It has been a year. It really has.
After two years of battling straight-up demons in the form of exams, PowerPoints, and sleepless nights, I traveled up northwest to a small Upstate town called Oneida for my third year of medical school. My departure from Middletown, NY felt like an exhalation of sorts: I exited a place that I associated with high levels of stress, a place where I spent the earlier parts of pandemic unsure if COVID-19 could kill me, and a place where I felt more like an extended visitor rather than a member of the community. I fired up my Jeep and whistled up Rt. 7 and a slew of other small highways, taking in a beautiful sunset, the quaintness of several one stoplight towns, but also the many confederate flags flown proudly from barns and pickup trucks. Where was I going? What did I get myself into?
This year has been pretty solid and has flown by. Oneida is indeed a small town filled with many friendly people, thankfully with less of those flags I saw on my way up. In its beautiful warm days, Oneida is a great place to ride my bike, hang out with friends, and explore nearby parks and lakes. Rent is affordable, people have patience, and I get the sense that this place can be relaxing rather than GO-GO-GO associated with other parts of New York. Limits exist though. In true Upstate spirit, I dealt with an overwhelming amount of cold weather and have nearly veered off the road once on a terribly snowy day. I also quickly learned that Oneida is a food desert, lacking healthy food choices and making it difficult to feel confident with how I treat my body once mealtimes hit (thank goodness for my pressure cooker). My dating life has also been shot. I mean, absolutely shot. While the Syracuse scene is 40 minutes away, I have to be honest: my romantic candle burns very quickly when I have to travel that distance, knowing there have been few things open in a pandemic, and I'm only here for a short time.
On a happier note, my third year clinical experience has been overall positive. I don't want to get into specifics of what I liked and disliked, but I definitely feel I have had plenty of opportunities to talk to patients independently, hone in my assessment skills, and grasp better ideas of clinical plans. My mentors have involved me in procedures, asked for my thoughts and feedback, and respected me as much as I respect them. I also did an elective inpatient hospital medicine rotation at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, NY in March, and I was able to experience formal rounding, as well as working with residents, which helped me elucidate the level of responsibility I will soon hold as an intern. I'm thankful for all of this, and I feel confident in my skillset as I head into fourth year. I still spend a significant amount of time studying and doing board prep, but it definitely doesn't define me as much as it has in the past.
I went into third year believing I was interested in Internal Medicine. Internal Medicine offers plenty of opportunity to explore the entire breadth and depth of adult medicine, engaging the opportunity to specialize in a specific body system, such as Cardiology and Gastroenterology. It also happens to be the landing spot for people like me who simply enjoy most facets of medicine. However, I have switched my aspirations to Family Medicine after experiencing a great Pediatrics rotation. Little kids are obviously a bundle of joy (usually), but working with older children and adolescents presents an opportunity for rich, preventative healthcare that we always talk about but sometimes experience difficulty in execution. As a pediatric endocrinologist, my attending would never miss an opportunity for a safe, yet extended conversation about weight loss, healthy food choices, and an active lifestyle. Family Medicine provides opportunities for variety in all age groups, and it's an overall solid choice for great outpatient medicine. I also have some inclinations towards Sports Medicine, a popular fellowship choice for Family Medicine physicians. Sports Medicine is a rapidly growing field featuring many (almost futuristic) injection therapies and ultrasound-rooted diagnostics, which would accentuate my clinical acumen, diversify what I can offer to my patients, and falls in line with my personal affinity towards conservative approaches for musculoskeletal injuries. We will see how it all falls into place.
Looking back, I'm just happy with my growth and with who I am becoming as an person. Working with patients is one of the best experiences I will ever have in life. There's nothing like this. Doctors who say they are never thanked must be treating their patients like ___ (insert word of choice). I love the interaction, the partnership, and the opportunity for improvement. Getting out of the books and into the clinic makes me feel less worried about not having an income yet. I feel happy with all my relationships. Post-vaccination and with the new CDC guidelines, I went to a Syracuse bar recently with some classmates who wanted to check out the area, and it hit me like a wave: although we were not finished with medical school, we came a long way from the dark nights of first year. The improvements in our quality of life have been palpable, and everything seems to be going in the right direction. Finally, I have rediscovered my love for physical fitness. Working out at the gym on a regular basis has proven to be the best thing I have personally done this year, and I appreciate its positive effects on all things physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Looking onwards to fourth year, a lot of uncertainty lays ahead. I'm still in the process of scheduling my rotations, which has proven to be a frustrating experience. Besides that, I will be interviewing for residency this year, and it will definitely be interesting to see where I end up. I would like to live in a more diverse place than Oneida, as I have been shocked on more than one occasion where a local resident will refer to recent gubernatorial rules and restrictions as those representing the Nazi regime, which are inexplicably insensitive comments I feel members of this community would be less likely to say if they had Jewish neighbors. Obviously, diversity holds several other benefits. Regardless, third year is really all about building off the knowledge from our first two years in a real-world clinical setting. Oneida definitely satisfied those requirements, but a small community hospital system unfortunately limits my clinical exposure to the management of serious neurological and cardiac cases; they get shipped out quickly to a tertiary care center. I've still got a ways to go in my clinical training, but it is important to acknowledge these shortcomings to better inform the choices I should make, and the places I need to look for in the future.
Third year has definitely been an experience, and I appreciated the opportunity to exhibit who I am as a person in the form of interpersonal patient care. Moreso, I am thankful that my friends and family are healthy in a year that has been quite scary. If I can take away anything about this year, it would be the wonderful mannerisms many of my mentors have exhibited in the clinical setting---much of which I have pondered and placed into a motto: "the 10%-more rule." What would a doctor do if they had 10% more patience, 10% more time available, and was 10% more open-minded? Do that 10% because patients notice that 10%, and the clinical decisions may benefit with that touch of extra.
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