Chronicles of Baby Ju's journey

Pre-Juliette

:-) We chose baby J on a Friday, the 7th of AUgust 2009. We went to Poochie Poochie (ehehe) in Puchong and met Anne, whose poodle was 'raped' by a west highland terrier, giving Baby Juliette and her brother. There were 3 other female brown poodles with the siblings in their play pen. WHen i walked into the shop, baby J came to me but i didntknow it was her at the moment, so i just played with the nearest puppy, and turns out it was our puppy! there were also 3 retrievers but they grow waaaaay too big to be a house dog... She had a vaccination on Saturday, so we decided to leave her for a day for Anne to watch for a fever.

Day One
We collected her on Sunday... SHe was such a good girl, she slept the whole trip home,and i had read abt how puppies would get antsy on the way home, how we need to soothe them etc. but she just slept! :-) We were told to immediately put her on newspapers to pee the moment we arrived home, and she peed on the newspaper! the clever girl!

but that night... she cried and cried, almost thru the night. i was up to rush downstairs to check out why she was crying until 2 am, then dan and mom were woken up.

Day Two
I woke up at 7 to bring her outside to eat and poo, she ate like normal and did her business like a good girl... She let me clean her teeth, her ears. and she has gotten used to being whisked into the bathroom to wash bum and paws whenever she poos! :-)
But she started yelping once mummy woke up. Mum was very tired. and so was Juliette! she slept almost thru the day! :-) she's such a darling. She walked around a bit while we did chores.. :-) short busybody!Then we brought her to the vet.
But she didnt eat anything anymore. at night we were worried and tried to feed her some dog biscuits instead, she took some but still had no appetite! i began to really worry abt Baby J.



I didn't know if Mummy would keep her at this rate...i put a ticking clock by her play pen,hoping against hope that it'd work this time... it was too late, i love her too much to lose her!

Day Three
I woke up and rushed down to see if she was ok. i pacified her a bit then rushed upstairs for mum to officially wake up and put Juliette's stuff into MUm's routine. i was anxious to find out if she woke anyone up during the night, cause i sleep like a log, i can't hear ANYTHING!

Turns out she didnt make any noise! tried getting her used to the harness, cleaned her teeth and ears and mummy combs her... i tried the ouch method to get her to now nibble me, and she stopped immediately, only to climb my hands, and lick me! awwwww
SHe has a temper too, dan was playing with her using her towel, but when she couldnt reach it, she barked at him, and when he gave her her towel, she took it and walked off! hehe She loves her teddy too, sleeping with her head on teddy a lot! Thankfully, she ate today...


Day Four

Baby J keep quiet throughout the night!! yay! but she vomited a bit, mum thinks it is from the bone mum gave daddy to give her when daddy leaves in the morning, cause she gets restless whenever the keys jingle and we open the door!
i put her outside to eat and pee while mummy cleaned her indoor play pen. Then we decided to bathe her! she climbed all over me and i was wetter than her at the end of the bath! hehe After her bath, she played with a dry towel mummy gave her and she was dry in no time! :-) she slept with her head on teddy and even when i put her purple towel over her body, she didnt move! :-)
Then mummy wanted to see Mi, and we packed Baby J, in the car. she slept in the crate, which i left open but she went into it on her own! She responds to 'Ju-ju' and she absolutely loves to pose. usually she'll go towards and try to bite anything she sees,except for the camera, she will just hold her pose for a few seconds! Whenever mummy navigates corners, she'd get thrown around her crate.. hehe yet she won't whine or yelp! such a darling! in Mi's hse, mi and papa let her wander around, like how typical grandparents ar... She went to pee in Mi's bathroom immediately upon arrival. then she wandered around! :-) managed to catch her poo cause she went just near a newspaper but not quite on it.She went towards ben to play with him but he seems really scared of her, he'd run away and she'd just chase him! :-)
She slept on the way home too :-) she's a really easy travel companion!

Baby J is in the hospital... Please get well and come home soon, pretty girl.. Mummy, Daddy, Che che sarah, Kor kor even che gracie miss u so much... and love u too!!

