Chuy Margaritas

A whirlwind. This is how I can best describe my transition between Cecil Webster, Medical Student to Cecil Webster, MD.

We might as well start at the beginning. As you may know last week was the official start of orientation. Five days of orientation. Nine fresh new interns, two second year residents and myself were to arrive at the formidable MEDVAMC (Michael E. DeBakey Veteran Affairs Medical Center) a hospital as large as its name. While some love the VA with its design-by-committee color scheme and federal-government-mauve tile, I admittedly was a bit reticent about beginning my psychiatry career here. So, after finding some parking I walked past a river of muddy flag-adorned trucks, Buicks, and of course the gaggle of valets that attended to them.

I got lost of course somewhere on the cavernous sixth floor, but I did bump into Leroy, a fellow intern. With a bit of walking, and my apologies for not being better oriented to the building, we made our way to the bright, albeit windowless, orientation room. After a steady stream of smiling faces, and introductions we got down to business. As anyone that has worked for the federal government knows, there was a deafening bureaucracy to wade through. Patience and enthusiasm was still fresh so we tolerated this 10 hour imposition. This was followed by the public hospital's orientation, BCM's orientation, the Department's orientation, and of course the orientation for psychiatry specifically at each of those hospitals. Sprinkle on some Compliance training (still think of that as an odd choice of words) and voilà. Orientationed out.

Thankfully, my fellow green colleagues are really cool. We're quite the motley crew. There are New Jerseyans, Tennesseans, Floridians, Marylanders (I suppose I can still count myself as one)and of course Texans near and far. The program director, at an evening party at her house, described us "quite a fun group" hopefully not euphemistically as we stayed about 45 minutes past the scheduled party's end. One of the very things that attracted me to the department was the sense of togetherness (not a stuffy remoteness that I experienced frequently although not invariably in the Northeast), and it seems like we'll have no problem with that. Already we've had a casual happy hour at Amazon Grill and an inaugural round of margaritas at Chuy's. We learned a little more about eachother. Jenn is uber-eager to buy a house, Alauna is hilarious as all hell, and Ben flushes at a quarter of a margarita. Nice.

Besides this there are other tidbits. There are former Nepal Peace-Corps members, siblings of spellers featured in Spellbound, and well-worn passport porters.

After a mercifully restful Sunday (my patients were seen by the soon-to-be-offservice second years), coupled with the arrival of my roomate back in town, and a visit from my mother, all was well. I pressed my gorgeous white coat...and its quite the handsome medi-cape. Laid out my best I-promise-I'm-older-than-I-look shirt, tie, and slacks. Tucked myself in to my newly cleaned bedroom and blissfully dreamed of sunny days with fanciful well-managed, compliant, schizophrenics. While I do not doubt that may I come up a bit short in regards to my career-eve dream, I do think that I will don a drowsy smile for the next four years. C'est commencé. Wish me luck.