Monthly Archives: June 2026

You are, Number Six

Posted on by
2

I almost titled this post 6-7 because I was reminded again this weekend how much the number seven shows up in my life and because of the reason explained below.

For those who don’t understand the reference, it’s a line from the opening of a BBC mini-series called The Prisoner starring Patrick McGoohan as the eponymous Number Six. To quickly explain, he appears to be a former British spy who resigns and is then kidnapped and wakes up in a mysterious village where everyone is only referred to by a number. In almost every episode, he’s interrogated by a new Number Two and he inevitably asks who is Number One. In the intro he asks the question and is told he is, Number Six. There’s a slight pause there making it ambiguous if he’s a reminder or an explanation. In some episodes it appears as if he has escaped The Village, only to end up back where he started.

When my fellow students and I picked up our badges at our last rotation, we were a bit chagrined to find they didn’t actually have our names on them, simply “Student Number #”. Mine ironically enough was Number 6. I was the only one old enough to appreciate the reference. I suppose it was a bit appropriate though, since as students only there for 4 weeks, many did not bother to learn our names and if they did have probably forgotten them already.

Once the rotation ended on Friday, I headed to my apartment in Delaware. My lease runs out at the end of June and since my next rotation is here, it makes the most sense to stay here for until the end of the month and then relocate to an Airbnb when I have to. My wife had gone down earlier, in an attempt to sell some of the furniture I no longer need and that I didn’t want to bring back to New York. When she was leaving a bit of depression or ennui came over me. I went food shopping and returned to the mostly empty apartment feeling a bit out of spirits.

It took me a few minutes to realize why. When I had left at the end of April, I wasn’t sure if I’d be coming back to spend any more nights here or simply to do one last clear-out. I had had mixed emotions then, mostly bittersweet. It had been my abode for over 10 months while I was in school. It was where I spent the vast majority of my time over the last year, between sleeping and studying. I won’t say it had become a prison, but in some ways it was. So when I left after my exam on April 29th, I felt like I was escaping. Like Number Six, I had escaped The Village.

Or had I? Here I am, nearly two months later, returning to my apartment, again hoping to “escape” it, and most likely next weekend I will, to take one final load back to New York and then return one final time and spend the final two nights of the month here. So am I Number 6? And even after escaping this apartment, over the course of the next year, I’ll be returning to campus for End of Rotation exams during Call Back Weeks. So, much like Number Six, I’ll escape only to return. And yet, there really is an exit date here. In May of 2027 I will have graduated. I will have a schedule again that I have more control over. I will be back home full time. I will no longer be Number Six.

Be Seeing You

One Down, Nine to Go

Posted on by
Reply

I’d like to say I’m now officially 10% of the way through my clinical year, but I’m not quite. While I’ve now finished one of ten clinical rotations, I still have to take what’s called an End of Rotation Exam (EOR) and to pass a couple of practical quizzes for this rotation. In addition, before the middle of my third rotation, I have to submit what’s essentially a paper. So, perhaps I’m 8-9% complete.

But, it’s a large step forward.

Each rotation we have is four weeks long. My first rotation was a surgical rotation. From a number of people I’ve spoke to, this is often considered the hardest, both in terms of material and required time. While a rotation is four weeks and generally about 40 hours a week, this one, I estimate was closer to 220 hours.

The first week started off a bit short, only four days, because of the Memorial Day weekend. But I hit the ground running on Tuesday, the first day. My classmate and I did a scrub session at a secondary campus, where we were taught proper surgical scrubbing technique and then later the same day we were allowed to step into an operating room and observe an open abdomen surgery in progress. Honestly, it’s at the point where some folks start to faint. Not my classmate and I. We were fascinated. The next day she reported to the main campus and I remained at the secondary campus for the rest of the week. My experience was generally positive, I was able to scrub into a number of cases and even was able to work on my suturing technique to help close in a few cases.

The second week I moved back to the main campus and did a week with the Cardiothoracic service. This was great because besides the two main surgeons, the rest of the service was all PAs. This allowed me to see how PAs work in a surgical practice. During this week I observed some bypass surgeries and was again allowed to provide some minor help in various, including at one point retracting an aorta with my fingers, and worked on writing up my patient notes.

The third week was in some ways the hardest. It was what’s called Acute Care Surgery. This service has no PAs in it, but I was working along side a number of medical students. What made it tough was two factors: One, I was given very little guidance of what was expected, and the second, students were expected to be on-site by 4:30AM to pick one or two patients to pre-round on. This might not have been too bad, but students were expected to stay until 4:00 PM or later (depending on needs or if you were in surgery). Fortunately, my fellow classmate had done ACS her first week and so was able to give me some tips and pointers. This was a week of very little sleep. I should add to that I had started it with a 24 hour on-call shift the Saturday of the first weekend. So, even though I was able to sleep in a bit on the first Sunday, I went into it a bit sleep deprived.

The fourth and final week, my classmate and I were together with the Trauma Service. Despite it being another week of reporting in at 4:30AM and leaving around 4:00PM, we actually got a bit lucky this week in two ways. Our preceptor of record was the attending for Trauma that week and they were short staffed residents, so we basically were working with the two incoming chief residents. This combination of factors allowed us to see and do a bit more than might have happened otherwise.

But now, the week is over. While I’m fairly confident that surgery is not the field I want to go into, Emergency Medicine is still at the top of my list, I have a newfound appreciation for how interesting and fascinating it can be. Also, as someone who had worked many traumas on the ER side of things, it was nice to see what happens to a trauma patient after they leave an OR. I logged over seeing over 110 patients in this time with my interaction ranging from simply rounding with them with the residents and or attending, to doing actual work-ups on them, changing surgical dressings, or participating in their surgeries. Without going back and counting, I think I was in about twenty surgeries. In one case, it was three surgeries in a row.

Interestingly enough, my upcoming rotation, which starts this Monday down in Wilmington, DE, is in rehab medicine with a partial focus on rehab of trauma patients. This will allow me to see the follow-up to trauma surgery. In a sense, I will see the full process of a trauma patient. This greatly interests me.

And the nice part about the upcoming week is that it’s far more normal hours. This will allow me to get enough sleep and to take evenings to study.

In the meantime, I’m going to take time this weekend to relax a bit.