Juliette

Che-che Sarah's Baby J

First we went to church...

Mummy prayed...

Dan and i posed...

Then Dan slept...


Daddy slept, and Mummy texted...


Then we came home, Mummy's turn to pose...



Then we played Little Big Planet!!

My saturday

Han left for hokkaido today...
but b4 that, we headed to sunway for steamboat. as we were early, we decided to try this new steamboat place.. it's 30 bucks per person, but for the month of july there's a buy 1 free 1 promotion.. it was really worth it, there was salmon, cod fish, fresh oysters and australian beef. on top of the usual steamboat fare...
have a safe trip, darling...

More shopping and cooking

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Enjoying my break...

:-) i've been feasting on salmon,cornflakes, guilinggao, multiply tubs of yoghurt daily, and i think slowly putting on weight... :-)

2009 Graduation Ball

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2009 Final Med Post Exam

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Results...

we were supposed to get our results the Sat after our final paper on Fri, but were told to wait till Monday, well another one and a half day to live, albeit barely breathing... Mum and Dad and Dan came up to Penang, expecting to be relaxing with me for the weekend, but i was so tense and edgy i wasn't much company...

Then monday morning i waited and waited clicked and refreshed the page umpteen times..Mum accidentally pulled out the room key which supplies electricity, so i get logged out and was unable to log in again 30 mins b4 check out time.. with no sign of the results. we had that day and the next day between 9-12 to collect our graduation robes if we passed, but no one had any idea, even at 12 on the first day of gown collection...

so we checked out and went to lunch,mum and dad decided to stay an extra night to await my results and collect my robes if it was a reality and possible...

at New World Park, Han told me to call Trudy for my results... she told me i passed with Honours. i had gotten 2nd class for Surgery and whooooopppppeeeeedddooooo a First Class for Medicine!! i passed GP with a 2nd class too! i was elated! i double-checked with Trudy that i had really passed, and she assured me i did well... :-)

this year there were 20+ of our classmates who were not graduating, only 102 of 124 were graduating... compared to only 5 from our senior batch who failed... i don't know if we're a dumber batch as a whole, or they changed THAT much of our syllabus... or if the exam was that much harder, but a lot of ppl we presumed would get thru, didn't... as well as some unexpected ppl getting thru as well... Luck definitely played a huge part in this Final exams.. and i couldnt thank God more...

exams

Exams…
2 weeks of study break- during which we not only needed to cover all there was to know abt Medicine and Surgery, we had Family Medicine as well. It didn’t contribute to our final grade (only Med, Surgery, Obs and Gynae, Psych and Paeds), but it was barring i.e. failing this paper would mean I won’t graduate, regardless of how well I did in med and surg! And all this while I shrugged family med aside, how hard can it be to pass a GP paper right??
The 1st of the study break(18/6), during which all wards were open to all 126 of us, han and I headed to the surgical ward because Mondays were when most patients would be warded to await elective surgery- hernias especially- it was such a scary field, but Mr Lam ran through two hernia examinations with Han and I, spontaneously early one morning, and that made the monster more human. Surprisingly, the wards weren’t swamped. Most were probably preparing for the Written components that would take up our First week (June 1st – 5th) followed by a one week study break for our clinicals, then the clinicals in the 3rd week that would make up 50% of each subject. We had to pass all components, as in pass written, pass clinicals, then only was our grade determined.
By this time, my gastritis was really acting up. I had irritable bowel with colicky pain one day at the epigastric region, the next, suprapubic… and my stomach tolerated so little, I had to resort to downing bottles of honey instead of proper meals!

