Gaining ground

so I'm not such a newbie anymore. I even turn in the right direction now when getting off the elevator...

In fact, we're getting near to floor rotation time, so soon I should move on from medicine for awhile and into a new frontier. The medicine floor is sometimes a drag... I hate seeing people with multiple admissions or trying to tell people that they aren't safe to go home. However, I have seen some cool things in the past months, including one lady who had a neuro disorder so rare that they were collecting her CSF for research and a guy recently with an unknown tick-borne illness (learned a new word, Rickettsia). I have definitely had some times where I wondered whether I was smart enough to work at this hospital, but everyone makes mistakes and I am learning. Definitely taking a closer look at lab values, figuring out more about those.

I have gotten to take 2 visits into the NICU in the past couple of weeks. I work with a girl who is really experienced with feeding and so I got to see the different units and today I got to see a baby intervention in the feeder/grower area. It's interesting stuff, but unfortunately I don't get to devote a lot of time to learning this (since they're kinda paying me to do other things too) and it's such a specialized area that it seems that it would 1. take a lot of time to learn and 2. be best to learn in person from an expert as opposed to on your own.

The whole peds/NICU interest causes me internal unrest, as I really don't know what areas of OT that I want to go into. Yes, I know that I am young, but I have such broad scattered interests that I have no idea where I'm going. Early this year, I had made out different possible career tracks and things connected to each... there were at least 4 and I had programs and interests on each card that I'm not willing to give up, so the range remains broad. In similar news, I just volunteered to do my first home mod evals as an OTR/L... don't know what will come of this, if anything. don't even know if it is volunteering or consulting for money, which I will definitely have to figure out :-P

I have been stressing out the past couple of weeks, it's been busy at home and work and I have been dancing on the edge of tweak out. I have a wonderful (albeit unpaid) vacation that I am leaving for this Thursday after being at work everyday for 11 days (1 was a conference). I truly need a vacation at this point. I had planned to schedule blog posts ahead of time, but I don't know how many I will get done. The other thing that I have thought of doing on vacation is reviewing info for my next rotation (neuro or ortho & ICU) but I think I am coming up on a point where I just desperately need a break. I have been pretty devoted to reading OT stuff for about 90 minutes each day (metro ride) and I just want to move to something less taxing on my brain. I have lots of ideas right now but I think that my mental health needs me to not overwork for a week. Should be a good time with family, actually try to relax for an extended period instead of running around like a vagabond. Have to learn how to balance life.