I will raise my future children to believe this.

Hmm, Top Blogs. That’s darn good incentive to keep writing.

After graduating from residency, I took a month off. It was the Holidays, I had finally been liberated from a malignant work situation, I had the chance to be my own man again, to make my own decisions. I thought I could waltz straight out of residency and into any job I wanted. After all, I was a doctor. Young, certainly. Inexperienced, perhaps a tad. But a highly educated and motivated physician. People are always sick, how hard could it be?

Pretty Damn Difficult.

My interests lie in clinical academic medicine. I want to practice, but I also want to teach. Having knowledge is great, but spreading it is infinitely more fulfilling. A fellowship position would have granted me that, but thats a long story most of my old readers already know about and I wont go into it here. So the next best bet was to continue on as a hospitalist, ideally in a teaching hospital.

I tried applying to several, but outside of my training facility, where I will not return, I’m still too young to obtain any kind of academic position. I dont yet have the experience and the breadth of knowledge, I would simply be a glorified resident. Not that I realized it at the time.

No instead it took almost 3 months of unemployment. 3 months of turning down any jobs not in Los Angeles or Orange County. 3 months of thinking I was too good to settle for living in Bakersfield, Palm Springs, Riverside. Thinking that I would start at my dream job, top of my field.

It wasnt a rude awakening but a gradual realization that though I may have graduated, nobody cared or knew the difference. It’s not what you know, it’s what you do. So, I started looking further afield. I still ignored permanent positions in places I couldnt see myself living, but now because I was looking for somewhere to continue to develop my skills while living.

With loans rapidly coming due, and no source of income, I began searching for alternative methods of employment that would pay the bills, develop my skills, and give clinical thrills.

And so I learned about the world of Locum Tenens (latin e.g. to hold the place of) aka substitue/temporary doctoring. 

Doctors leave to have babies, to go on vacation, to move on to other jobs all the time, but patients need to be seen. This leaves clinics and hospitals understaffed, sometimes for only a few days, sometimes for months. While the hospital looks for a replacement, they will occasionally call into a doctor temp agency for someone to help out while they search. Its a good source of short term employment, and all the travel costs including room, board, and airfare are defrayed by the company. Essentially it’s a work vacation. travel the world, treat the sick, and get paid to do it. You just have to keep getting licensed everywhere which takes 6-8 weeks per new facility.

So while I continued to search for my dream job, I accepted my first locums position. A Geriatric Clinic in East Los Angeles where none of the patients spoke any english. It was time to see just how fluent I was, in spanish and medicine, as I began my first real job as an attending physician…

-Dr J

Well, apparently xanga has managed to survive. At least so I’m assuming from the fact that I can still log in. It’s kind of like coming back to a childhood home after a move away. Though I havent been gone that long, it seems ages have passed.

And I suppose that in some ways they have. I have no clue what my xanga friends have been up to, at least the ones with whom I communicate solely online. A few close friends and I elected to continue writing to each other via old fashioned letters. A step down in technology, but a grand return to interpersonal communication, something that despite my job, I still feel I sometimes lack.

And so, I putter about the place, sorting through old memories, wincing at pictures and posts of who I used to be, and enjoying the chronicle of whom I have become. 

There are so many stories still left untold.

The completion of the Peru trip-I have gone back to keeping a paper journal on travels, so something will survive another internet website ending

The completion of residency. I made it out, but what came next-the surprisingly difficult struggle to find a job despite, or perhaps because of my level of education and specialty training.

My locums work (think temping, but for doctors) experiences in a geriatric all spanish speaking outpatient clinic, and my rural/3rd world hospitalist time spent in Kona Hawaii.

My upcoming return to the Midwest for a permanent position as a hospitalist, at least for the next several years.

The return of my stand-up comedy career.

And all the stories of what you, my friends and readers have been up to in all this time I have been busily concerning myself with the outside world.

Everything Changes. That’s the adventure we call living. However, it’s nice to know that I still have somewhere I can come back to at the end of the day to call home. So in whatever iteration you return xanga, I’ll be right there with all my things set up just the way I like them.

After all, I’m still one of the 24 hour people

-Dr J