June 1st Surgery- we had the essay part at 9-11, then MCQ, MEQ between 2-4pm
We had only 2/10 questions on general surgery, 1 on urology,1 on vascular (our incoming professor was a superb vascular surgeon, thus the emphasis), 3 on miscellanous which included specialty surgery- neurosurgery and plastic surgery which I didn’t study, trauma etc, and 3 on ortho (my ortho rotation was spent relaxing, the gravity of the rotation didn’t reach me at that point, plus it was not an easy topic to teach). They asked Colles fracture I think. I prepared by formulating a scheme I was gonna apply to any fractures they asked, and I prayed they wouldn’t ask anything on bone tumors or osteochondritis… the papers became progressively harder, with the MEQ comprising questions on chest pain, which really was a Medicine question. With this day done, we had one day to prepare for medicine…

June 3rd I was particularly afraid of this paper. We had 5 questions in the essay- Pathophysiology of Dengue Fever, Pernicious Anaemia (which is so rare here that I just briefly flicked thru it, half asleep), a drug interaction question with 3 scenarios, and two questions to save us – management of COPD and a question on stroke… sigh… then there was the MEQs where we had to complete each page within 5-7 mins, then place it on the floor, face down, and recall information from previous sheets of paper in the current page, without referring to the papers on the floor! The case unravels and progresses with each paper. And while last year’s batch had a nice pneumonia and pneumothorax, we had renal failure. Yucks! It is such a dry subject, and I never counted it as one of the main topics, the mains being respiratory, cardiovascular, neurology… then the MCQs were a killer. I’ve never circled that many questions to go back and check!

June 5th We had our family medicine papers today… we completed part the OSCE at the end of our respective rotations then today, Friday, we had to complete a written component, and a slideshow OSCE. The OSCE was first, it comprised 10 main questions with stems. There were 3-4 dermatology questions, with one question on causes of red eye. It was really ridiculous… then the written had abt 25 pages! With at least 60% from Paediatrics and OBG and psych. It really boggles me why they decided to separate GP from POP (paeds, obg, psych) and put it in final year.

We had a one week break, but we were informed that the surgical ward was off-limits to us beginning Tuesday. We had to back in college on Tue 10am too, to await any borderline orals (if the committee cant decide if they should bump your 47 to a passing 50, or a normal pass of 57 to an honours 60, etc. Han and I went into the surgical ward at 7am on Monday, we examined a guy with bilateral hernia, a few peripheral vascular disease, and we hung around there till abt 8.30, before moving on to medical wards. Then we got news that one of the surgeons freaked out at how many students were in the surgical wards, and got us barred from the wards effective immediately! Whoa, that was scary, considering the fact that the ward wasn’t that full to begin with, some decided to make the trip to Seberang Jaya hospital, and Taiping Hospital, quite a distance from the island. But we decided to make do with PGH, and we went to the hospital 3 out of the 5 weekdays, and used the rest to study… the pressure was mounting… the following week had us sitting for our Surgical Long Case on Monday (40 mins with the patient,20 mins with the examiner), Surgical OSCE on Tuesday, await our Surgical viva on Wednesday, then Medicine Long Case and OSCE both on either Thursday or Friday, I had mine on Friday thankfully, and in Seberang Jaya.

Surgical Long Case-I was praying to NOT get an ortho case, cause I only found out 3 days before that we could get an ortho case (and Vikki did indeed get one!), I was hoping to get a breast lump, thyroid goitre, but not the ever popular (it makes us 90%of cases!) lower limb- varicose veins and arterial disease. I did a pirouette and a little dance when I got what looked like a thyroid case, the patient spoke English pretty well, but wasn’t very knowledgeable abt her condition, and my examiners were a Prof of Surgery from UM, and some say the Chief Surgeon of Malaysia! Plus I started 10-15 mins late, but my junior-who-was-ushering was not of much help. I still had to be examined at the stipulated time, which meant I only had 25-30 mins with my patient! My usher had to be asked 3 times to let me know how much time I had left! I’ve heard of how ushers in the previous years used to slip the diagnosis to us final meds, and I’m not expecting that from my usher, but ur supposed to be facilitating my exam condition, not acting so stressed and stressing us out even more! Anyways, my examiners grilled me on my history, then they didn’t ask me to present my physical findings but asked me to examine my patient in front of them, and lo and behold, it revealed a thyroglossal cyst! I felt it was went just ok, some of the others had simply goitres, peripheral vascular diseases, breast lumps but others had the rare-in-this-region Ulcerative colitis, lymphoedema (which comprises all of 2 pages in our textbook), weird dysphagia, and some had the RCSI prof of surgery, who’s notorious for failing ppl, and he did, at least 3!
Surgical OSCE went pretty well, except for the thyroid station- the examiner was my long case examiner-so kedekut markah, and the ortho station, we were just told to examine step by step and some ppl got the cruciate ligament tear, I didn’t get that far. But the hernia went pretty well (thanks to Mr Lam’s teaching) – Mr Kingston examined-the hernia was huge, I was surprised it was reducible!, and the abdomen has a huge splenomegaly, and Prof Kevin’s station was an arterial disease patient. We were in PMC, but while those in PGH got the same cases, their examiners were pretty scary.
We got the news that 7 ppl failed-with no hope of being saved, and 7 ppl went for viva-out of which only 2 were saved. So that was 12 ppl who weren’t graduating!

