Walking On

Just came back from a Liverpool vs Man Utd match, which ended in a victorious 2-0! WOOTS! I had gone with little hope of a win, saying that I would be happy with a 0-0 draw, as Liverpool's run had been horrendous before this with 4 defeats in a row. But who knew, Man Utd was shyte today.

Like JH said, I should definitely watch more football from now onwards and give Liverpool all my good luck vibes.

Saw 'The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus' the night before with Hanna and Hugo, of which I did not understand one bit at all. I had to run off halfway for a booze session in honour of my Daisy Hoo's birthday, which did not end well at all because I was completely wasted by the end of it. The worst I've ever experienced so far. Thank God for a friend like her who took care of me and patiently attended to my needs although I was a total mess. No more booze for a while now.

And the booze has also made me lose my voice, almost completely. How am I supposed to clerk patients this week now?

ARGH.

Busy Bee

I thought I would be home early on Monday since my consultant didn't have clinic at Epsom this week. Teaching for that day was cancelled right after my radiology tutorial ended at 9.45 am. Technically, I had the entire freaking day free. Instead, I decided to go to the ECG room, and after finding that it was being taken over by a bunch of surgery med students (pffttt go to your theatres or go somewhere else!), I suggested we go over to A&E to irritate some of the poor doctors there. I ended up on the service of this reallyyy nice SpR around - who just reminds me of my dad btw, although I lent him my pen to fill in a form and he ran off with it and I could not locate him after! ARGH! - and V was taught some amazing ECG stuff by this SHO.

Finally spotted a pneumothorax and collapsed lung on the CXR, attempted ABGs but it was too difficult so the SpR took over. And ABGs totally are not easy by the way, because today during rounds, our team's SpR tried on this old lady and after two people jabbed her like ten times, everyone finally gave up. Then assessed a priority chest pain patient with another Reg, and then was asked to run through the ECG (ARGH!! Well, at least I got better after ystdy), and after that another CXR. Managed to put some of my well-acquired knowledge from my IJN Elective days to good use. Then the Reg shooed me back home saying that it was 5 pm and she thought I had been there long enough. And I was! From around before 11 am till 5 pm, and missing lunch in between too!

V was exclaiming later how she thought A&E was really cool, and this reminded me of how a couple of my friends have been professing their interests in Emergency Medicine. Compared to yesterday's fast-paced experience, ward rounds this morning was realllyy snoozy with the team's new Reg and the F1. After that I tried to clerk a patient who obviously had a very large multinodular goitre but to no avail because she was completely confused and could not even answer the first 5 questions of the MMSE. V and I just trawled through the patient notes after that and looked up a couple of the follow-up investigations on Clinical Manager.

Then I had clinic in the afternoon with my regular consultant. Rheum clinic, is as V puts it, 'mindblowingly boring', but I love Dr D heaps. He is like a kindly father and so funny at times too, although he may be a man of few words and little constructive criticism. I still have a soft spot for Rheum, however, because it is a running problem in my family.

Now I need to do my incredibly boring essay. Argh. Such a buzzkill after two such lovely, busy days.

Transitioning Through Time? Or Not

While talking to some friends last night, I realised, at that moment, how much I had changed as a person, along with my interests and habits.

I remember a time in the not-so-distant past when I loved Classical music. I loved going for concerts and worshipped anyone who played the violin well. When I later took up the flute and was made a part of the orchestra for the opening ceremony of a certain church, it was the best thing that had happened to me, indefinitely.

As of now, I have not touched my flute for a good 4 years. My piano reminds shut beneath its dusty lid in Malaysia. And when F brought up the idea that I could get a keyboard and use headphones to play here, I bit my tongue to prevent myself from saying that I had completely lost interest in everything music-related.

I remember a time when I knew absolutely everything and anything about football. The EPL, The Bundesliga, The Serie A, The World Cup.....name the tournament and the team, and chances are that I could break down a short analysis of tactics and styles for you in great depth. Now, it has been months since I have watched an EPL match on TV. Name me any other EPL team besides Liverpool and I would not be able to provide you with much input at all, apart from *gasp!* 'How CAN you say Liverpool sucks?!'

Then there was the time when I loved writing. I wrote short stories, proses, poems, articles about my opinions on life, and later blog entries....and everything seemed to flow naturally from the tips of my fingers on to the keyboard. I loved reading, and I loved writing, so much so that it was almost a daily thing to do without further thought to it.

Now, when I think of writing, my mind is blank from inspiration. I feel nothing, I know nothing, I care about nothing besides the mound of work piling up around me and making and organising my notes into files.

A few years ago, I had a love-hate relationship with David Gray's song 'This Year's Love', simply because I had started off hating the song, only to move on to a time when listening the song could put a wistful look on my face.

A couple of days ago, I came across the MV on someone's blog and decided to watch it, just because I had never seen it before. A good minute or so into the song, I decided to close the window because I was bored out of my wits.

I am a person of many extremes. And after all of the above, I realise how fickle I can be when it comes to my obsessions or flinging off stuff into my 'Been there, done that' box. Sometimes I wonder how it is that I spent years of my life labelling this guy as 'fickle' or 'absolutely having no idea about what he wants' when I am about three levels worse than him myself.

Again, another case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Bits and Bops

It's been one long week indeed.

When Monday swings around the corner, the long week just looms ahead and you feel tired just thinking about it. Then Wednesday comes and suddenly everything fast forwards and it's TGIF! And then once again, the weekend disappears all too soon.

I haven't blogged in ages, with the excuse that I am busy and caught up with too many things, and my days are so filled with tasks to do that I don't even have time to open up Blogger and update my blog. But truth be told, I haven't mugged properly in ages, and as for finishing up tasks, I am still stuck halfway through my mind-blowingly boring essay on Health Inequalities which I had vowed to finish last week. Pfft.

I guess that in short, nothing very much has happened at all since the last time I updated. Well, apart from the fact that about a week and a half ago I was bestowed with an incredible gift of seemingly idiopathic abdominal cramps / epigastric pain / bloating, which I had mistaken for menstrual cramps in the beginning, but then proceeded to drag on for 10 days and made life extremely inconvenient for me!

Thank God that now with Proton Pump Inhibitors the bad gastritis has gone, and was not something more than that.

Was on-call last Thursday, from the day till 10 pm, amidst grand rounds, presentations, lectures and so on, which turned out to be one incredible experience. Although I had been warned that the consultant on-call was one tough cookie at first and was a no-nonsense kind of woman, she turned out to be an incredible teacher and I actually found her sarcasm extremely funny at some points. In short, it was one of the first times I felt like I was doing real medicine throughout the past few years.

Having said that, it is only the first week, and I've got to keep up the spirits for the next 6 weeks or so. So hopefully we'll fare well in that department.

On another note, I have been pondering about the definition of 'maturity' these past few days. How do you consider a person 'mature'? It is easy for me to scoff off everyone as 'childish' or 'immature' or 'clueless about life', and yet how much more seasoned am I to judge people as such? I have not gone through a whole life of World War II with battles scars as proof to show that I have slaved through life to be considered worldly enough. And here we are in a profession that demands mental strength, maturity and a level-headed attitude amongst all other things. Many times I have found myself to be increasingly childish amongst my recent dapples with Junior Doctors, Post Grad students and so on, and here I am writing off others as the same. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Definitely food for thought, this one.

I like the busy schedule that is taking over my life, to be honest. I like having countless things to do and long hours away from home, and the ability to shut out everything and everyone around me and just focus on the main thing right in front of me, i.e. the patient, case notes, investigation results, and so on.

Although I must admit, I do miss shopping. Hur hur.