holy moly

it's been a crazy few days.

1. Diseases
Pt came in with weight loss of over 20 lbs in the past 2 months (5'3", weights 80 lbs now oh my gosh); a bad cough; etc. Turns out she has tuberculosis.

Yeah. And since I was the first one who saw her and didn't know what she had, I had no mask. I have to now to get checked for TB. Ughh...

2. Boards
Something an attending talked about was DIRECTLY a question. Wow, I love it when this stuff happens!

3. Tired and not sleeping well
I've been getting these weird dreams whenever I have increased real-life-base-level-worriedness. They're always vivid and full of not so fun stuff like car crashes and waking up noon on a workday and getting yelled at by an attending. But also just weird, like dancing on someone's face, trying to get a group of people to feed animals, walking around a miniature desert in a single file line, etc. I dunno. My brain is weird. I could not make this stuff up even if I tried. And it's so vivid. It's just weird.

4. TIRED.

5. (Cont.) evaluations

I never realized how much this could impact me, but it does. I am not one to hold too much stock in what other people say about me unless it's repeated from multiple sources or there's some sort of reason to back up what they're saying. Essentially I have trust the person's words before I accept almost any feedback. 

But reading evaluations from preceptors and attendings and residents is just... Scary. Because what they say, I have to trust that this is how I am coming across in clinic. It's not, "is this true?"  It IS. Because it's about impressions now. It's not about if I actually am this or that. It's if I appear this or that. And that matters. 

Reading positives things makes me uneasily happy. What a weird contradiction. Uneasily happy. Because all those good things, I don't even if they're all actually true. I just appear like so. But at the same time, I am bowled over at how good the words are. And I can almost understand now how people can be so appreciative of compliments. Ugh. Need more time to unpack this thought. Later.