Almost Clockwork

I will admit that the past two weeks of my life have been particularly unfamiliar ones.

For one thing, it had become increasingly frustrating to be continuously on the end of being an F1's personal lackey. At first, it was alright. More of an 'I don't mind' mentality to being ordered up and down - taking bloods, faxing letters, being a postman to bring referral letters to clinics for referral. Simply because I was fast and it was pretty much routine. Clockwork, to be exact. No second thoughts needed.

Then it got worse. It started dawning on me how disastrous it would be to work with people who were disorganised or irresponsible or just plain blur in the future - and I wasn't referring to medical-knowledge wise but just plain common sense. It started getting to the point where I felt plagued with a sense of dreariness going to the stuffy ward office and sitting in front of computers doing endless discharge summaries. And then it got worse when the other med students on my firm became increasingly annoying and started asking me every single blur question under the sun. It got worse when I became expected to pick up alot of people's slack and even got the blame for things I didn't do just because I wasn't up for arguing and defending myself. And most of all, I felt that my brain had come to a standstill. It was terrible. It was bad enough that I wasn't the smartest cookie in the jar to begin with, but this had started hitting all time lows.

And then today, everything changed. At the risk of sounding dramatic, I suddenly felt alive again. My lack of tolerance for the haphazard fashion that ward rounds had been carried out drove me to go in at 8 am to sort out the notes and check all the obs for the patients, simply because Consultant teaching at 8.30 am would mean that everything would not be in place for later if I didn't take any initiative to do it. Who knew that a tiny gesture like that would have earned me multiple praises from the people I least expected them from, and even being labelled 'Star Student of the Day'.

But more importantly, for the first time in 3 weeks, after a useful bedside teaching session, I finally felt in touch with medicine again. I was finally thinking laterally and using my bank of differential diagnoses to work up a patient systematically. I was learning new things, revising my CXR presentations and mentally going 'Ooohhhhh' in my mind because my brain was finally working. I had forgotten the thrill of getting things right and realising that there are some things you actually had no idea that you actually knew.

Thank God as well for the random Vascular surgeon later on who came by our ward to review a patient and randomly started giving me an impromptu teaching session on Mononeuritis Multiplex and the different types of Anaemias that could present in a Rheumatoid patient. Despite my wariness with his brandishing a pair of surgical clamps excitedly around (don't ask me why he brought it with him) while he asked me questions, I was truly intrigued. And grateful. At the very least, my brain was yet again given the chance to function for once.

And most of all, despite the slight dampening in the end to a great day, with my patient deteriorating rapidly in the afternoon and going into Septic Shock, at the very least, I was back in touch with my long-lost self again. I was reminded again that I had compassion as a healthcare provider, and a human being. That I was doing Medicine for all the right reasons as much as I had doubted my resilience greatly from time to time. And most of all, that there was no way in hell I would trade all the lack of seeing sunlight, trekking more than an hour to and from the hospital, and pulling my hair out due to the fact that none of my time would really be my own in the future. Because at the end of the day, the message was clear....

There's really no other place I would rather be.