Heaven to hell

After starting a week on medical rotation only I realise that I have
been living in heaven while doing surgical nights. No paperwork, not
stressful most of the time, and most importantly, no unscheduled
overtime.



What I have been doing for the past few days include paperwork,
paperwork, and phonecalls.. Its pretty much compromising our active
involvement in the patient's care... as in examining, history taking,
or care planning, things like that. And instead, we are only busy with
writing drug charts, preparing discharge summaries, calling family
members, checking blood results...



It is indeed relatively much more relaxing, but I'm starting to worry
about the career direction I'm heading: to be a doctor or a secretary.
Hopefully time would tell.

Pre-, Graduation, Post-

Spent a day at mornington peninsula and we went up to arthus seat for the stunning scenic view. A middle age caucasian man was the person offering to take this photo for us.

The title tells it all...?

House hunting

Gosh no luck at all with my house hunting since I started it 2 months ago... the latest addition was a nice modern unit 10 minutes drive from my hospital... I thought I would have got it since there were only 2 applicants... and how bloody annoying it was when the agent told me the landlord gave it to the other dude... FARQ! 50-50 chance and I blew it again. Man I wonder if I will ever get a place nearby the hospital with such luck.

Nothing much happening in the hospital lately, has been having pretty good nights so far... though its pretty tiring to do 5 nights in a row. Can't wait to go home on this coming saturday. Can't wait to meet my parents, my girlfriend and my old friends. My precious 2 weeks holidays. I really really really need to spend it wisely.

Hope everyone is doing fine with whatever they are doing.

Good and bad

Its hard when someone questions your profesionalism. It even feels humiliated and sickening when the one who does that is a 19 year old kid.

I was paged to resite an IV line for this patient with quinsy as he needs IV antibiotics. Having know that he is a young bloke I took a casual approach and trying to be easy going with him... he has good veins, but somehow his skin is tougher than anyone else I have ever inserted an IV line... twice I got the flashback of blood twice I went too far and puncture the vein.

There came the problem... he started to be a bit shaky and yell at me, telling me to do it properly. I told him, calmly and gently, that I was doing it properly and carefully, its just that sometimes we need some luck with it too regardless how skillful a person is. Being as ignorant as he is, he kept arguing with me and said how unprofessional I was. Fine, screw you dude, I then told him that if you werent happy and did not trust me, I would be more than happy to get someone else to do that, so be it. No idea what happened to him later, but he was discharged when I was doing my consecutive night.

I did question myself after that incidence... I suck at it dont I? I couldn't even put in an IV line for a young person, how shitty my skill is? Almost couldn't sleep the whole day as his voice and statements kept surrounding my head. I have even dreamt that Prof. Collins, the head of our department, called me up to his office and said it in my face "YOU SUCK!". Gosh. I almost thought its real.

People say, when something bad happens, something good will happen too.

Not really something extremely delighting, but it does help me recover my confidence after that incidence. Another big lady who needed an IV resite... I went there and got it done on first attempt. Came out and the nurse was looking at me, saying "Gezz you got it done? Her last IV was done by an anesthetic reg... good on you!". *smile*

Another elderly lady who needed an IV resite too... after I have done with her, she said to me "Thanks a lot doctor, you are really gentle." *smile*

Tiny matters, but I do enjoy every single moments.

Commitment (and doctor's handwriting)

I started to wonder if I'm commited to my job, to be a doctor. I don't seem to have a choice now though as I have spent 6 years of study and graduated and I'm 25 (old enough to stop studying full time I reckon), but laziness is surfacing lately and I'm really having a hard time fighting it off.

Perhaps its because I'm doing night duty and I don't receive much support from other doctors, no one teaches me, no one tells me what to do when I'm in the middle of nowhere. The only place I can find a solution is from the internet. I wonder if I would need daily antipsychotic medication if I worked in those days when internet did not exist.

And when I'm not working, everyone else is working. No one comes out with me, no one does sports with me, I'm simply all alone all the time. Or I'm just simply tired after 2 or 3 consecutive night duties and I need to rest or so. Girl friend not with me, parents in M'sia, argh!

