Erin's Bio

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I was thrilled to be starting my third year. Clinical medicine! What I had been waiting for during two excruciatingly long years of basic sciences!

Then again, there was a sense of dread lurking just beneath the excitement that wouldn't go away no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. The boards went fine, even though my scores got lost somewhere in the land of the NBME and took over 6 weeks to arrive. Having the "PASS" on my letter eased my mind a little. But not much. I chose peds to kick it off thinking that it would be slow in the summer and that I could ease into clinical rotations without being in over my head. Then everything sort of blew up. I found out that I was pregnant...again...the week before I was due to start my rotation. Then I found out that I wouldn't be pregnant much longer on July 2 or 3, can't even remember now. To add to it all, our fine officials in Nashville couldn't agree on a budget plan, forcing a shutdown of state government, which included the medical school. So we all missed the first week of the year.

I worked for 12 days straight in the NICU, newborn nursery, and on pediatric wards, feeling all of the pressure of the clerkship in addition to pain, resentment, and deep, deep sadness over another loss. All the while, seeing 22-year olds deliver their 5th child, positive for drugs of all kinds, or a "mother" demanding a cigarette break while the OB tries to deliver her 25-week preemie. But the kids can make all the difference in the world. There is nothing greater to me than seeing a new, wanted baby come into the world, and to follow that child through the first few visits to the clinic as they grow. Or to see a sick child's face light up as they become happy and well. I still say that I won't be a pediatirician, but seeing a child or two a day would bring a lot of light into my life. Still, I was happy to see the rotation come to an end. I'm now in the middle of Family Medicine, where I am very, very comfortable and seem to be learning so much each day. The diversity of FM can be astounding. In the ER last night, I saw two boys with behavioral problems, an older man with gout, a woman with a dental abscess. Not the most interesting pathology in the world, but there was something to be learned from each of them. Since I've been in Kingsport (and this is going back a couple of years, as I did research there before I did the rotation), I've seen a man with scurvy, a case of anaplastic large-cell lymphoma that presented as an erythematous breast, ARDS, protein C deficiency, too many cancers to count, and endless COPD. And I've met so many lovely people in the process. Today my 78-year old patient told me that she loved me, and I repeated it to her, and meant it. She's in respiratory failure and might not make it through the end of the year. Family Medicine is more than likely "it" for me. The question now is...when? To accelerate (skip 4th year for the Accelerated Residency Training program) or not? I suppose I'll continue to ponder that during the rest of the rotation.

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*Some names have been changed.