I have not been blogging for nearly a month now. Have not been writing. I made a point not to post complains but I end up posting nothing.(again!) Gee… I can be quite a difficult person, living a life full of complains,.. I can blame not just ANYONE, but practically ANYTHING… however ridiculous… and I am indeed in need of the ‘writing therapy3’ again, the need to expel ones’ lungs, shout till ones’ vocal cords sore and well, complain endlessly… (no, it’s not PMS1 or PES2)
Currently, I am having my elective posting in Seremban General hospital. Elective posting is great,(so far so good), and it’s not irritating me now- no complains. But I wonder whether writing therapy helps when you write about unrelated issues…(issues other that what’s bothering me) let me try and experiment here… Besides, I should blog a bit about elective posting or it will seem as if I either hate my posting too much; or I am too busy to blog (which I am not); or I have no internet access (which is not true as I online practically everyday). Well, it’s neither of the above. And I have no reason to ignore the existence of this chapter of my life.
The beginning of posting was tough, I mean being the ONLY elective posting student here. I was haunted with questions like – why the HELL did I choose to post here? What am I suppose to do? Where should I go? – kind of L-O-S-T and sure enough I went thru the 5 stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression…
Let’s pretend I am in HUKM, and I meet an elective posting student, say from IMU who stays in Cheras and chose to do her elective here alone. Well, the first thing I would think of is the person is either extremely attached to home/something/someone; or is an anti-social freak; or an insane-stressed-out-medical-student-with-no-life…, which doesn’t fit me entirely! (I am not an AS4, am I?)
I was attached to a very nice HO5, Dr Shima during my medical posting. Yeah, she’s nice but very ‘unmotivating’ though…
[Don’t have to come so early to hospital…]~as usual, it was hangat-hangat tahi ayam6 at first, then my semangat7 level gradually fell like a downhill slope
[relax and enjoy your elective posting…]
[actually, there’s not much activity in the afternoon. I did my elective in this hospital too, I usually go back after lunch]
[what? You are here on a public holiday?]
[Dr Najib: I was practically absent during the whole of my posting, ha-ha!]
I basically take blood, observe procedures and follow ward rounds, ‘chat’ with patients, attend CME, seminars, hang out at the HO rooms and observe the politics etc… I meet Yen Wei, a pharmacist in my ward who is very nice and hanged out with her gang.
I got my evaluation form signed on the 2nd week and I am basically FREE to do ANYTHING!! (am I smart or am I smart?) Yeay! I made myself less guilty by convincing myself that elective posting is actually a holiday in disguise.. only that the university need to pacify passionate people who cannot survive a month of break without going to the hospital… (which is a silly theory) (okay, maybe I’m just hopelessly lazy)
When I entered surgical posting, I met the IMU students and Suni8. (remember Sunihaliza Sulaiman from KGV last time?) So, I tag along them, and she kinda smuggled me into a couple of their classes. Then, all the sudden, things started to make sense and the semangat rises again. Her coursemates are really fun, cool, very friendly and welcoming. And I get to discuss stuffs other than demographical data9. Finally!!
My semangat level was kinda fluctuating,.. there are days where it’s too busy for lunch , and other days where I just don’t bother… Today I saw 4 surgeries at OT10 which is entirely insane! (insane, not referring to the surgery, but me standing till I think I might have varicose veins11 and exopthalmus) Then, saw a quite painful MMG(mammogram) and then went to the wards. oh yes, Charjini, an elective student studying in Melbourne joined Seremban GH yesterday, which kind of explains my sudden peak of semangat, coz she memang very semangat, and I get influenced easily, haha!
The OT today is very interesting. Let me share with you one of them. There was this 3 days old baby with imperforated anus12. The poor little baby was attached to so many tubes and wires. It pained me to see him, he looked like a machine, some sort of a robot… When the surgeon performed the surgery, he incidently found out that the baby has NO colon! NO transverse colon, NO ceacum, NO sigmoid colon, NO descending colon!! There were just loops of small intestine, a blind ascending colon and a blind rectum. Wow! The small intestine ends at the terminal ileum. A stoma was made. Can you believe a 3 day old baby have to live with a stoma15 for the rest of his life? It’s so sad, really… Later that afternoon, I see him in the wards where he was sleeping quite peacefully… I wonder how is he going to face school life, will he be isolated or labeled a ‘freak’? Adults can understand, but small kids, do they?
Wow! This has been a long blog. I haven’t explain how I gained acceptance though… Well, I realized that if I have not been in Seremban, and have been posting with my friends somewhere else, say with May Luu in Sabah16, there would be a lot of things I couldn’t do… okay, maybe not a lot of things, basically just one – AMSA/EAMSC13 stuffs- paper report, contacting other delegates, making sure things are in order, monitoring the progress of poster, cultural, etc, getting the namecards done, arranging stuffs, online meetings, finance work, etc… work, work, work… well, everything happens for some reason… I wonder where the commitment and dedication comes from… sometimes, I wonder, if I could just channel this semangat into passion towards medicine, I might actually be a much better medical student…. And I learnt that one doesn’t appreciate what other people do for them until they actually experienced it (the hard work) themselves…
Besides, being in Seremban, at least I get to catch Johann Strauss14 New Year’s Concert conducted by John Georgiadis which is really amazingly, marvelously breathtaking, and worth everything… don’t you agree, ze? And guess what? We’ve got Premier seats for just RM10!! *wink *
I should really mark the full-stop. I suppose those who are reading this has line has very high tolerance to boredom. So, I guess, my ability to write ‘fai wa’ (crap in Chinese) is still there. Well, some things never change, do they?
Footnotes:
1. PMS= Pre-Menstrual Syndrome
2. PES=Pre-Exam Syndrome
3. ‘writing therapy’= writing used to be a therapy for me, it helps me think, the way swimming and listening to music helps… sleeping, however, don’t help me think, but simply helps me to temporary forget and unacknowledged the problem, ignoring it…
4. AS=Anti-Social (not Aortic Stenosis)
5. HO= House Officer / Houseman / the lowest rannking medical staff in the hospital (excluding medical students)
6. hangat-hangat tahi ayam = a Malay proverb meaning strongly motivated only at the begining
7. semangat = spirit, in this context referring to strong self-motivation, commitment, dedication
8. Suni = Sunihaliza Sulaiman, my high school friend who is now doing her surgical posting in IMU 6th semester. Very nice friend.
9. demographical data = Name, Age, School, etc
10. OT = Operating Theather
11. Varicose Veins = Dilatation of superficial veins, one reason is due to long standing hours and valves defect.
12. Exopthalmus= Eyes appearing as if ‘popping’ out.
13. Imperforated anus = a condition where the gut and bowel opening is not patent causing the patient to lose the ability to evacuate feces.
14. AMSA = Asian Medical Student Association
EAMSC= East-Asian Medical Student Conference
15. Johann Strauss = a classical composer. Pizzicato Polka(Josef & Johann Strauss) is my favorite where all the strings are plucked!-really cute! Im Krapfenwaldl Polka, Furiouso Polka and Gipsy Baron Overture are great too! Other famous dance pieces are Radetzky March, Emperor Waltz and Blue Danube.
16. Stoma = an opening of the intestine to the abdominal wall. In most simple terms, you see shit coming out to your abdomen wall/skin instead of the usual normal route via anus.
17. Sabah = A state in East Malaysia, part of Borneo Island.
