Anyway, it's back to work tomorrow for me and most everyone, and though you always have that end-of-vacation pang ("if only I had one more day to sleep in, then I would really be refreshed!") for the most part I'm ready to go back. I like my job. I miss doing it.
It's always a little hard to return to the hospital after being on vacation, kind of like stepping off one of those moving walkways at the airport. You have to readjust your pace. Your reflexes are a little slower, and you have to recalibrate them. Your thought process hasn't clicked all the way back in yet, it's like on manual reload versus automatic. (Sorry for the gun metaphor. Just pretend I'm talking about a camera.) I remember coming back from maternity leave after Mack was born, and after six weeks off, how just plain out of practice I felt, like an athlete in the off-season. You don't realize how active of a vocation (both physically and mentally) medicine can be until you have to jump back into it after a prolonged absence. I've only been on vacation since Christmas Eve, and already I feel like fat Elvis.
(Meaning deconditioned, not, you know, actually fat or nostalgically-slash-ironically beloved.)
Anyway, the holidays are over. It's a whole new year. Finish the last of your fruitcake and let's get back in there.
