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Wednesday, September 05, 2018 @ 7:28 pm
This time round I'm almost a year late.It's been about a year since I last wrote about anything here, but I've definitely not forgotten about the existence of this page. Living each day without realising that 24 hours of life has passed sounds incredulous, yet many hardly have time for daily musings. Since fifth year is supposed to be intense and I should be studying, I've listed a few things to pen down and set a time limit for myself so that this doesn't become an excuse for me to evade studying again. There were sooooooo many moments that I thought of this blog and wanted to write things down as I go along, but somehow it hadn't worked out. Undoubtedly a lot has transformed since the last time; having a whale of my time during electives in Australia and back home, transitioning into M5, gaining a lot of weight which can't seem to be shed off, thinking about and establishing a life beyond just Medicine... these are but a few of the things that top the list. M5 so far has been physically and mentally exhausting; the extremely long hours in SGH GS killed me and left me with pimple scars and dark eye circles that I never had and left my pockets drained because of the money spent on the numerous Grab fares incurred due to the unearthly reporting time. As much as I hate to admit it, the transformation has made me a worse person and I think no one can refute that. If I allow myself to be honest, my temperament had never been worse. I used to avoid being direct in my conversations with others, but nowadays I just can't seem to hold it in anymore. The profanities intensified, the number of times I raise my voice has been uncountable, and the frequency of having pent-up feelings has increased. To make things worse, the lack of exposure to proper literature has made me feel more illiterate than before; I find it harder to express myself now through words, be it verbal or written, and this makes me feel so trapped. All of these have amounted to me being a bitter, angsty person who's just getting by aimlessly. Being told that I was "unfriendly" made me think about the way I projected myself upon others, and how much first impression counts and meant to me. It's nothing like being overly self-conscious, but it did make me reflect on how I could do life better. During the electives period, I had long talks with the registrar George almost daily for the first two weeks I was there. I remember the first day I was there ever so vividly. To them, I was so shy and reserved, and that took a few weeks to get better. George was an amazing person. In Singapore, most of the registrars were so busy that none had any time for us. One could attribute it to the slower pace of life in Australia, but George took me under his wing and spent as much time with me as he could before he had his study leave for his exit exams. On my first day, he took me and Corrina out for coffee and introduced me to all the baristas at the coffee place. I felt so welcomed and of course, it was difficult to turn down a cup of rich flat white from Australia. Subsequently, he had a few unofficial afternoons off to study, but still returned to help out at clinics and OT. We had too many small talks on the way to get coffee for the team, and he was the one who'd basically teach me everything -- from navigating around the hospital to medical-related stuff. One afternoon, he told everyone in OT that he was taking me out for lunch. He asked everyone along, but the rest were too busy to join in. The scrub nurse Hilda quizzed, "George, are you being unfaithful to your wife? Bringing a girl out to lunch!" It seems he had a reputation for being Mr. Popular, which explained why he was the face of the hospital -- a standee at the feedback booth smack in the heart of the hospital atrium. I thought it felt nice to have a person who knows everyone and everything to be guiding me in a foreign land. As we weaved through the hospital crowds, he would always stop to say hi to people and I'd awkwardly hang around. Which was what happened during lunchtime. It was weird because there were only the two of us, and I felt bad for ordering food AND a drink. Later, I felt a bit better as I convinced myself that it was normal for people here to be so hospitable. We talked about a lot of things, previous and future plans, his family and how he was coping as a surgeon -- how his family had not moved over to Australia. It all made sense -- why would anyone living the life of a king in Malaysia want to move over and be treated a second-class citizen here? I had many thoughts about doctoring overseas, doing something more with my life and taking greater leaps out of my comfort zone than just being the conventional typical conservative Asian girl who has her life cast in and by a mold. Conversations like these made me realise how important it was to take a leap of faith whenever there was the time and opportunity to do so, because missing the boat in the past would mean that things can change in the future, and also because time and tide waits for no man. I really admire the free-spirited