Sunday, March 22, 2009

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...

Thursday, March 05, 2009

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!