (my sisters) were way more excited about my engagement than I was because ehhhh.... I've never been into all of that....dreaming and wanting to get married. My brain is not just wired that way. So as much as we had talked about it and I had put it off, I thought I didn't have to worry about it until at least December because dude lied and told me my ring would not be ready until then as it was being custom made. He got me good!

Anyway, I went into panic mode for a couple of days after ring got on finger because marriage scares me. The good thing is my mister is the only guy I have ever considered marrying and throughout this year, he has come correct. We are so similar in personality, sense of humor, outlook on life, religion, family,  pretty much everything and it is very surprising because he is not Nigerian and I never thought I could vibe like that with a non Nigerian (who cannot speak or understand pidgin).

Guess who told me "your wahala is too much" the other day? In the right accent and context. I have told him he will be speaking pidgin by the time I'm through with him. We are currently working on the right way to use "abi". He got "o" down.

When I first met him one of the things that I was impressed by was how he thought I was the best thing since sliced bread because I'm African. I didn't necessarily expect that from an African-American.  He just loves it and loves all things Nigerian. He wants to eat Nigerian food all the time and our kids will only have Nigerian names according to him. He doesn't mind if I don't change my last name and he really wants to learn pidgin. 

It's exactly a month today since we got engaged and I'm just now starting to get excited.Left to my own devices I don't think I would have ever been ready or yearning to get married. However, God chose to bless me with the right person at the right time.

God has blessed me, thank you God!

Forgive the typos...Man's hot and needs to sleep.