Medicine- I was hoping to get a simple asthma, or acute coronary syndrome, or heart failure, or diabetes. So I was concentrating one those major topics, after all common things are common. I saw the rheumatology part, but I had too much to cover, so I skipped it. We had to prepare for osce too, so short cases as well- spot diagnosis- rheumatoid hands, malar rash, scleroderma, then neurology resp, cardio and abdomen all had a station each-so thalassaemia… thankfully I had Thursday to study, dunno how I would have done it otherwise. Friday morning I went to church as I had done quite a few times throughout the exam.. only God could calm my nerves. I was afraid of getting a weird long case, and not being able to say anything at all! We had 1 hr with the patient and 20 mins with the examiners. I got a rheumatoid arthritis case, of all cases!! But I got Dr Yeow- who’s one of the classiest and nicest physician in PMC and an external examiner. Dr yeow wanted me to give SLE as a differential but she lead me to it, and questioned me on it. The examination of hands was so patchy in my head. After all most of the time we did spot diagnosis, not much on test of function etc. sigh… but the osce was ok… I started off with neurology with Prof Richard- the guy had a homonymous hemianopia (luckily zaza told me the day b4, I was expecting only facial nerva palsy, bulbar and pseudobulbar, then parkinson’s, cerebellar the basics;-)), but they put another patient in that 7 min station, a polio patient!! Since the mass vaccination of babies, polio was such a rarity… but Prof Richard as usual made it a pleasant experience. Then I moved to spot diagnosis, initially I missed the first patient’s thyroid goitre, but Dr Ang of SJH wanted pretty specific answers, and the next was a lady with RA, he also prodded till he got the answers he wanted, the invigilators told me I did a good job, but in that state, how to believe anyone? I’d lose focus. The next station was cardio… I was afraid of this, so I practised a lot… I expected to do a running commentary, it is pretty hard to garner marks if we only present at the end, we might run out of time and not get any marks at all! But he told me to proceed, while he stood by the door chatting with one doctor… sigh… I heard two murmurs but had trouble placing those two murmurs… we always had single murmurs and thus we prepared for it… then I had to go stand in front of the examiner, at the door and he asked ‘what’s your diagnosis’… I panicked but just threw Aortic regurgitation to him. He seemed happy, then I mentioned an Austin Flint murmur, but I think with the fan blowing at him he didn’t hear. He was nagging me too, I later learnt he nagged everyone! Ehhe but later when he continued to question me, he said I was doing well, and to relax. I took a while to mention Austin flint again, cause I didn’t know he didn’t hear me, and I didn’t wanna anger him more by repeating myself and sounding stupid… but that was really one of the weirdest examiner… hehe the respiratory case was C-R-A-Z-Y! I had to examine the front of his chest, when I’m used to zero-ing on the back, thus I kept mixing up my rights and lefts, and I’ve always thought ppl who did that was pretty dense! But I think I did ok cause I detected the hyperresonance of the left side due to overcompensation cause his right lung was missing! The scary examiner showed me an X-Ray with a missing right lung, which I was only able to pick up as I was walking away.. hehe really one of those ‘look at the big picture moments!
My very final station was with Dr Letch from Taiping, who is the nicest head of department ever…. He’s so humble and kind. But he was pretty serious in the exam… I had a patient with many signs of chronic liver disease! With spider naevi and all!
I emerged from that exam feeling pretty shaken, but I learnt that compared to the rest, I did quite ok, I got to x-ray, got the mean cardiologist’s praise,…
And I was done with final exams!!!

