Welcome to residency!

So this is residency. I'm about 2 months into it at this point and my this is going to be my life I guess. My first block was ER and honestly, it sucked. Mainly because in my job, I'm a no BS type of guy who has to deal with a LOT of BS. I think some people are just better at filtering it out or ignoring it, but it just bugs me how many people take advantage of the system and come to the ER for such petty stuff and expect instant miracles for chronic issues. Sorry buddy, but your years of eating like crap, drinking excessively, and causing your pancreas to shit out on you is the cause of your pain and I can't do too much about it. Oh and if you're popping pain pills like a fat kid with a bag of m&ms, I'm probably not gonna give you much for pain here. We know if you've been here 8 times in the past month for "my ____ hurts" and you get a completely negative workup each time. This is a hospital for acute medical problems, not a dilaudid and percocet dispensary. Sorry for the bitterness, but that's honestly what a large percentage of the population is in this ER. I love the docs, PAs, and NPs there. The staff is awesome and I learned a lot. 

My second month is much better. I'm on the floors, where the majority of people are actually ill. It honestly has been a pleasure to take care of these people; to follow their hospital course and see them as a sick person coming in and leaving in better shape. I feel like I'm actually doing something for them. Right now, I'm on the night shift and it's pretty cool. I dislike having my schedule flipped around but the hospital is fairly calm at the moment and we had some good cases. 

So far, it's tough. Residency isn't a cakewalk mainly because of timing. I live about an hour away from work, so that's 2 hours of extra time allotted for. Hours tend to be about 12 hours on a good day, more if you're busy. But that's mainly because of rounding. Some people are awesome and get to the point and rounding is done in a reasonable time. But many others seem to move in slow motion and take forever to round. It is what it is and there isn't much anyone can do about it, but it's good to be able to get it out of my head for now. I miss having somewhat of a life. I miss being able to not having to worry too much about schedules. I miss having enough time to play guitar for a little while before going to bed. I miss having a beer and spending the evening painting a picture. I miss having my friends around. But I signed up for this. And I'm liking it. Or do I just have to like it regardless? I suppose eventually I'll get used to having only 4 days off a month. And it's not even a real day off. You have been follow a bunch of patients and then you leave for a day. You spend that day catching up on sleep and whatever shit has piled up at home, then you come back and all of your patients on the list are brand new and you spend extra time looking up everything about them, which then makes you go home later than usual. At this point it doesn't even matter. I'm not complaining about this by any means, though it may seem so. I have no regrets going into the field I chose. I knew what I signed up for. When shit gets tough, you suck it up and conquer it. When shit hurts, you suck it up and conquer it. It doesn't matter. I'm just babbling at this point. It's almost 4am and I'm on my last night shift for at least a little while. I'm lucky to get maybe 5ish hours of sleep during the day. I have some good tunes playing right now and we ordered pizza earlier this evening. Life is good. At least for now.