organising thoughts

i just decided to lock this entry because i have a lot of thoughts in my head that i need to clear out. i think i haven’t written in too long and in so doing, i don’t think i’ve been reflecting enough on my life. i remember back around the time that yee kiat was in hospital for his head trauma, i wrote a lot. well i wouldn’t say a lot, but i wrote enough to make myself feel better, not just about his accident, but about all the mess that was going on in my life then.

 

change.

 

just looking at the word makes me feel a little unnerved. i remember back in the past when all those forwarded emails were “the thing” and there were questions like to what extent would you feel uncomfortable with change? and in the past i’m pretty sure i would have thought, “heck yeah i’ll definitely embrace it.” but now when i think about it, i’d say, it really depends on what and how that change occurs.

positive change: i.e. end of poverty, cure for cancer, cure for aids

it is the change that you are uncertain about, the change for the worse that throws everything that you’ve thought into a whole different light that makes you question what you believed in. everyone goes through major hurdles in life. starting school, o levels, going to jc and learning in a different environment, graduating from  jc, moving on to uni, for the boys, army and so on.. now we’re all moving on to a different phase of life; some already have. most of us are working, some are planning marriage/already marriage and i think it is that junction that we really start to analyse our path. i’d say it takes a great amount of wisdom for a 19 year old to do that at the beginning of university life. maybe with the 5 years behind me (i am actually 24 already; how time flies) i’m starting to think with the mind of an older person (GOD FORBID!)

sometimes i wonder whether i’m so entrenched in the past, in how things used to be that it makes adjustment difficult. i try to remember what it was like when i finished a levels and paul went into army and how i adjusted to that period of time. somehow in my mind i remember a smooth transition. maybe it was rocky at first, but to be honest, i really cannot remember. it’s either i have a bad memory or it just was not that bad.

i suppose when you’re ambivalent about a change, it is a good time to reflect on why you may be upset about it. whether it is just a selfish objective or whether you believe that this change may indeed be a change for the worst, personal agenda aside.

although this may seem like an extremely vague entry, now when i think about it (haha it didn’t take long, maybe because i already knew the answer in my head) a lot of my resistance to change have been for purely selfish reasons. it will be some inner demon that i’m goign to have to fight myself.. be happy for the other because he is achieving his dream.

it is always easy to put too much focus on the negatives.. you didn’t do this or that; but when i think about the positives, however small, it still gives me some hope that yes, maybe the important things have stayed the same.

update

I have been home for 4 weeks already, and I must say, time really does fly. I have already started my O&G rotation and it has not been as.. exciting.. as I thought it would be. I have decided that I’m going to take charge of the rotation, because what the seniors said is true: they don’t really care much about elective students. It kind of makes me wonder how out of touch some people might be with being a student. I’m not saying that all of them are like that, but I’m pretty sure the suffering endured as a med student would stick with doctors well into their consultancy. Then again, I’m not 50, so I can’t say what my memory would be like at that age.

 

daryl actually commented that over the week i was a lot more lacklustre than before, like i had suddenly developed this apathetic nature and could not be bothered with anything. when he came over he was trying to get me to think about what was really wrong. i guess one thing that i really need to do is to start reflecting on my daily experiences. i think recently i’ve just been getting carried away with my irritation and temper without considering what might be the reason behind each experience. he told me that i should start each day with a prayer (which honestly i haven’t been doing..) and with each time i got irritated, just pause to think what message God has for me. and i must say it works.. :) thank you, dear, for the redirection.

 

Was in clinic with this really nice consultant yesterday. While we were waiting for the next patient, she told me that the next patient had a miscarriage and her purpose for attending the clinic was to monitor her bhcg, which had been declining. So when the patient was called, this 70 year old woman walked into the consultation room and Dr Teo, the nurse and I were all shocked for a minute and just stared.. then the nurse said, “not you! you’re not the patient, you’re in the wrong room!” after the patient left the room, the nurse said, “pfft. beta hcg..” haha :)

 

and yesterday was april fool’s day! although i remembered it for the entire morning, by the time 5pm came around, i was slightly out of it. i sat in for this ultrasound discussion between the sonographers and my mentor when i received a message from shuyu that said that wei de and xin fang got together.. this is the thread of messages:

OH MY GOD IRIS YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS. Xf and wei de ARE ATTACHED!!!

WHAAT omg you HAVE to tell me what happened! was it on fb?

HAHA she just sent me an sms out of nowhere and i was freaking out!! She said she had no credits to tell you. They’ve been going out since Canada!

omg she could at least have sent me a fb msg!! and she took 4 WEEKS to tell us!?

Haha just wanted to make sure i guess? Anyway it’s quite funny, when he asked her hey were outside in the snow and she wa slike can we talk about this later I’m freezig to death!!

-.- at least this one lasted more than XX days :D omg how exciting :)

Yes well it would be, if it were true. Happy april fool’s day!! :)

=______=” but i must say that was fantastic :) unfortunately i tried to pull one on xf but she was already on guard because shu just pranked her as well.. something about 2 people acting like loansharks threatening to bang down her door.

