Saturday, June 1, 2013

Endure to the end...

I am currently on night float, which means that Sunday night through Thursday night, my work day starts at 5:30 PM, and ends the next morning at 6:30 AM.  I am constantly confused as to what day it is, because it's odd to start the work day on one day, and finish it on the next.  We always have to ask patients if they know the date, to make sure they are oriented, but since starting nights, I basically accept getting the right year as oriented to time, otherwise I would need to be admitted to the hospital.

Anyways, every morning I think - just X number of days left.  I just need to endure this for x number of days, and then I will be completely done with medicine for the rest of my life, and can focus on radiology.  One of the really nice things about the whole medical training process is that every 4 weeks or so, you finish a rotation, and then start a new one.  During medical school and my residency, that often brings a stark change in the type of work, the people I take care of and the schedule.  During radiology residency, there will still be rotations every 4 weeks, with new people that you work with, but the work/schedule will be much less variable than it has in the past.  Without the change, I think I would go crazy.  Just about at the end of every rotation, I am begging for something new.  On my mission, I had a similar experience, but my time frame of needing a change was about 18 weeks, instead of 4-6.  By the end of 3 transfers, I was ready for a new place, as I felt I had the weight of the area on my shoulders, and the new area would always reinvigorate me.

However, when it comes to the gospel, there's no transfer possibility every 6 weeks.  There's no new rotation every 4.  In fact, I was recently thinking about what endure to the end means, and I am not sure there is an end.  Death?  But that is certainly not the end of our agency.  If we believe the gospel can be preached to those in the Spirit Prison, and they can repent, then certainly, we could err.  The millenium?  Satan will be bound for those thousand years, but then will be released for a time.  Exaltation?  The Book of Mormon teaches that even God can "cease to be God" if He stops making choices congruent with eternal laws.  So about that end...  

I figure if I can just endure to the end of night float, that will be good enough for now.

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