As of 2/13/2008 I have signed a contract with Carillon Roanoke Memorial Hospital in Roanoke, VA.   I will be doing a 4 year program in Family Medicine with a fellowship in Medical Informatics.   This is the best marriage I can find between my medical and computer skills.  The hospital is pretty large with over 1000 beds and 15 floors.   The staff there are amazing too, which results in a fostering of a level of camaraderie among the residents.  To top this off, one of my old preceptors, Dr. Wayne Brackenrich will be my program director.

There are a variety of reasons for switching from a surgical career into a medical career.  The main reason for the switch was a better lifestyle.  I applaud every person who endures a 5 year surgical residency.   For lack of better wording, it is both hell and a complete sacrifice of one’s free time.   After much thought and experience with certain events (like the technical issues with the allopathic urology match and getting married in March), I bailed on surgery.   For those of you who wondered what happened with me going to Wilmington for medicine, I only ranked one program for the osteopathic match and that was New Hanover Regional Medical Center.   On match day, I didn’t match yet I found that the spots were still vacant on the scramble list.   I couldn’t get the program director to return my phone calls and was just told by the secretary that they were not filling the spots.   The day of the scramble, I had well over 100 phone calls with a total of 24 offers after the 3rd day.  After all the craziness with Wilmington and the scramble, I decided to withdrawl from the Allopathic match and sign with a dually accredited (MD/DO) program in Roanoke.

Either way, it was a stressful week.  I take my COMLEX PE board exam next Thursday so I am currently studying for that.  I am on my last rotation now.  Once I finish that I am thru with medical school!  Excellent!  I am going to dump Aplus.net as my web provider since they suck and my site is slow.  If anyone has any ideas for a web hosting provider, please let me know.  I was looking at Dreamhost for awhile.

In addition to new music (which I know you all are dying to hear but I am not releasing it yet until I have tweaked the tracks I have recorded) there will be a new site coming up called  www.warcraftdoctor.com which will have my tips and tricks for World of Warcraft…geared to the more mature players of the game.

So anyway, I am happy and relieved now.  Some of my friends are going to do a double take when they see I am not going to do urology or general surgery anymore.  But at heart, I feel like being a jack-of-all-trades rather than a specialist in one specific area.   The only thing I will miss if being able to wear scrubs everyday.   Scrubs are awesome!  When I look at my Patty, it’s clear I’ve made the right choice.

To the surgeons of the world, I salute you for your sacrifice!   To the rest of the world, you can stop guarding your bungholes now…I won’t be doing a rectal on you every visit now.

-Richie