The Match

In case you are not a Facebooker, I matched into a Family Medicine residency!  I am thrilled to be headed back to the great Pacific Northwest!

Match day itself was an experience in and of itself; one I will probably never forget.  The anxiety and buildup to this day (arguably this starts even before medical school) left many of us trembling with fear and excitement as we waited for our names to be called by the dean to come get our envelope.  I was so shocked when I opened my envelope I didn't even recognize the program at first.  But we survived!  And not too much worse for wear!

I'll leave you with a quick story my attending told me on my last day of clinical work before match day....

He's an older attending with 40-some odd years of experience.  He said he still remembers his match day all those years ago.  They handed out buttons they could pin to their white coats for the rest of the school year that read "FYBIGMI" (pronounced "fuh-big-me") and stood for "eff you buddy I got my internship."  A thinly-veiled message to any attending supervisor that the student had matched and is now coasting through to graduation day.  I can't believe they had that much snark in medicine back then!

And that's where I'm at now...a glorious month of reading books and going on hiking and backpacking trips...Ah, to finally be a 4th year with nothing to do but prepare for the big move!

A few months later and we are finally at the big moment!  Tomorrow is basically the biggest day of medical school.  Yes, graduation is important too and technically gives us our title (Yours Truly, MD).  But tomorrow we find out where exactly we will be doing our residency training for the next several years.  On Monday I found out that, yes, I did in fact match to a program (one of the 11 I interviewed at).  In the meantime, those who were not fortunate enough to match had the opportunity to scramble into any open positions.  So once the stress of discovering whether I matched was lifted, it's been a relatively stress-free week.  Today I just felt excited to find out where I'm headed!

Today was a big day too!  It was my last day working as a medical student.  There are still a few months left in the school year, but all that's left is an independent study month (reading books and backpacking) and an update course (a refresher on key medical school teachings and tips on internship survival).  Next time I see a patient, I will actually be their doctor, as scary as that sounds!

That was a long hiatus!  In my absence, I have been celebrating holidays with family, doing 11 residency interviews, and visiting friends all over the west.  It felt good to be out there...though each visit was brief, I felt like I really saw a lot of people and didn't have to rush like I have the past few years that I've lived in Virginia.  

The interviews went well.  I met so many residents and faculty that are all really excited about the future of Family Medicine and I would be happy to train at any of the programs I saw.   And I think I did a good job of picking awesome locations as well.  Most places I looked have housing options that sit right next to great outdoors activities, so I could be out hiking or biking or paddling or skiing any day that I'm not working until dark 'o clock.

And tomorrow, I go back to work.  After about 2.5 months of not even thinking about medicine.  I start geriatrics at the VA hospital.  I am definitely excited to go back and to have more purpose in my day-to-day life, but also intimidated by my own rustiness.   My schedule is set up so that I can see a wide variety, starting with outpatient clinics, then nursing home, palliative care and finally house calls, plus wound care rounds when I'm with the inpatient teams.  

And this may be totally detrimental to my psyche, but...

30 days until Rank Lists are due

53 days until THE MATCH!