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haven't been updating for the past 6 months cause my life's been really crazy. not crazy-fun like i'm-partying-too-hard-to-blog fun, but more like crazy-my-life-really-sucks crazy.
first, a quick recap.
most importantly, i AM NOT IN TAIPEI ANYMORE. haha! i still get the occasional email and sms asking if i've stayed on in taipei for good considering my previous post was just before i flew off to taipei, and someone actually asked if i got married to a taiwanese!! LOL. so it was a fun but very wet trip since it rained while i was in taipei everyday.
came back from taipei, and it was a quick jaunt to nearby phuket with some of my old secondary sch classmates. it was a laidback, slack like hell trip, coconuts by the beach, eating icecream nonstop, indulging in some gambling in our monstrous hotel suite.. haha. definitely one of the best trips ever.
being in the faculty of no-holidays medicine, i returned back to school for an onslaught of short postings which truly, was pretty enjoyable because i knew the 2 major postings that were coming up after that were definitely not my idea of fun. rotating through anaesthesia at cgh, ophthalmology (eye) at ttsh (a lot of early days though, that was excellent!), ENT at cgh/ttsh, and finally the eyeopening experience in pathology where we got to go into the mortuary and watch autopsies right in front of our very eyes. the whole 8 week period doing these short postings were a breeze, with an occasional end of posting test here, and writeups there.
after that, my hell started. paediatrics posting. something i thought i'd be looking forward to. turns out, i only like kids, even though they're sick, but i really hated studying why they were sick and how to help them. i think my liking for kids should be channeled towards another job like a kindergarten teacher, and not a paediatrician. i can make funny faces and make them laugh, and carry them without dropping them, but ask me to diagnose a kid who is wheezing away with fever and a funny rash and some other concomitant problems, and i'm totally stumped. end of posting clinical test was a complete disaster, what was supposed to be a straightforward case turned out to be a total horrifying experience for me. i suck at vivas and oral tests where i'm supposed to come out with answers instantaneously. argh i just really hope i pass this posting overall.
thankfully, there was 2 week break where i took off for another quick jaunt to hongkong and macau. anson was the excellent tour guide and saved us loads of time. also realised how nice canto songs are! (despite not being able to understand a single word) and i realised that all hongkongers can sing. anson and his hongkong friend both sound like superstars, i think anyone in the street can just sing and sound like eason or sammi.
well, the worst was to come with the obstetrics & gynaecology posting. having heard so many horror stories about this posting from batchmates and seniors who have entered the realm of o&g and come out shaken, it is hard not to be filled with fear when we started this posting. so many rubbish paperwork and mini-clinical examinations where we had to hunt tutors to fill up silly little forms for review.. and then the horrible writeups, and late late times for tutorials (tutorials at 6pm?! you've got to be kidding me.) and more often than not, the doctor will say 'sorry, busy today. can't have tutorial.' o&g comprised of an osce examination, where basically its like this circuit of 10-12 stations with simulated patients and the doctors mark u in the 10mins u have in the room. remember when i said i suck at vivas and oral tests where i'm supposed to generate answers on the spot? well, as usual i crashed spectacularly in some rooms and from some rooms i emerged not knowing whether i passed or failed. ahh heck. whatever. we ended school on 22nd december, just 3 days before xmas.
and after a brief respite over the festive holidays, now i'm back to patho hell. pathology has really come back and bit me in the ass really hard after i did so badly in year2. now they expect us to go back to revise the whole year's worth of stuff and test us in like 2.5 weeks time from today.
seriously, at this time every year i really wonder why i am in medicine. a fellow classmate recently shared with me this online website where we found out that there are numerous pple out there who are disgruntled with medicine and it is scary to realise that i am finding myself agreeing more and more with their viewpoints as time goes by. i'm reading an entry eg. "101 things you wish you knew before entering medical school" [eg. #90 The best time of your entire medical school career is between the times when you first get your acceptance letter and when you start school. and my personal favourite, #47 Anatomy sucks. All of the bone names sound the same.] and i find myself nodding my head in agreement as i go down the list wishing i really knew.
but it is always during the preparation for the final exams of the year that i find myself REALLY hating the course i've chosen, and once the damned exams are done with and i'm given the all clear to proceed on to the next year, i find myself rid of these negative thoughts. but as the impending inevitable of the final year and eventually becoming-a-houseman approaches, i really wonder whether these negative thoughts will dissipate like they do in the previous years, even though as the years pass it gets longer and longer..
