Neuro Week 2

No posts from me this week because I have been at the hospital a LOT. I was on the general neurology inpatient service (there's a separate stroke service that I will be working on next week). In five days, I was there for 68 hours, including 34 hour overnight call (got a few hours of sleep then, so it could've been much more exhausting). This is similar to the hours I was doing on the internal medicine service earlier in the year, but I'd been told that neuro was much mellower, so it was a bit of a surprise! I do have this whole weekend off, though.

I saw some very interesting patients, learned more about doing the neurologic physical exam, and had some good lectures to prepare for the exam next Friday. Other than that, mostly sleeping!

Neuro week 2 leaves me not quite as excited about neuro as week one...on the other hand, that could just be the exhaustion talking. One of the neuro residents on my service this week did his whole internal medicine residency before coming back to start again in neurology, which is an extension I hope to avoid! I'd much prefer to make the right choice first time around, so that at some point I can actually have a salary and some control over my schedule. The advantage of neuro as a career would be a significantly higher salary and a nice steady schedule, especially if I saw outpatients rather than acute care things. Also the chance to be really expert at one narrow field. But it's hard for me to imagine giving up all the things I love about family medicine, like delivering babies (even in the middle of the night), taking care of kids as well as adults, and doing the coordination-of-care things that I really enjoy.

The doctors I'm working with certainly don't hold back with the career advice, so you, dear reader, should feel free to chip in as well!