Final Med

It was 7 years since the fateful SPM results that allowed me to embark upon this journey I call ‘life’ today. One signature sealed my fate, and I saw myself being dragged to the pits of INTEC with its dingy toilets, mouldy mattresses, and even a midnight robbery, to be whisked off to the romantic streets of Dublin, with its 30min Catholic masses, oh-so-gorgeous Jesuit priests, Swiss guards of the Vatican, and the cheeky-grey-eyed violinist on Grafton street!
It’s been 2.5 yrs since I’ve returned to Penang, and Penang’s grown on me.
I started off 2009 with a slow trot, easing into the year that I’ve long awaited, envying my friends who have already graduated, knowing that I’m at the very last leg, but boy was it gonna be a super duper mountaineous hurdle to jump… with every chance in the world to tumble and fall flat on my face.
Momentum was gained when I stepped into Surgery from GP, the surgeons were very inspiring (particularly this one whose dedication and sacrifice for his passion spurred me,and I only hope I can have even half his zeal- well I found him dangerously attractive too! ). I was in the wards at 6.15 am, and most days ended at 4pm, sometimes 5 and a few times at 6! But it was exhilarating! Eager teachers had to be met with enthusiasm… yet, I couldn’t quite muster up the knowledge I wanted to have in my head, despite the hours I clocked in. sure, I knew some answers to some lecturer’s questions, but there were some I didn’t have a clue abt, even at the end of our 6 week rotation. I was at ill-ease, but I had no choice, I had to pick up with pace, cause time and tide waits for no man, and Medicine was here!

There were 2 complications at this point:

a. the mere thought of sheer workload of medicine was enough to knock the wind out of me… there was nephrology, neurology, cardiology, each of which we had a week’s rotation in Penang GH, then one week for infectious disease, haematology (like thalassaemia, leukaemia, etc) and rheumatology (like rheumatoid arthritis, SLE), but the first 2 weeks was in Taiping GH, where we were supposed to cover Respiratory medicine, endocrinology- this meant we would be missing out on teachings by our Prof of Medicine who was a genius in respiratory medicine and our dean, who was the go-to-man for endocrinology! We ended up covering a lot of cardiology though we had a designated week for cardio on the 6th week. Being in a foreign place was not easy, studying in the hotel room. Then there was the issue on which book to use. Personally, I like to employ one book, as a basic skeleton, cover that, and then add the pomp and grandeur to that. I didn’t have a core text I used in 3rd year, some ppl advised to use Oxford Clinical Handbook, others Baby kumar and clark, but I was one who needed the basics clearly outlined for me before delving into the fundamentals of each disease- I was too afraid of being quizzed on diseases that I neglected to study. So by the end of 6 weeks, I had jumped from book to book, and I had my thoughts all jumbled up as well. It was strewn everywhere (just like Gracie’s desk!! J) I was panicking,
furthermore, I seem to not be able to keep up with the occasional tutorials we had at PMC, whilst surgery had afternoon tutorials with daily ward bedside teachings, for Medicine, we had 2-3 ward teachings per day, and 2 tutorials per week, taught by our own colleagues. I knew I was grossly inadequate to face the final exams. Each field was continents away from the next, neurology was Asia with its diverse culture and aberrations, with Cardiology being the African dessert, unchartered territory for me, yet somehow widely engaging- findings weren’t obvious or demonstratable on a photograph for 20-30 ppl to witness at one go, but an art unique to what one individual’s ears can pick up. One might be the only one able to pick up a murmur very easily in one patient, but miss it entirely though 7 others could detect it. The challenge cardiology posed was one that, surmounted, could boost even the biggest egos doctors and medical students are famed for! Respiratory medicine seemed okay because, the more I knew a field, the more I knew I didn’t know. Respiratory medicine had no formal structure of designated tutors, so I felt it was safe, little did I know! Then there was Dr Kok… It was truly an experience to study under the top student from UM (I very openly admire students who come out of local universities, because the 2 months I spent in form 6 in St John’s institution, while it was merely a peek into what my friends had to cover, it was enough to instil in me a eternity of admiration for those who jumped those hoops and hurdles, and especially for those who did it gallantly without breaking a sweat i.e. those who got into medical school la…
b, Secondly, Medicine rotation lasted 6 weeks, after which we had 2 weeks before our final exam! That means I had to cram in revision for surgery on top of all those scary subjects. Mr Lam, another product of the local university scene who only further emphasised and punctuated my admiration, was so kind to take us for one revision class on May 1st! then Han and I would haunt the surgical wards at 7am before our medicine wards (officially to practise our hernia, thyroid, breast, abdominal, peripheral vascular disease examination, and primarily to oogle the hot surgeon I was speaking abt previouslyJ)

