Gen Surg: Typical Day & thoughts.

So again, I thought that surgery would be more hardcore. I mean don't get me wrong I'm not a genius or even close to rocking this rotation (especially considering this one resident who constantly gives me this smile i'm sure means 'you have no idea what your talking about you idiot' and then ignores whatever i said).  But surgery is just...underwhelming. Here is my typical day thus far:

• Arrive at 4:30am or 5:00am (depending on how many patients I have)
• Round on all my post-op pts (involves waking them up and doing a SOAP on everyone, labs, etc)
• Meet with Resident at 7am to round with them, and you better know your patients new stuff...
• Sometimes there is a lull after rounds where i can snag breakfast and study for an hour, most days not
• Visit patients in pre-op and write pre-op notes at least 1 hour before their surgery
• Scrub in and enter 'sterile zone' where have to wear cafeteria lady-like hat, mask and booties.
• Wait for surgeon/patient/resident to arrive, surgery to start, room to be cleaned, etc
• Watch scheduled surgeries (hope you've read on em the night before). Since there are so many students I only scrub in on 1 a day (scrub in means potential for me to actually do something like hold a retractor)  The rest of the surgeries I stand on a stool looking over somebody's shoulder. If i'm lucky I can see what they're doing. Most of the time not. Also if its a good day the surgeon will ask me questions and think i'm stupid when i don't know the answer. But most of the time I have to stand still for 5-8 hours at a time on a stool quietly and I sneak practice my surgery 'ties' with the 3.0 vicryl suture i stole and sewed my scrub pants. (you can leave it there all day and nobody notices).
• Answer consult pages for entire hospital for gen surg
• Round with the attending- more just getting approval for what we've decided to do- lots more pimping (asking questions in a derogatory way).

Then i can go home. Sometimes its as early as 3pm other times it's 10pm. If i'm super lucky, the other med students and I have worked out a system where we cover for someone while they 'had to resterilize' aka- go grab some lunch and granola bars for all of us. I have never gotten a chance to get dinner, because if its a long day- residents and surgeons are cranky.

I don't mind the hours. And I don't mind being busy or not knowing the answer. I just hate all the WAITING. I hate standing on stools and looking at nothing. I hate the attitudes of most of the surgeons I encounter- tho it's really not as bad as TV says. I am surprised to say it, but despite LOVING anatomy and despite LIVING for procedures.... surgery sucks.  I don't want to do it --even a little bit.

Weird. I expected surgery to steal my heart and I was scared with all my procedure and anatomy love I was going to have to talk myself out of surgery because of the horrible hours. But no, I don't even have to talk about surgery at all. I already dread my last rotation-- trauma surgery.  At least I'll be down in the ER most of the time. I guess we'll see if anything picks up or not.