Ready, set, spend money!

A much awaited event occurred last week: applying for residency. This was the first step of my involvement in the Nobel-prize winning "match" process (No seriously, an economics guy won the Nobel prize for it! You can read more here or here). Essentially, I apply to programs through a centralized application system online. My application can be downloaded by each program I apply to and then they can apparently click "interview" and it sends me an interview request. All medical students in the country were waiting for the official date and time that we could apply: September 15th at 9 AM central time. 

Now, as you might imagine, because of this arbitrary open time, there was a HUGE amount of traffic on the site. Despite many jokes about how the people running the system should have known exactly how many eligible medical students would be trying to access the site, the heavy traffic caused the system to crash. So, when I got up on September 15th to submit my application, I was greeted with this lovely page error page.

 

It may have been wise to completely give up and just go to work, but I had some time since my rotation (more about that in a second) is much more low-key in terms of hours. So Tom and I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast while hitting 'refresh' every few minutes. After an hour, it still wasn't working so we gave it a rest knowing that I could apply later in the day. 

So, I went to work at the King County Medical Examiners Office (KCMEO). This rotation is a diagnostic pathology elective that runs for two weeks.  The KCMEO performs investigations and medical examinations of all deaths in king county that meet certain criteria like: homicide, suicide, trauma, gun shot wounds (accidental or not), any death that occurred unexpectedly or if the decedent had not been seen by a physician in the past 36 hours. It's a totally random, once-in-a-lifetime kind of rotation that, I've learned, is not for those with weak stomachs-- I won't be sharing a lot of the details here.

My role on the rotation is to learn as much as possible and to assist the medical examiner in the evaluations. Basically, I assist with autopsies. I've seen a lot of incidents of heartbreak, accident, and sorrow. On my first day alone we processed three suicide cases.  On my second day I was given the opportunity to "go out on scene" to a case. I didn't know what I was headed for, but I was offered a spot in the rig with the scene investigators, and I took it. 

I donned a two-sizes-too-big-for-me "KCMEO official" jacket and got in the rig before I was informed that we were driving to the scene of a suicide. I can't go into the details, obviously, but suffice it to say, that marked a first for me. I walked into the room and assisted in documenting and photographing the case. Then, another first for me, I helped pack up and move the body out of a building that had no elevators. That meant that the "sled" would come into use. 

You know those orange plastic things that people get loaded up into when they're stuck on the side of a mountain or deep in the woods? Well, same thing. 

We placed the decedent on the sled, and carefully pushed/pulled it down and around a spiral stair case and out to load the decedent up into the rig.

The firsts kept on coming. After processing the scene, we followed the leads from the scene to the home of the decedents family to break the news of the death. By the time we returned to KCMEO, I was in a very strange state of mind, that's for sure. In that sense I was both grateful and reluctant to have a mental distraction: my application. I logged in from the break room and finally saw the fully functional screen of the application:

  A few deep breaths and approximately $500 later (there's a fee for every program you apply to, a fee for processing transcripts and a fee for registering for the match process), I had applied. 

With a bittersweet feeling of relief, anxiety, happiness and fatigue, I returned to the work room in the KCMEO's office to review photos from the scenes of our cases to make sure the stories lined up with what we saw on autopsy. It was an emotionally charged day, for sure.  

After applying, I was told that I could receive interview offers as soon as 48 hours after submission, but most programs take at least a week and often they don't extend offers until October. I looked forward to a break mentally and emotionally. I didn't get what I was planning for, but I couldn't really be upset about it :). As of Friday I have three offers out of the 32 programs I applied to. So, we'll see what happens next! I haven't started booking flights yet because I want to see if there's a potential to plan 2 or more interviews in the same trip rather than booking a bunch of there-and-back trips. We'll see. 

Ok--what else has been going on? 

On Thursday I had the opportunity to celebrate some of the mentors that helped me get where I am today: Dr. Bruce and Dr. Boyd. These two emergency physicians were some of the first I worked with as a scribe at Tacoma General and they were both retiring. Nurses, doctors, scribes and loved ones met up at Katie Downs in Tacoma--a place that I have seen and walked by countless times but, ironically, had never gone into before!

We shared memories and stories and I caught up with all the docs I used to work with. It was a blast and a grateful escape from the heavy stuff I've been processing on my rotation.

 

Later in the week I also got to enjoy a little "me-time" on my lunch break. Because, for this rotation, I have a lunch break and I can acutally use it! Often on other rotations even if I have a lunch break, I have stuff to do that totally fills it up. But on this one, I'm able to fully take a break--there's no final exam to study for, no project to prepare, no lab results to follow up on, no phone calls to make--it's great! So I used my lunch break to take a few walks around Seattle and discover some things I've never seen. 

I made it to this cathedral, which admittedly I don't know the name of. I entered to find people doing all sorts of things: weeping, praying, meditating and sleeping.

 

The organ music echoing through the arches was an interesting juxtaposition to the homeless gentleman passed out on the pew and the young girl lighting a candle in the prayer room

 

With that, the weekend hit and I was ready for some "normalcy." Well, I found it at the tailgate with the Cravens! 

They got a great spot under the tree.

The theme this week was brats and dogs.

Tom took over as grill-master and he loved it! 

 The 2 o'clock kick off was perfect. We had a great lunch in great company before finding our seats in the sunlight in the dawk pack section.

It's been four years and as it turns out, I'm a through-and-through husky fan!

Ok--you made it to the end of the post. That's all for now! We'll see how many adventures pop up in the "interview trail"! I can feel my credit card warming up in my wallet already...