Babu Chalam’s Homepage

I am currently enjoying the second of my three weeks I get to allow for myself for my intern year.  As you notice by the title I am at my father’s house.  I will be using this time to get some studying done, start my second phase of P90X2 and hopefully get some website stuff done as well.  I plan on being in Atlanta this weekend before I head back to the hospital in Augusta,Georgia.

I am already feeling relieved and grateful to get this brief period of time for myself as I will start a 3 month stretch of adult inservice, emergency medicine, and medical intensive care unit shortly after I return from this week of rest.  For now, I am not going to think about medicine stuff too much, just enjoy being here in the house in which I grew up.

I know I am 7 days late but a very wonderful happy new year to everyone around the world!  I had a great one week rest with family and have been back in Augusta, GA for almost a week doing ER and clinic work.  It’s kind of hard to believe that I am half way finished with my intern year of residency.  Time really goes by very quickly.

I have a few promises I want to keep for myself now that I have given myself some time to recover from the onslaught of residency work.  I will continue to stay as optimistic as possible despite any negativity around me.  I will continue to show up early and stay late and continue to give 110% of my effort for medicine even if no one appreciates it (and yeah we interns don’t really get any respect, but that’s okay ).

I also want to continue to stay as healthy and in peace of mind as possible.  Eating proper nutrition and exercising with my new P90X2 program whenever I get a chance will take care of that.  Also I really feel better and more confident about myself after I push my body to its physical limits.  I guess it’s the endorphins.

I also need to be more socially forthcoming.  I am six months into residency and I am no longer going to care about what others think about me and I am just going to be myself and stop letting myself get scared on the wards (okay I will probably be a little scared in the ICU but I won’t let it negatively affect me). I also really need a girlfriend.  It would be fun to meet a fun and interesting female who fits my personality. Hopefully this time next year, I won’t be in the single category.

Spanish language still remains an important goal for me as well.  I hope to make some advances in my Spanish language which for the most part has been stagnant due to my residency obligations.

Also I know that this website desperately needs a makeover.  Same old boring design for the past 5 years just isn’t going to cut it anymore.  Let’s see how creative I can get.

So yeah, I want to accomplish ALL of the above while being the intern physician in the throws of residency.  I am already laughing at myself while I am typing this, but mark my words,  I will accomplish my goals.  I am only one who truly has the power over my fate and no one else.  And yeah,  I aspire to finish my intern year and immerse myself in medicine as much as possible so that I can move on to the second year of my residency this July.   Peace out!

I have reached the halfway point of my intern year and have picked the right time to take a one week rest from medical life.  Since July I have been going nonstop gathering a plethora of medical experiences in 77 hour work weeks with an average of 4 days off each month. Needless to say, I am tired, overworked, stressed, beaten down,  etc etc etc. . .  so I definitely feel great to have a little break from this.

My last adult medicine in service rotation drove me to the brink of insanity and a sense of hopelessness.  I hope to use this next week to play with my favorite little person (of course I am talking about my niece!) and shower her with a bunch of X-mas presents so that I can feel motivated once again to do all of this.  It will be great to spend time with family and reunite with a few old friends. Plus I am going to spend a few days in my hometown of Douglas, Georgia, a place I have not seen in over 6 months.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Santa Claus (in the form of some FedEx guy) stopped on my doorstep yesterday while I was napping following  the night shift at the graveyard (i.e. hospital) and gave me my present 3 weeks early.

For those of you who thought I would fall off my track of exercise ever since my residency training started, well you are . . . uhm. ..  WRONG!!!  I will admit that I have lowered my frequency of workouts and the amount of reps due to time constraints, but overall I am keeping my promise to not end up an American statistic.  (One in two persons in the U.S. will be obese by the year 2050. )

I am pleased to have started P90X2. This time around my workouts and results are going to be a LOT different than my round of P90X last year.  Last year I was an overweight unemployed physician living with my Dad and  in the throws of depression and fast food culture.  P90X instilled a culture of fitness, nutrition, and confidence that has for the most part been intact.  I became a different person physically and emotionally.

However, I don’t expect too much of a change as far as appearance and strength with P90X2.  I have to face reality that my life revolves around medicine and that my time for working out will be limited. I will not be doing as many reps and dedicating an hour and half everyday for the new P90X2.  It is tough to get up at 4 in the morning to wake up and exercise (but i still do it! ) .  This time I foresee my P90X to be a P 120 X (spaced out in 120 days instead of the usual 90 days) to correctly perform all of the new moves and allow my time for recovery and account for my obligations concerning my medicine internship training.

With that said, I am priviledged to endure Tony Horton’s latest fitness masterpiece.  Tony Horton doesn’t  know me personally, but I will always consider him a dear friend who helped me in many ways.  I encourage everyone to do something active in their lives and eat healthily this holiday season.  If I can find the time for it, so can you.  Today I sweated out a challenging X2 Core workout. Tomorrow it is off to Plyocide. Let’s do this!