 

woon yang’s wedding is tomorrow! :D i’m so excited! first wedding invite woohoo :D

final year

after another long hiatus..

it has been a hectic few weeks and i’m leaving for melbourne again tomorrow. I think my frequency of blogging has decreased quite a bit. (to put it mildly) and i think my style has probably changed over the years as well. sometimes when i go back to the entries i used to write back in JC, i try to recall the girl i was back then.

sometimes i get that “i want to go back to secondary school/jc” feeling. i look at the rg/rj girls and think that i used to be like that.

went for lunch with xins and lynette the other day. met them at stb and when they came out of the lift in their work clothes and looking all professional, i had a sudden thought about how far we’ve all come along since then. most of us are working, some are thinking about marriage and finding a house, some are still studying.. i remember the band room, i remember the saliva-filled corridors, the graffiti under the carpet, sneaking food into the corridor and avoiding prefects..

:) i’m graduating at the end of the year and will be starting work next year. :)

oh my friend, we’re older but no wiser, for in our hearts the dreams are still the same

Jeremiah 33:3

Been feeling extremely stressed out lately.. I’m completely tired out and the thought of the exams coming up in 5 weeks is not helping my mood at all. I’ve also been feeling down for the past 2 weeks.. felt slightly isolated despite being around friends. There was this gap there that was quite distressing, really. Spoke to daryl about it and I feel heaps better now. (thanks dear :))

I remember Jeffrey telling me once that 333 was the emergency number in times of distress :) and it’s something I’ll always keep with me. It really is quite uplifting, along with the verse from Philippians..

“Call to me and I will answer you, and tell you great and unsearchable things that you do not know”

/Jeremiah 33:3

It’s very reassuring knowing how much promise there is, but more importantly, how much hope there is in those promises. Doing psych now, seeing people with no hope in life, I can see why people hold on to even a glimmer, because having no hope is possibly one of the most awful things in life.

Thank you, Lord, for the hopes of passing exams! :) :) (because, there is still hope in passing HAHAHAHA)

 

gp land

Doing my GP rotation now. I must say that although there is a lot of free time, it just seems to zoom by. (probably because I spend time doing things like writing in my blog =.=)

anyway just finished reading through lecture notes on nausea and vomiting in palliative care and this was on one of the last slides:

Guerir quelquefois – to cure occasionally

Soulager souvent – to relieve often

Cousoler toujours – to comfort always

When i first entered med, i must say that my view is quite different from now. before, it was all about disease disease disease and i although i knew that the element of caring for the patient was definitely very important, i never realised the difference it made in patient care. when i broke my foot, (actually it is still broken) the registrar i saw at dandy on my last visit was just unbelievably nice :) he explained everything to me even though he knew that i was a med student and was very reassuring. he was absolutely lovely. i can’t remember his name, but oh man, he was one of those doctors you would want to marry if you were his patient. :)

of course, there’s the other extreme with that doctor at the polyclinic that i saw when i went home who was an absolute DOUCHEBAG. he made me feel stupid and like i was wasting his time. -smack him-

which brings me to my point about the fact that even though i’m not fully cured, God knows how long it’ll take before the bone fully unites, the element of comfort that was provided has made a huge difference. by the time i saw the reg at dandy this semester, i just about had enough of the foot. although there were minimal changes radiographically, my outlook changed dramatically.

ok back to work :) just thought i’d made a small comment :)

dedicated to zengo

haha zengo this is dedicated to you.

I MUST COMPLAIN!!! about this horrible HORRIBLE nurse that i encountered today. dujon was kind enough to give me his after theatre slot so i rushed up .. well not really, i had coffee with grace first.. THEN i rushed up to the theatre to sign my name in the god-forsaken blue book.

About the book

Most STUPID idea on the face of the planet. we have to write down our name in the book before we go to theatre so that the theatre staff can control the flow of medical students in and out of theatre. as if the green caps we are wearing are not just screaming out “I’M A MEDICAL STUDENT”  compared with the blue that the staff wears. PFFT. so anyway we supposedly have to have our names there in advance.. at least a day I reckon..

back to my story

So I rush up to theatre, quickly jot my name down in the book for today’s list and then sign on the time in sheet (another human traffic control for visitors.. once again. this might make more sense in terms of fire safety and stuff, but then people waltz in and out of the operating theatre like no one’s business, which returns me to my argument, GREEN HATS.. HELLO?!) and while i was doing all this flurry of activity of signing, there was this nurse standing next to me. and when i was signing in the time in sheet, she was looking at that blue book, and was like, “did you sign here?” and i said yes… and she said there’s already a student rostered for today, upon which i nicely explained to her that he offered his shift to me just a while ago, which is why i went up to theatre.