Perhaps I should only question my commitment after I start my next rotation -- medicine. I believe i will have a busy working life when that rotation begins, and if I still find myself a slacko or lazy arse, then perhaps I should sound the alarm.

.....

Many people think night duty is relaxing as we get 7 days off per forthnight, and we work only 7 days but still make up the full time 76 hours salary, and we don't get busy nights as often as everyday. The thing is we are always being placed in the position to make moderate decisions on patients who we don't know at all. 'Don't know' in the sense that we are not taking care of them normally but the treating medical/surgical team. And the most #$*(* annoying thing is when I try to sit down and read up the history, I can't read a single %(#@$*. I wonder why there are so many doctors with spastic or paralytic hands or fingers, they all write in random fonts and patterns in which only their own brain can recognise. Trust me, I'm the only doctor in this hospital who hvae decent handwriting.

I strongly suggest the medical faculty of each universities to spend half a rotation to improve potential doctors' handwriting. Or at least, fix up their spastic hands first.

Orite, I should stop whining and bitching. I just got paged by a nurse and I got job to do now... hopefully its gonna be peaceful for the remaining hours.

Sang Yee

Oopss....

Sigh I almost forgot about this site. When I have a read of my previous message only I remember the disasterous day I had when I was travelling to Melbourne from KL..... basically the @*($ did not end there.... the flight was further delayed till midnight the next day, and I was absolutely furious about that crap. I went off to complain to the MAS office, and they barely able to arrange a flight for me to get to Singapore and the transfer over to Singapore Airline for a flight to Melbourne. At least I was able to arrive home by 8am Wednesday, the time when my orientation started. When I reached my hospital its already 10am...... well at least I did try my best to get ASAP, it would be insensible to issue any penalty on me for such unforeseen circumstance.

Orientation went alright, although its pretty boring, but I couldn't complain since we were getting paid for the orientation. But bad things just keep coming to me. Some $&@^%@} broke into my car and stole Fui Yin's ipod and my cd player that I placed in the glove compartment. DAMN IT. What a week man... or I should say, what month! First the tsunami, then Alan Tam/Hak Kan countdown concert got cancelled, then flight got delayed 16 hours, and now, my stuffs got stolen. Unbelievable...

ANYWAY, life goes on... don't look back; look ahead, look at the future. Thats what I always tell myself. As long as the one you love are still there with you, why bother to worry about stuffs that you can earn back later in your life?

Sang Yee

What a long morning......

Gezz... finally the day to get back to Melbourne for the start of my so-called "wonderful medical career". Tomorrow will be the first day of my orientation and it will end on Friday... which means I will be officially working on next Monday.

Fui Yin stayed overnight with me and, together with my mum, we travelled down to KL sentral at 7am and arrived there around 8. Gladly no one cried at the scene... perhaps its due to the fact that I'm heading back home again at early March for (fixed annual leave). Yeah its pretty gay to have a holiday after such a short period of work... I (or perhaps everyone) would prefer to have it at mid of the year instead of just 2 months after start working.

When I thought everything was going smoothly as planned, shits happened. No one was inside the departing gate but a nicely dressed KLIA staff with an apprehensive look, standing infront of the gate who seems to await for another bombardment from frustrated passengers... I approached him and asked whats going on... and as expected, the flight has been delayed... till noon. Gosh.

After wandering around the departing hall and walking pass those pretty ladies infront of the perfume stores, I found myself running a bit dehydrated... so I climbed up the lift and luckily found myself infront of starbuck cafe. Weeeee, bought myself a large capp and sat my ass down started to wifi (happily, sort of).

... I miss my girl, my friends, my parents, especially my mum who cooked me so many nice foods during my stay at home. A special thanks to Fui Yin again for your love and care, I love you as I always do. To all my doctor friends (including soon-to-be doctor Andy), hope you guys are having fun with whatever you are doing. To Nigel (if you are reading this), nice chatting with you over the phone, I really hope you and the gang are able to spare me some time when I come back again on March.

Till next time, have a wonderful day!

Sang Yee