After a great month of pediatrics I return to the adult side of medicine tomorrow.  Residency has been going well and I am getting through this three month stretch of hospital in-service with 4 more weeks of in-service to go.

This past weekend I went to Athens to visit friends and take in the celebration as my Georgia Bulldogs clinched a division title.  I also went to Atlanta where the highlight of my weekend occurred:  I got out of my car outside my sister’s house and my little two-year old niece came running towards me with a big smile on her face.  I picked her and she gave me a hug and I gave her a kiss and carried her on my shoulders around the house.  It was like a happy ending to a movie.

Time to get ready for tomorrow and wake up early and work out and get to the hospital by six in the morning.

After finishing a month of adult inpatient medicine, I now have a week of inpatient pediatrics finished and another 3 weeks of pediatrics to go before I do one more month of adult inpatient medicine.  It has been really cool being back in the hospital admitting patients.  It has been tough, but nevertheless the work has been rewarding.

First off,  Happy Diwali to everyone out there.  I am not doing a good job at being a Hindu considering I wouldn’t have even known it was Diwali if my friend from Boston had not texted me (Thanks, Sairam!).   It’s also Halloween this weekend.  Maybe I’ll dress up like a zombie, if I am not feeling too lazy.

Anyway, I am glad to be alive and lucky to be doing medicine. I miss all of my friends in Europe but am happy to be here doing something cool and noble and it is nice to be close to family here.    Plus I played basketball today with my senior residents and my ankle didn’t sprain a bit.  A miracle considering how much trouble my ankle has given me since I injured it in Czech Republic in 2003.

I hope to get some things accomplished this weekend off.  Hopefully I can clean up my house, study some much needed Spanish and some medicine topics, and hopefully do some yoga.  And then on Monday I will be back on my march through the land of pediatrics.

After two months of OB/GYN (one month of wonderful OB/GYN full of delivering babies and full of education and this past month of a garbage rotation of doing someone else’s post partum scutwork), it is finally time for me to rejoin my residency program in a fully occupational role.

This Monday I start my one month of Family Medicine In Service.  I will be working with other residents and attendings in admitting patients and treating their illnesses.  Needless to say, I am extremely looking forward to rejoining my fellow residents and contributing to medical service and FINALLY feeling like I am part of a team of physicians.

These past two months I have enjoyed a LOT of OB/GYN experience, but I feel like I have been left on an island by myself and depending only on myself.   This upcoming Monday things will change drastically.  In essence these next three months of my internship year are going to be extremely brutal, full of sacrifice and long hours. Following my month of admitting adult patients to the hospital, I will be doing a month of Pediatric In Service. And then the final month of this three month stretch will be back in family medicine in service admitting adult patients to the hospital and treating them.

In essence I will be coming early to the hospital and leaving late almost every single day for the next three months treating patients (one month adult patients, the second month children, the third month adult patients again).  I had a discussion with my best friend (I call him Dad ) about this, and he basically told me that these next three months are not going to be miserable; they are just going to be very busy.  I WILL learn a lot these next three months and will do a service and take care of people.  This is what I signed up for and no matter how tough and how late I stay in the hospital, I will not let my patients down.  And this isn’t just some bullshit I am writing to motivate myself. This is the fucking truth. I will help people and learn and sacrifice my time in the process.

These next three months of hospital work will be the core of my internship year.  It is essentially the heart of my residency experience up unto this point.  I am extremely excited to rejoin my fellow intern and three wonderful senior residents as we get on the battlefield and fend the hospital lines.  I am going to give each of them a big hug on Monday morning at 05:45 when all of us meet up to work together for the first time.

I have been very fortunate to be in a residency program full of great people. I would take a bullet for my fellow interns and senior residents.  I cannot let them down. No matter how difficult my work gets and no matter how many times I make a mistake (Trust me, I am going to make a LOT of mistakes), I will NOT give up.  I will fight and claw and learn for me and for my patient until the bitter end. Let’s go!

I have been a little down the past few days with a cold which seemed to take so much energy from me. I think the main reason I got the cold was because my current rotation of visiting post partum patients is not very active, so all I have been doing is sitting around too much. Anyway I feel a LOT better today after some sleep and resumed my working out. Today I did Yoga and tomorrow I am resuming my weights/resistance/P90X stuff.

I had always avoided publicly talking about the terror attacks in New York and D.C. ten years ago, mainly because everyone in the world seemed to talk about it over and over again, and I really never thought I could contribute anything to the conversation.  I remember being in Heidelberg, Germany and going to a movie with some British students from my language course and hearing the news from them. That night in the central square (Uniplatz) there was a candlelight vigil dedicated to the victims.

I had no television in my little dorm room, so I did not see images until the next day when I got a newspaper and watched television at my language course in Max Weber Haus.  When I finally saw the images I remember feeling a lot of anger and sadness. I knew that the U.S. was going to be in war, and I knew that I was going to be an American citizen living abroad in a time of war.  Anyways, it is sad to think how unsafe our world has become since then and the emotional and domestic repercussions the U.S. has had since then.

