"weak choice"

I made what a friend of mine calls a "weak choice". I decided to do a month of Nephrology. A month of looking after patients on dialysis. Some of the sickest patients that there are. Some of the crappiest patients that there are. Patients that don't take care of themselves and are slowly losing fingers, toes, legs, arms. They have almost every major medical problem that you can have. You know - Hypertension, diabetes, renal failure, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, emphysema, etc., and a lot of them used to do IV drugs and have Hepatitis. What winners.
So, the patients have a lot of problems, that should be good learning right? Well, that is what I thought, but... not so much. Essentially, all I do all day is collect data and round on the patients, and then round on the patients some more. Did I mention that I round on the patients? At least in surgery after you are finished rounding you get to do something fun and cut someone open, but not in Medicine. You just round.
Also, it is "home call", ie. if there isn't anything going on, I can go home. So that should be good right? Yeah, not so much. I usually have to drive the 30km round trip back and forth to the hospital at least once in the evening and usually twice. Usually just as I am thinking about going to bed (around 10:30pm), I get a call to come and admit a patient. I usually then don't get home until after midnight. That would still be OK if that was it, but the nurses keep calling and calling. So, I don't get much sleep at all. Again, not so bad if I got to go home the next day, but because it is "home call" we get to do MORE call and we don't get to go home the next day. What crap.
Well, at least there is learning in seeing those patients, right? Sometimes, but sometimes not. There was one instance where the attending had already seen the patient, come to a diagnosis, and had even called for a bed for her, but still expected me to come all the way from my house to admit her (when she was still at the hospital). Again, what bullshit.
Live and learn I guess. I know that this was a weak choice now, and the best thing I can do is pass that info on to my colleagues. We don't have to do this rotation, so I am going to tell them: DON'T BOTHER! There are easier, less exhausting, rotations with better learning.
Happiness is knowing that in 5 working days I am back in Anesthesia doing what makes me happy.