Med school like any other endeavorers journey comes to a pinnacle of intensity. It’s the summit of the mountain, the grand finale, the scene at the end of the movie where the bad guy and good guy have the big showdown. For me this was manifested as Trauma surgery.
I thankfully had some idea of what I was getting into before I started. It was well known that trauma surgery was the toughest rotation in surgery that I could have chosen for my general surgery month. But I wanted to do it. Part of the reason I came to New Orleans was because Charity hospital was the 2nd busiest ER in the country pre-Katrina and I figured the gun and knife club would be a great way to learn medicine. So this was my one shot to be on the inside of that world and I wasn’t going to pass it up. So I went it with the attitude that I knew I was going to work absurd hours and be exhausted and hopefully see amazing things. But I also knew that at the end of the month I would have completed all of the big core rotations and med school would be a down hill slope. So this truly was going to be the final push, and just knowing that allowed me more motivation.