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],

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 [email protected].  I certainly have plenty of time to respond!

Go Blue!

-mcw