No more medicine wards!

Today was my last day on medicine wards--ever! It was definitely a good feeling to be walking away, knowing I wasn't returning. No more long internal medicine rounds, no more cross-cover call... If I had any doubts about wanting to do preventive medicine instead of internal medicine (which I didn't), that would have cinched it.

I told my resident and fellow intern when I came in for rounds today that my goal was to get out before 11am, and even with following and having to present four patients, I left the ward at 10:55. Of course, I had to sign out to the on-call intern before the other intern on my team to do so, but I did it.


I did, of course, have an ulterior motive for leaving the ward, other than just wanting to get away from Ward 75 as quickly as possible. I realized the other day that I have worked every single Sunday this block, and thus hadn't been to church at all during Advent, which is my favorite season at church. So, I checked the Walter Reed website, and found out that the Protestant services at the chapel are at 11am (hence the goal leave time). After switching out my white coat for my winter jacket in my locker, I had to practically run across base to get to the chapel (and still came in late), but I did get to enjoy a nice Advent service, so that made me happy.




The afternoon was spent doing as little as possible, which included a nap on the futon (I have a very comfortable futon) before heading out to dinner with one my friends, who was celebrating the end of her month on urology, going into a month of ER, which for a surgery intern is practically a vacation--predictable hours, no call, no residents to make life miserable.

Tomorrow I begin PM&R, and will get one of my four weeks on that rotation over before heading for the airport on Saturday to fly home for Christmas. I can't believe it's almost the end of the year already, but I'm definitely not going to complain about how quickly it's going--the sooner I can be done with internship, the better.