individuals who'd listen and follow their hearts to try out new things and get to somewhere they have never been. As a Malaysian who had gone over to Australia for his studies and now developing his career as a surgeon, he gave me the best and most realistic pieces of advice about life that no one had ever spoken to me about. Amongst many things that we idly chatted about (ranging to Southeast Asian politics to hobbies to food to doctoring in Singapore), there is one thing he said that I will always remember: think about what you want life to be like at 50 years old, then work your career around this vision. A lot of people have regrets about the choices they had made during their younger years, himself included. The journey to becoming a doctor is an arduous one, but what lies ahead after graduation doesn't seem to get easier. I've always thought about juggling family, friends and work and envisioned a decent work-life balance and wondered how people (especially the Duke students I've met and spoken to) manage. The good thing about life is, really, that there is no way that one can truly get stuck. Many at times, it's all in the mind, and how we choose to view things makes a lot of difference. I'm not undermining mental disorders or others of that ilk, but if in times of despair, one is shown the multitude of possibilities, there seems to be nothing that cannot be solved. You can either run away from it, or for the daredevils, face it. Running away doesn't sound like a solution to a problem, but sometimes it may well be the best way at that time. People are ashamed to admit that there is a problem, and that they are unable to cope with it. Things get buried and covered up, until one day a breakdown resurfaces everything -- the good, the bad and the ugly. People are afraid of being viewed as vulnerable. People are victims of judgement. But this should never stop anyone from leaving and living. Which all boils down to the moral of the story and one thing that I value the most in everyday life -- relationships. To me, regardless of a happy event or a sad occasion, it's all about the people. It's the people that matter and people make things happen and memorable. I am lucky to be able to take many things light-heartedly and allow sleep to dissolve away all negativity and start a new day anew. I hope relationships remain my top-most priority as I cruise along in the next few years to come. Today, I was posted to DSC and sat in at the treatment room with Timothy. He is (or rather was) a nurse who was only a year older than I am. I was kinda expecting to learn about protocols, how to give certain treatments and similar stuff but was greeted with a better experience than what I could've asked for. Besides learning from him about the medical content, it had been so long since someone sat down with me to talk about life. I was initially extremely taken aback when he said that he had resigned from being a nurse. I probed further and he related an experience he had with a patient he took care of in the past. His patient was an amicable, very likeable elderly lady whom he had a close relationship with during her hospitalisation. However, this elderly lady had 3 daughters, who were essentially the ones giving him hell. A told him not to give any updates to B, B came after him because he did not speak to her. To make things worse, the ward doctor refused to speak to the family and the poor guy had to give excuses to say that the doctor was busy and unable to meet the family. Needless to say, he was scolded for not being able to deliver the conference with the doctor. He told me how difficult it was to be caught in the middle of family affairs, and how he got 3 complaint letters just for these issues. He also mentioned the flaws of our public health system. It really is all rosy on the outside; the hospitals now view patients as customers/clients. I believe that healthcare is ultimately a form of service, which was exactly the pull factor that drew me to this career. However, it is losing its original intent to heal the sick and do no harm. Patients are the crux of doctoring, but many at times, dealing with the patients' families amongst many other expectations come along, and these shroud the entire concept of placing the patient first in everything we do. People are demanding, exacting, calculative and most importantly, have sky-high expectations. "Wah so young ah, are you sure you can handle?" Thankfully of course, no actual harm is done to the patient, but in handling the intricacies of human interaction, there will definitely be harm inflicted on some other parties. This can boomerang and become an occult source of harm to patients that people hardly ever notice -- tension in the family, making patients feel like a burden/trouble to their loved ones. It is sickening to think that medical students have to pay so much for the education, only to be in continual debt, be overworked, jaded and unhappy at the end of the day having been through tonnes of these issues. In the harsh environment, it becomes difficult to navigate daily doctoring life, let alone to continue cultivating increasing passion for the job. The