I can remember calling my late mother the day after the attacks.  She told me an interesting story of a childhood friend of my sister who was working at the World Trade Center at the time, but was sick on 11. Sept 2011, so she didn’t go to work.  Kinda’ makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Anyway I hope everyone will use today to think about not just the U.S. but the rest of the world as well. Many people from many different countries were victims as well.  It is just unfortunate that the site of attack was in the U.S.  Terrorism happens everywhere around the globe.  It is not Muslims or certain brown skinned people from the Middle East who are our enemies.  Radicalized fundamentalists are the world’s enemy. We as a world need to embrace our similarities and put aside our differences in regards to race, religion, or whatever.

Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox now, before I piss someone off. I am going to enjoy the beautiful morning and finally get my oil changed in my car and do the many other errands I have to do.  My thoughts go out to the victims and their families on this difficult day.

The previous post was a language exercise I wanted to give myself to commemorate my tenth anniversary of my exchange year in Heidelberg, Germany. On August 25, 2001 I flew off to Heidelberg, Germany with the hopes of completing my learning of the Germany language. But alas I came back to the U.S. with so much more.

Through my one year as an exchange student in Heidelberg, I studied German with other Germans, and moreover got the opportunity to know my relatives in Germany and really become close to them.  I also got the chance to travel through Italy, Greece, and England during my stay in Heidelberg, Germany.

And it’s really hard to believe what still awaited me after my studies in Germany.  I got the chance to go the Czech Republic and live and work there. Of course I made a TON of friends from various countries during my stay and I miss all of them like crazy.

It is truly unbelievable that I can still speak German to this day and that I’ve gotten the chance to travel through many European countries.  Even a couple of months ago I was able to make friends with some Germans and other Europeans through my travels in Spain and Portugal.  And now I am working as a resident physician, and I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I delivered close to 40 babies and assisted in 6 C-sections in one month.   When I was 19 years old (and still at the very beginning of my German studies), I had no freaking idea that I would be doing such things in my life.

I am a very lucky person to have this life and I still want more.  I hope to learn Spanish and one day travel through South America and Australia.  But for right now I am a resident physician and I have to work really hard to get through these next three years in order to finish my residency successfully.  After the great long weekend at my sister’s place, I will once again be at the hospital tomorrow early in the morning.  Let’s go!

Tja, ich habe mal Lust, ein bisschen was auf deutsch zu üben, und fuer merkwürdige Sprachfehler bitte ich um Entschuldigung. Am 25. August 2001 bin ich nach Deutschland abgeflogen, um ein ganzes Jahr in Heidelberg als Austauschstudent zu verbringen.  Kaum zu glauben, wie sich mein Leben durch dieses Erlebnis verändert hat.

Dank meines Studiums als Germanist in Heidelberg hatte ich die Gelegenheit, Germanistik mit anderen Deutschen zu studieren, mir die deutsche Sprache endlich zu eigen zu machen, und vor allem meine Verwandten in D-land besser kennenzulernen. Ich hatte auch die Gelegenheit, andere Länder zu besuchen während meines Aufenthalts in Heidelberg und zwar Italien, Griechenland, und Großbritannien.

Und kaum zu glauben, was noch kam nach meinem Aufenthalt in Heidelberg.  Ich hatte die Mut, zwei Jahre später  in der Tschechei zu wohnen und zu arbeiten.  Und klar habe ich eine ganze Menge toller Menschen aus verschiedenen Ländern  angefreundet.  Und natürlich vermisse ich alle meiner europäischen Freunde wahnsinnig.

Tja, das gibt’s doch gar nicht, dass ich heute immer noch deutsch kann und dass ich kreuz und quer durch mehrere europäischen Länder gereist bin. Vor ein paar Monaten habe ich auch während meiner Reise durch Spanien und Portugal Deutsche und andere Europäer angefreundet.   Und jetzt arbeite ich als Assistenzarzt und es ist total unglaublich, dass ich in einem Monat fast vierzig Babies rausgeholt und an sechs Kaiserschnitten teilgenommen habe.  Als ich 19 Jahre alt (und ganz am Anfang meines Deutschlernens) war, hätte ich mir nie vorstellen können, dass ich solche Erfahrungen sammeln würde.

Also ich habe viel Glück bis jetzt so ein Leben zu haben, und ich will mehr. Hoffentlich gelingt es mir, Spanisch zu lernen und eines Tages durch Südamerika und Australien zu reisen.  Aber jetzt bin ich Arzt und muss diese nächsten drei Jahre echt schuften, um dieses ärztliche Praktikum mit Erfolg zu absolvieren.   Nach dem tollen langen Wochenende bei meiner Schwester, gehe ich morgen wieder ins Krankenhaus. Muss mal weitergehen!