seriously, in all frankness, i really wish i had some time off school, sometime off all these damned clinical postings and associated tests and whatnots, and just give myself a time to think whether this is really what i want in life. sometimes i wonder what i'd be like if i weren't in medicine but i guess the grass is always greener on the other side, no?
thankfully the electives are coming up after the horrible horrible pathology exams, and hopefully the next 4 months will give me the boost and inspiration i need to see me through to the end of medschool.
and to you, the reader, thanks for reading this entry. pls post a comment, just say anything, it would be nice to see who's still regularly checking back on this blog (and wondering whether i'm still in taipei, haha)!
i'm off to taipei for a 6-day jaunt with some of my medicine friends! shiok. this holiday took waaay too long to come, and i'm so glad that it's here at last. and tmd i just know that it'll be over before i know it. so better enjoy it while it lasts.
the trip to the airport was pretty suay. my mum's car broke down right in the middle of the PIE! i was driving when suddenly the car lurched (i thought my mum had accidentally pushed against the gearstick) and to my horror, the rev-meter (whatever it's called) suddenly plunged to 0. and the car just continued rolling.. heng there was enough roll left in the mazda to roll to one side of the expressway.. ergh. waited till my mum called AA before i called for a cab.
flying alone for the first time today, since i'm flying on an award ticket on SQ (big thanks to my uncle!) while the rest of them are flying on jetstar. i'm using the free internet at the transit lounge of terminal 2 now cause its so damn boring. after a few times in t2 u realise that the shops never really change. there's a new chain of luxury fashion stores but well, being luxury and all that haute couture entails, i'm priced out! haha. well. so other than pretending to be a snob and walking into the ferragamo and hermes shops, there really isn't anything much to do.. ESPN is showing baseball now and everyone basically looks bored... being alone doesn't help matters as well. got no premier lounge access as well. also no one to help me take photos or to talk rubbish with. yawns.
but well, i guess flying solo is a brand new experience for me. i hope it turns out fine (hope no one sitting next to me on the flight later!! or if there is, pls let her be a nice person. preferably pleasant on the eye as well heh) and taipei summer weather wun be too rough on me. mouth ulcers galore now no thanks to the late nights and late suppers and late pubbing i've been putting in since ortho posting ended last friday (hooray and thank god THAT'S over).. wonder how i'm going to stuff myself with the famous taipei street food when my mouth is basically screaming pain now.
will be back on the 11th june, so i'll see you all then, and hopefully got loads of nice taiwan stories to share!
p.s. to my friends who are travelling (or going to travel) to london, new york, LA, cambodia, vietnam, hongkong, tokyo, australia: you guys have a great time too!!
this has been a most glorious weekend! no studying needed, just plain lazing around and of course checking out the great singapore sale that has just started.
and all this because my ortho test is over!
well my ortho clinical test was held on friday, and ohmygosh i got a heart attack when hsienmin and i were only informed of the test on wednesday afternoon!! yes, that's less than 48 hours before our test cause the secretary told us that we were to meet him at 730am on friday morning!! that's some scary shit cause i was really banking on the weekend to study.
so in the end, i had to cram in 7 weeks of ortho learning (sorry, i'm not terribly diligent as hsienmin can probably attest to that) in less than 48hours! i think i learnt more about ortho in 2 days then i did in 7 weeks. FINALLY figured out the anatomy of the hand (calling it hand bones and hand nerve didn't go down quite well with a certain hand surgeon at nuh heh) and physical examinations
considering that i hadn't done more than 2 physical examinations in the whole ortho posting, i was really sweating it out when i decided that hey, i need to practise on someone! so poor mama teo who was at home cooking had no choice but to lie down on the bed while i tried to examine her hip. and in the end i confused the whole hip examination with the spine examination cause both had something to do with lordosis or smthg like that. and in my utter desperate attempt to cover up my ignorance, the woman who has known me all my life immediately called my bluff.