important people seem to think that providing excellent service to their customers in healthcare trumps everything else. Everything nowadays is done to achieve that and to avoid complaints, to the point whereby healthcare professionals are now trained to do things a certain manner so as to avoid trouble with the law and liabilities that could pose as a threat to receiving a complaint letter. The support for healthcare workers by healthcare institutions in this aspect is lacking, but the important people fail to recognise it. If staff were better protected, it is safe to assume that they would be more empowered to give their best in handling patients and interpersonal relationships, which would potentially raise the threshold for complaints (if saving backside was even paramount in the first place). This was one of the many reasons that led Timothy to resign at age 24. I hope a new pursuit in Physio would bring this carefree, YOLO young man a new lease of life where he'd truly enjoy his job. "If you are a nurse, there is nothing in this world that you cannot do/handle." Amongst many other deep things we talked about, he reassured me that I was a good person and reminded me to change but only for the better, since change was the only constant. I take comfort in this knowledge and really hope to live up to his/my own expectations when I look back at this post in future. In terms of my personal life and goals, I am ashamed to say that it is in shambles. I don't think I am doing a very good job in handling various aspects, but I really have no idea how to go about managing myself. The clarity that I used to have about what I want in life has now become practically non-existent; there are now a lot of self-doubts and considerations, but the goals I set in the past were probably some stupid naive short-term kind of goals that were never achieved anyway. I find myself really thinking about what I want to be like at 40, 50 even 70 years old. I find myself evaluating new guy friends as though they are potential partners. I find myself slightly worried about being left on the shelf since everyone around me have their other halves. I find myself not keeping up with the things I used to think were important (e.g. maintaining my dreams log). I find myself not caring about my health as much as in the past when I was really weight-conscious. I find myself lacking in self-care as compared to my other female counterparts. I find myself needing coffee almost every other day and being extremely unmotivated. I find myself being less FOMO than I should actually be. The worst part of it all? I find myself thinking about and prioritising myself over many other things. Yes, some might say that it is only right to spare some thought for yourself. The same argument works either way -- if you don't think for yourself enough, how can you live for the others around you (versus living for the people around you and thinking of them first)? Either way it makes sense, but I remember regarding others first as a virtue that I used to want to keep with me throughout my life. Now it scares me to see this Americanised mindset taking over me. People might think that I am too conventional or conservative to even say this, but it is a cause of concern to me. I think I am becoming jaded in many aspects of life, not just about my potential career. I find myself becoming angsty and impatient over Granny. I know I can't blame her because she is demented, but somehow I couldn't remove her present condition away from her abusive self in the past. I know she did a lot for us, but I find myself being unable to deliver what I should be delivering for her. I find myself being frustrated at her for making me distracted from studying, for ill-treating the helper, for asking the same questions over and over again (okay this is not that bad). I know she doesn't mean it because she's demented and probably cannot remember what she says or does. But does she really mean it? Is this an exaggeration of her premorbid personality? Is dementia an excuse? Can dementia be an excuse? Is this going to be a vicious cycle? It is pathetic because I have to admit that I cannot relate, and Dad always tells me that I will only understand in the future when this happens to me. It doesn't help that my sense of justice is overpowering; no matter what it is, whether she's old and demented or whether she's elderly and hence deserving of utmost respect, I still stand the ground that it is wrong to condone her aggressive/abusive behaviour at the expense of the helper's rights. There are so many questions in life that I cannot find answers to, and this would be one of them that I'd never imagine getting a satisfactory answer to. To what extent can we forgive a demented person unable to regulate his/her own thoughts for the harm he/she has implicated on others? What constitutes fairness and justice in such a case? How much right does the law have to judge matters like these? I think it's enough musings for the day and perhaps for the year. Of course, I bust my time limit again, this time by an hour and a half. I wonder when the next time I'd have spare time for writing again. |