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And…I have made it.  Right now I am sitting in downtown Royal Oak [http://www.downtownroyaloak.org/], drinking coffee and reveling in the fact that…I have nothing to do.  Sure, I need to blog [check], read a book [Hunger Games, anyone],

Stella!

and then pick up the puppers from her surgery [Bob Barker would be proud…she will be spayed as of today!].  And having nothing to do feels pretty good!

To summarize the past couple weeks–work.  I finished up my Emergency Medicine rotation, and I honestly really enjoyed it.  There are a lot of similarities between Anesthesia and EM, including 1) short, intense relationships, 2) procedures, and 3) hilarious people.  I got to do some sweet suturing, respond to some trauma calls, and deal with the gamut of issues that come into a tertiary care emergency room. It was a great month for sure.

I then started [and finished] my LAST clinical rotation of medical school.  That’s right, folks, I am done with patient care as an M4.  I am definitely the type of person who likes doing all the hard stuff early on, so then I can relax a bit more towards the end.  I just completed my Hospitalist subinternship, which was an awesome experience.  It gave me a whole new appreciation for interns–getting paged about lab results, imaging, nursing requests–there were times I felt like I had 10 things juggling around in my head, and I needed to keep them all straight!  It was also affirming in that I feel like I will be able to handle intern year in a short…8 months.  I know it will be a challenge, but this place has certainly prepared me well.

So what do the next 8 months look like for me?  Well, a whole lot of reading, cooking, working out, and interviewing!  I have my schedule all set–I am thankful to have heard from all the programs I applied to, and I have set up 11 anesthesia interviews with a few transition year programs mixed in.  Given Sarah’s exam schedule for law school, I deferred a solid number to January so that she can travel with me.  We will be heading to New York City, Boston, Baltimore, and Nashville in January–will be a crazy month of traveling! I am excited to see how other places function– I didn’t rotate outside of the UM system during my M3 and M4 years, so I think it will be important to see how other places function [though I really love how we do things here].  I start off my interview trail in about 1 week, when I will head to Beaumont for my very first anesthesia interview.  Will post details after that.

Congratulations to all the M0s who were recently admitted–I certainly hope you consider making UMMS your home for the next 4 [or more] years.  As always, any questions to mwixson@med.umich.edu.  I certainly have plenty of time to respond!

Go Blue!

-mcw