CT surgery pushed me to my limits of patient care. While I got along with the attendings and most of the nurses just fine, the patients tested my compassion, my knowledge of medicine, and my comfort zone of medical practice. Never have I been in a situation where there were very sick people with a very real chance of dying and I was the first one to be called when something went wrong.

A patient died during the night while I was on shift. I had seen the patient the previous night in the ER and had sent her home. Now I'm being grilled about whether or not I had properly activated the chain of command, whether or not my medical judgment had mishandled the situation, whether or not I missed something on my physical exam that could have predicted the patient's mortal outcome.

I because just a few DSM-IV criteria away from fulfilling a major depressive episode. My concentration became thin, my sleep haphazard, my mood sullen, my guilt swollen, my ego shattered, my confidence splintered. And this just in the first week.

Some people really liked the rotation. One of my fellow interns liked it so much that he's switching rotations with another intern so that he can do CT surgery for three months instead of the requisite two. There's a second-year ortho resident who would see my defeated face in the hallway and remark, "You know, I sort of liked CT last year when I did it."

What's an orthopod doing liking CT as an intern? Weirdo!