The exams were designed to assess and scrutinise our knowledge from every view. Our general understanding of each field as a whole, skimming all diseases, delving into the rarer ones in Written- MCQ, then letting us talk in Short notes, testing our thinking on the spot with MEQs- they would give us the first sheet of questions which we were to complete in approx. 5 mins, then we had to place those sheets facedown on the floor, and tackle the next sheet! Regurgitating totally from memory, information contained in previous papers. There were X-Rays to tackle, pathophysiology(to the diagnosis we thought was right- i.e if we were wrong, not only did we lose marks for the wrong diagnosis, we lost marks for the pathophysiology too!) to map out…
Then there were clinicals, Long cases approx 1 hour to clerk and 20 mins to be examined on just ONE topic out of all the multitudes of topics we studied, if we were unlucky enough to get a rare disease we just flipped the pages of, that’s 80 mins of purgatory! Then there was osce, 5-7mins to just physically examine the patient (in surgery emphasis was on technique, in medicine we had to come up with our diagnosis at the end of it!!!)
So with THE exam to which I have been working towards for 7 years, if not my entire life and which would license me to do what I think I wanna do for life, looming ahead, I had to do my best, despite all my inadequacies…

in memoriam...

i am preparing to head to taiping for my second last week of surgery, before my final exams... we shot our yearbook photo and i'll put it up when i have access to the internet:-) but today, after having dim sum with lorraine and kenneth, i started thinking random thoughts about my life... and it strayed to ppl who touched my life so long ago...
i. Puan Hajah Gayah
Pn Gayah was one of my standard 1 teachers back when the teachers taught us every subject, cikgu hasni was our class teacher, cikgu daud was our Guru Besar who taught us Jawi, and Pn Gayah was the guru penolong kanan who taught us english. she was very very classy, and used to really think my command of the english as a std 1 student was good. hehe i rmbr her expecting me to spell c-r-o-c-o-d-i-l-e... i managed c-r-o-c-o-d-i-a-l... hehe she was in her 50s, maybe 60s when she taught us... but a few years after i left permata, i heard she was diagnosed with cancer and she passed away...

ii. NurHaslina Ghazali
i was used to being teacher's pet, because if u studied hard, then the teachers would like you. but i had this girl who was my main competitor, only she was so sweet, no one could not like her. she was really pretty, with brown hair, and she was actually really beautiful. she was very kind and gentle and she used to be number 4 i think in class. her father was a Doctor, i rmbr, cause it was a rarity and we were all so very impressed. but in standard 3, cikgu ayub was our class teacher then, she got sick. i rmbr them saying she had brain tumor. she was absent for quite some time, but one day, her father brought her to school, he supported her while she walked to her desk, but she didnt look sick, or frail, neither did she lose any hair. :-) she looked just as pretty as usual... but that was the last we saw of her. the next week i think, (my sense of time is really distorted) she passed away. a few of the malay girls went for her funeral, and they told me how she was made up and she donned a white outfit that made her look like an angel...

i hope they're both in heaven, with God and all the angels... thank you for touching my life.
now back to Final Med...

i so wanna document this week...!

