Sunday, September 9, 2012

Why OB-Gyn?

Well, why not? I can tell you this - I could not be any other type of doctor.

I floated through the pre-clinical years uncertain as to what I wanted to specialize in. Maybe peds, maybe infectious disease. No way in hell was I going to enter OB or surgery. I knew, just knew that I would hate the OR.

Third year rolls around. My first month is outpatient family medicine. I discover that I dislike sick people. I hate managing chronic diseases (now take 200 mg of  drug X daily instead of 100 mg). Now, this is a problem seeing as how I WAS IN MEDICAL SCHOOL!!!!!!! I liked the procedures he did (he did some minor office surgery - I saw a vasectomy and toe nail removal in his office) and I liked the pregnant patients. hmmmm..........

Suffered through peds in November and December. My daughter was 7 months old. I was assigned to the infants floor. There was a shit-load of RSV admissions. I think I scrubbed my epidermis off, I was so scared of bringing it home to her. I was, however, the BEST at getting the RSV sample - because I was a mom already, I was really, really good at sucking snot out of nasal passages. The other students were too scared to go deep enough.

Surgery next. I had been dreading these two months. I even arranged to be placed at the hospital where there were no residents - and therefore no student call. I knew that I wasn't interested in surgery, might as well make the months as easy as possible. I FUCKING LOVED SURGERY!!!! I had a blast in the OR. I scrubbed in on some interesting cases: a Whipple, some ortho cases, many bread-and-butter choles. This was not expected. Not at all. It blew my exhausted mind.

OB-GYN came next. Had the gyn month first, again, I loved the OR. Hated my bitchy resident, but loved the surgeries. She was truly the epitome of the stereotypical OB resident.  Bitch. OB month next - again, loved being on L&D. Got to catch babies because the interns were so over doing work. The residents this month were better.

The rest of the year was psych (shoot me now), neuro (nice docs, but not for me), and internal medicine (aka eternal medicine, because all they did was round forever).

Medicine as a field is nice because there are different niches for different people. I am in the right field for me - I have a surgeon's mentality but I'm more touchy-feely than one. My patients generally are very healthy. I get to know them very well. And you know what, I can usually fix what is wrong.

I am an OB-GYN.

5 comments:

Mary said...

It is interesting to hear the thought processes behind the choices. Every time I see my family doctor he tells me to tell my daughter (ENT), "BORING!!"

She says, "If it is below the clavicle, I have no interest in it."

Anonymous said...

That's exactly it, not butch enough for general surgery, not intense enough for internal medicine, not hippy enough for paeds and so not into the sick people. Happy events for me, with a mix of medicine and surgery - OBGYN!

Unknown said...

After finding out about your pregnancy, soon-to-be mothers need to deal about another major thing - choosing the best OBGYN.

oB/GYN South Florida

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing. I would love to find a good obgyn in Pueblo, CO. My sister is having a baby. We don't know the what to do. Where do we even start?

Unknown said...

I think it's great that you absolutely love what you're doing. I think this making sure that your doctor actually likes what they're doing is a sign that they're going to be a great doctor. I just found out my wife was pregnant with our first child and we are trying to find an OB-GYN in our area. I'll have to try to find someone with as much passion as you have! http://www.defazioobgyn.com/about-us