"eh, you know what you doing anot? i think you're going to fail!"
damn sad la can. even my own mum could tell that my physical examination is damn pok. really utter demoralising crushing blow.
soon the last minute panic set in cause i really knew nuts about orthopaedics considering the scant interest i had in it (pls refer previous post). lucky some friendly tips from manny vicliang and ortho HO from nuh, chiak, saved my ass!
so onto the test proper. when the doc gave me the case he said "ok i'll be back in 30mins and u'll present to me ok?" then he zao back into his journal club meeting. so off i went to find the patient i was supposed to clerk, and the shittiest thing happened! the patient is no longer there!! like TMD!!! turns out she had already gone to OT so clueless and helpless me had no choice but to go look for the doc. this was when i realised that i dunno what's the doc's name, i dunno how he looks like (cause i only saw his face for like 10seconds), and i dunno where they having the journal club meeting!! jialat sia. really sweating liao. heng i walk out of the ward and straight away heard some mumblings about 'orthopaedic surgery has come a long way...' coming out frm a room and then i had to stick my head in to look for the doc!!
when i just push the door ajar, everyone in the room turn to stare at me, thinking like waddehell this student in labcoat doing man. but luckily the doc saw me and came out... phew. and gave me another case.
overall the test was okay. then hsienmin and i went to orchard to start our great singapore sale hunt!! shiok. to be in town on friday afternoon when everyone else is probably still in wards/lectures/clinics/polyclinics/IMH/w
so on hindsight it was great that the test was over so quickly for me so now i got a short breather before the MCQ and OSCEs next friday. oh well, to those taking the ortho test in week 8, good luck and all the best!!
pooi la!
i hate ortho posting. i guess this is what happens after u've been through a whole run of slack postings prior to this posting which actually requires u to do some reading and clerking!
fyi, my m3 timetable was as follows: genmed (CGH) - general surgery (SGH) - psychiatry (SGH/IMH) - radiology (CGH) - emed (TTSH) - chp project (had a side trip to cambodia in the process) - m3 study break - m3 exams - family medicine (GP/Polyclinic posting) and now finally where i am - orthopaedics surgery posting. guess only fellow medicine students can understand what i meant by 'whole run of slack postings'.
well. argh today was just a really bad day, and it doesn't help that when i try to answer at grand ward round today the doctor say "Oh no! this answer will make you fail your final MB!" how encouraging is that. (at least now i know why foreign construction workers always agree to have operations)
anyway, 4 weeks of ortho have passed surprisingly quickly (honestly) and i just pray the last 4 weeks will pass even faster cause its back to the hellhole of NUH for the last stretch of orthopaedics. i dun like NUH, and i dun like ortho. add them two together and oh man, just a shitty combination.
wish me luck man
haha it is only the start of week2 of family med posting, and i've finished my gp posting! hooray. so i get tues and thurs off.
but guess what. now i'm sick. with a nasty bout of flu, phlegm and sore throat and everything, so i have to spend the first tuesday off at home.. =(
anyway the reason why i get this week off is cause my gp had to go to manila, philippines (Haha rob couldn't spell it correctly) for a conference FULLY sponsored by glaxosmithkline!! shiok eh!! when the drug rep came to brief him on the trip last week, dr tong (that's my gp) told us that he had no choice but to go for this trip since it was free and he needed a holiday. then asked us what there was to do in manila since he had no idea.
i wouldn't mind. i like free holidays. (i was mouthing behind the drug rep - i want to go too!)
so yesterday was the last evening session with him, and i think the powers of bringing peace and harmony and tranquility are really really strong in hsienmin and i. i asked him how last week's schedule was, with two of us sitting in at the clinic. he said, "well, on the days when u guys are here, it was slow, so slow it was embarassing. on the days when u guys weren't here, i was so busy i didn't even have time to eat my dinner! but its ok, i like slow days once in a while... but not so often. haha"
then reading other fellow med students' blogs on how they're doing at their emergency medicine posting (which i did last dec). they have busy nights, busy ambulance runs, busy busy busy! a total contrast from the peaceful times i had there, when even the MOs in the ED said, 'eh ? how come tonight is like running a GP clinic?'. and we even managed to neutralize the always full TTSH A&E dept to be completely empty, no patients whatsoever, no one, nothing, zilch, no ambulance, nothing.. for one full hour. until one patient came in complaining of 'leg pain'. i rest my case.
and then, when our night shift ended at 7am and we were stumbling out of the ED (just woke up, you see, there was nothing else to do) and walking to the carparks, what do we see but 4 ambulances driving into the standby area. and our MO telling us the next day "oh why why why did you guys leave just before my shift ended at 8am?? we were so busy!!!"