THEN

she started this tirade against me about how i can’t just sign in and walk in and that i didn’t acknowledge her presence there by introducing myself to her and insinuated that i was lacking common courtesy. and in my mind i was thinking, how the heck was i supposed to know that you were the theatre staff in charge and secondly, i don’t need this kind of rotten attitude from you. being a student is difficult enough already, and she’s just trying to make my life difficult. and i stood there saying that i was sorry and that i didn’t realise and she was muttering under her breath about something probably related to me and i was thinking, omg you’re giving me crap for being enthusiastic?! and when i was about to dash off into the change room to change to my scrubs, she called out to me and asked, “IRIS! did you gain consent from the patient for being in during the operation?” and the way she said it made me feel like a dolt. =.= and i said i wanted to change first but she made me go back and ask the patient and i was thinking that this woman was probably revelling in that control she had over me. [fill in angry word]

OOH so angry. :( but at least tom let me be first assistant today :) ooh but that woman really made me angry. SO ANGRY :( :(

AND.. i got a parking ticket todayyyy!!! -wails-

mentor week

well i’m not writing about mentor week per se, more of my experience with a paediatrician this morning during the caesarean. he was HILARIOUS. he saw me standing by the side and asked who are you? and i said i’m a medical student and he said, “MEDICAL STUDENT! which uni are you from?” and when i said monash, he said, “well you must be smart then..” haha. and then he started talking about how med students these days don’t learn anatomy and how the system had changed since his day. (he was a really nice old man) and then during the procedure, he tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a model of the heart and he said, “that’s what they use to teach you guys these days. you say you know anatomy because you have model hearts. no no you don’t look at the real ones these days. you have MODELS.”

he then proceeded to tell me about how he decided to do paediatrics. he actually trained in obstetrics for 6 months and went to RCH to do a course on paeds resuscitation, found out that he liked it more, and swapped over. (of course, he made it sound so easy.. genius) and he was waxing lyrical about how paeds is superior to everything; just like what dr chew was doing about o&g. one thing that really struck me is their passion for their specialty and how everything else seems to pale in comparison :)

when the baby came out, he started quizzing me about paeds stuff like “what’s the most dangerous thing to a baby when it first enters the world” and “when babies become hypothermic, what happens?” (they become hypoglycaemic) etc. etc. and it was cool because all this time, he was resuscitating the baby and asked me about oxygen saturation of a baby (which is 20-30% only) because of the foetal haemoglobin and then how it breaks down once it enters the real world which is a reason why they become jaundiced and how passing the liquor early helps etc. etc. and after that he got dad over to cut the umbilical cord, which was extremely rubbery and he commented how it was like his mother-in-law’s steaks HAHAHAHA :) after which he wrapped the baby up really tight such that for some strange reason it become triangular-shaped like a samosa. :D HAHAHAHA .so funny :) i love paediatricians. they’re awesome :) :)

early in the morning…

It is now 442am and I’m sitting at the doctor’s station in the delivery suite. and it took me 3 tries to type out “it is” properly because I am that zonked out.

This is my first WHOLE night shift and I must say that it is probably good training for the future. I had 4 hours of sleep last night before I rushed to hospital for the tute and I had 1 hour of sleep before i came to hospital. In a total of 36 hours or so, I’ve had 5 hours of sleep. RAWR. tired.

and I had my first breathlyser test on the way to hospital. Which I thought was rather bizarre because who gets drunk at 845 pm.. but then again i guess you never really know haha.

I had a glance at the photo running across the top of my blog page and I had this sudden thought about whether the 12 apostles had changed much in the last 4 years. I look back at the photos I took back in first year, and I wonder how much I have changed since then. Surely, I have learned so much. Going for vespa night is testimony to that. I still remember doing that attachment at TTSH after 1st year and asking prof chia what hyperkalaemia and hypernatraemia meant. Now if i heard something like.. this 10  year old boy presented to the ED with right iliac fossa pain that intially started in the midline and gradually moved to its current location. associated symptoms include nausea and vomiting. he is currently febrile and tachycardic and slightly tachypnoeic… and it would completely make sense. I guess you never know how much you know until you see what you potentially were like before.  It is extremely exciting :) looking forward to the time when i can start work!

Will be going to the great ocean road again when daryl comes. apparently an apostle has collapsed.. or was that before i went in first year HAHA :) clearly my dates are messed up. but it would be nice to go back again. just like the return tot he grampians. :) even though i’ve only been there once, there was a certain sense of nostalgia.

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unbelievable

I was just reading the newspapers last night when I came across this article about some statements that Mahatir made recently.

According to him, the 911 attacks on the world trade centre in new york was staged as an excuse to start some kind of attack on the muslim world.

How he can get away with statements like that are beyond me. I highly doubt that acts like that that killed more than 3000 people would be deemed an appropriate precedent for some action on the muslim world. Why would the US government want to destroy such iconic buildings, not to mention sending a plane crashing into the pentagon, the military headquarters of the US to spark off the movement. It all seems rather ridiculous to me.

But then again, there are people out there who believe that the Holocaust never occurred, like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I find it amazing that people can make such insensitive comments; surely statements like these induce anger and have a role destabilising already tense situations within and between so many countries.

People really should think before they open their mouths.