it was Vascular week and group after group before this have shared stories of the scary Mr K2 and his grilling on monday morning at 7.15am, and Mr K1 in the clinic with 15 mins to rush to our 2pm tutorials and 6 essays on vascular examination and a video...
so the friday before (27/2), i clerked two patients, one arterial, one venous so that whichever system Mr K2 requested, we didn't need to come during the weekend to clerk.
He wanted venous, so during the weekend i wrote out the complete extended history (i took a 15 min history from the reluctant patient), then read up on management, differentials, etc. i even searched for journals online (Pentoxifylline= Trental, Daflon) and Bisgaard principles, and did the best i could. i was swamped the whole weekend, trying to prepare for the Upper GI tutorial we had on Tues, and my clinical presentation (recto-sigmoid Ca) also on tuesday.
Mr K2 postponed our teaching to 8.30. so that was a welcome gesture, but i went in at 8 to finalise my case. 8.40 monday morning i presented, and he asked if i clerked the patient for a very long period of time, he was satisfied with the history except for intermittent claudication symptoms,but grilled me on examination. i stumbled but my groupmates were there! in the end, Mr K2 was joking and laughing with us!
so we went to Mr K1's clinic, and lucky us, there were no more patients at 12.30, when we were fully prepared to stay till 1.30. Tutorial at 2 was cancelled, but we had to be back at the vascular clinic at 3 for clinical presentation.

My tuesday clinical presentation was postponed to thu, instead of an afternoon free, we had one session from the coming friday with mr Lam was brought forward to 2pm, one session from friday morning with mr lim was at 3-4, and mr siva was at 4-5, but he didnt turn up till 4.50... that tues morning, we stood in the OT from 8.15 till 1.30pm!

Wednesday we went in at 8am to organise our patients in the ward, while waiting for Mr K1 who taught us from 10-11.30 pm. We had MDS at 12-2, and tutorial with mr P, but he cancelled it. so that afternoon was off at 2.30pm.

Thursday morning, we had a session with Mr Lam at 6.15 am, and had to do our video and compile our essays. i clerked my 2nd jaundice patient for the week, but the hepatobiliary system is still pretty vague. We had a 1-2pm session with Mr P for his session yesterday, 2-3 with mr murugan who didnt turn up cause he was on his flight to the philippines, and 3.30-4.30 with mr teoh...

i felt direly incompetent cause i didnt have time to prepare my tutorials. i woke up at 4.30 or 5 am everyday, after sleeping at midnight and still couldnt find enough time...
i am so tired... don't get me wrong, the surgeons are all very nice ppl, they're kind but awfully busy... i know i'm gonna miss them.
next weekend we have our advanced life support(ALS) course, that had 50% of the previous group failing... so need to brush up my general surgery knowledge, finish the 6 essays, my next week tutorials, and ALS material!

This is truly final med. and God knows i feel so stupid, but i'm loving it!

i'd like to think i'm back... :-)

i have imposed a certain deprivation in lieu of Lent, and i find a have more time on my hands, to do things that keep me from studying.... :-) anything really...
today's the end of my first surgical rotation week. we have 6 of those, then another 6 of medicine, then BOOM the final exam...the one that reflects all i've done in the past 5 years...
i don't expect to leave medical school with a bang, because i think the work i've done in the past 5 years, is nothing compared to what i put in for my SPM, or what is expected of us... i can only leave it in God's hands...
but i've decided to help me as much as i can:-) i'm studying... i am... i fall asleep a lot at the end of the day, and sometimes there's such a barrier between my mind and the words that stare at me from the book...sometimes,i even find it so overwhelming that i wanna cry... havent have much of that this week, though... yet... this week has been a scramble to find my footing after pretty relaxing ortho and GP rotations, trying to cram everything into this week, cause we started with urology, so urological cases in the morning, then we have tutorials in the evening, so thyroid and breast this week, and i'm preparing for my presentation which is lower GI next tue, but we have an upper GI on monday, and next week is VASCULAR... apparently, we need to write 6 essays, and make a video on vascular examination, and it's a full day from 7 till 4 with no lunch break...
oh God, give me strength....

on another topic, i went to Ash wednesday mass this year... and it was so solemn, but such an enriching start to Lent... here's to my spiritual health that i'm gonna detox till april 12th!

wish me luck, World!