so it's definitely not hard to believe that i went through the whole emergency medicine posting and i didn't see any dead, or near dead patients. it's good for them really, but bad for my learning, cause i really don't know what a dead person looks like. (no, year 1 cadavers from anatomy class do not count.) or what to do in emergency cases, since i think i saw a grand total of 2 throughout my whole emed posting. definitely not as power packed as lynn's busy nights at the same hospital where she's doing her emed now. haha. and and it's not that i'm slack cause i did go for all the shifts i was assigned to..
are we powerful or what. ohmygosh. hsienmin and i are the powerful bearers of peace and harmony and tranquility.
i think in the future, i'd make a very good house officer since i probably won't see any patients. and we'd be very popular with the whole on-call team that night.
freaking funny............. yet one of the dumb things we learn from family med posting.. (was it communication skills? or importance of messages? or some cofm shit)
listen out for the hidden number 3! i think the ah ma forgot to key in 3.. clearly got no head injury if u can remember such a long number.
haha to those doing family medicine posting (and actually attended the lectures), here's the damn funny ad!!
i want those sweeties!!!!!!!!
p.s. this is the crap we are learning in fam med. but i'm not complaining. hahaha
they were together for 6 years and counting, when one day he realised that she didn't love him anymore. he was still very much in love with her, but he sensed that it was slowly evolving into a one-way thing and she was just staying in the relationship cause it had become so much of a status quo that no one was willing to shake the boat.
he was too much in love with her to put her through a relationship which she no longer had any passion for, so he made the really tough decision of ending the relationship. he lied to her that he no longer loved her anymore, and the 6-year-relationship just crumbled into nothingness, just like that. and now the girl is (apparently) attached to someone else, blissfully unaware of the heartache she had caused.
i felt compelled to tell his story because it made me stop and think, are the relationships we get in now going to last? and those so-called long-lasting relationships we see in some friends now, can they truly say they are as in love now as they used to? and if its diminishing, wouldn't it run out someday, when all of us are just holding onto the relationship merely for convenience's sake?
kinda sad, dun u think so? it took a lot of drinking sessions to get the guy restarted and going, and man i just feel overwhelmed everytime i think of the situation he had to go through. if i were in his shoes, would i selfishly hold on to the relationship, wishing that she would fall in love again someday, or would i just let go, and let her seek her true happiness?
sometimes this sort of thing has to happen to someone close before you can truly understand the agony of this catch-22 dilemma.
cheer up, pal. don't give up the forest just because of one tree.
| Name: | RI 2001 Guard Of Honour |
| Type: | |
| Description: | Hey peoples, this is for anyone who... 1. Has spent any time at all standing outside the teacher's office waiting for Mrs A during recess being a Guard of Honour, quite possibly the highest mark of distinction a Rafflesian can ever hope for. 2. Has, due to collective incompetence, had to sprint to touch the big tree and back at the now non-existent field behind the RI junior block while getting yelled at. Not to mention spinning around on same spot. 3. Has stood in class on chairs / tables with various limbs raised in the air while nervously answering questions from then-brutal SAT verbal tests for class discussion, in full view of the HM walking outside the classroom's huge glass windows. 4. Once dined at the cantin; studied about lareeenxes and phareeenxes in biology class. 5. Has sat in math class, waiting for recess to come and wondering what thumb it was. 6. Inexplicably produced "yellow ppt" during a tit-ration experiment... only to incur the wrathful vengeance of the inevitable "BOYYSE!" 7. Squirted cold, distilled water down the backs of tight-shorts-wearing, overly muscular individuals. 8. Has had the testicular fortitude to be at the wrong end of a Walls of Joelicho special move. 9. Knows the eternal lyrics of "My Heart is Like A Cabbage", and witnessed J-Dub's rendition of "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)". 10. Meets any of the abovementioned criteria, but most importantly, is as constant as the northern star, and has more sense than mere "blocks, stones, worse than senseless things". |
oh my gosh.. all these really bring back so many memories of my secondary school days back in ri... argh!! i feel old. of course, only the guys from 4b would understand ALL the points... ok la and maybe those guys from 4i too considering we had the same maths and chem teachers.
shit man i feel old.
anyway, i just got facebook! so those who are already on facebook, pls help me out by adding me! haha. just search my name and i'm pretty sure you can find me.
see ya on facebook!
