It is still as complicated.

Because you refuse to tell me why.

All the 'if only' and the similars,

I'm so tired of hearing those already...

Is there something new you would like to say?

I can't read you.

 

I like everything about you, except one thing.

And that's the one thing you can't fulfill and can't provide.

It hurts me much because it is something everyone else can provide, if willing.

I questioned why.

You gave me an answer that I'm not satisfied.

Unacceptable.

I don't demand much,

I don't ask much,

I compromised,

But this one thing,

If you can't give it to me.............

I think there's no other way.

It has been long since I last posted here. Much has happened, much has been gone through. Heartbreaking moments, broken relationships, work pressure, etc. Currently at my 4th posting, paediatrics, which I don't enjoy that much. Dealing with children was never my passion. It requires a lot of patience and high levels of tolerance. It feels very restricted to be in this department, where everything done has to be informed to your superiors, you have no authority to make any decision on your own, even with the simplest thing like starting antibiotics. A child won't die with antibiotics, will he?

I've finally gave up on the person I was holding on for months. I didn't want to, but the way he acts forced me to. I do occasionally still think of him, but glad to say, it's diminishing as the days go by. Perhaps I have other things to think about.

My social life has picked up a bit recently. I finally got myself to going out with friends once again. This time, I can say, I am genuinely enjoying myself when I hang out. Not like previously, going out with a heavy heart, troubled by many matters.

I don't know what to wish or hope for really. Life has become floaty. I've lost the sense of reality. Living by the day, taking things one step at a time. We'll just see how things go shall we?

 

 

 

Being on call on a weekend is not nice at all. You work all alone, while your other colleagues are off. I thought things will be made worse being on call with an MO who's known to be always shouting and scolding. At 8am, in my first hour of call, a patient collapsed. Blood pressure was unrecordable, oxygen saturation dropped drastically and when I attended to her, there was no more pulse, pupils were already fixed, and no heart sound. The cardiac monitor did not show asystole yet however, so I did not proceed with CPR. I told my nurse to call my MO, knowing that when she reaches, she'll probably be shouting away, ordering this and that, and scold me for not starting the resuscitation.

She arrived sulking, as expected, asked me why did I not start on CPR. I told her because she was not asystole, and she mumbled something beneath her face mask, of which I could not hear. We actively resuscitated the patient for 30 minutes, doing CPR, bagging, pushing in ionotropes, running in fluids... but yet, we still lost her. I expected my MO to make a big fuss about it, but surprisingly not. She was nice, did not scold and she was the same throughout the 24 hours I was on call with her. She was pleasant, talked to me nicely and even taught me a bit of here and there. I have no idea why, but I was glad she was fine with me. More than just fine in fact. How odd things can be sometimes.

Death to some people is a very tragic event. To me, it's an everyday thing, I honestly have no feelings towards the dying and the dead in the hospital. My heart has grown cold, and it is only my duty to pronounce someone dead, I am not sad about it. Breaking the news to the family is hard, but as I broke, I honestly felt no sense of sorry. I was only doing my duty of breaking the sad news. After that, I walk away, leaving them to grief. I don't spend a lot of time with my patients, as I have too many to attend to everyday. I don't remember their names, their faces, their problems. They remember me of course, and I don't feel that bad not remembering them. What am I becoming.

I told myself I want to be a good MO, someone who can manage patients properly, someone who can guide my future housemen, someone who knows my stuff. But is it enough with all that? What about my cold heart? Am I becoming evil and heartless? I feel that I am only treating the disease, not the patients. My ward MO use to scold me for not being concern on my patients welfare, I know he's right. But still, to what extend can I care?

To work with passion in this field is not easy. I find myself doing things because I have to do it, not with zest. I don't say I hate my job, it is actually quite interesting as I see and learn new things everyday. But to work with full of passion is not something I can do. Sometimes I am becoming a robot doctor, treating only what I see. I don't know what else the patients go through, I have no time to sit and hear, I have no time to chat with them. I get annoyed when all the relatives keep asking me the same questions over and over.

I don't know... I want to care, but it's just so hard to. I'm not sure if I'm giving excuses. Maybe I am, just to be defensive. If you tell me you're down with cough and cold, I probably won't bother much. I have seen too many of that everyday, I have seen the much more serious ones. If you expect me to pity you for minor stuff like that, I honestly can't do it either. I go to work even when I'm not well. I have to sit under the air cond in clinic even though I was feverish and freaking cold. I have to work through the day even though I have stomach cramps. I work even though I'm sick because I have to. So how can I pity you if you tell me you have cough and cold? I don't even feel much for the dying, what more those 'minor' stuff?

I don't know what is becoming of me. But honestly, that's what I'm becoming. I may have the skill and knowledge to treat you, but the other part is missing. The empathy, the pity, the sense of feeling sorry... it's disappearing. I do not want to think that's normal, but is it?

I usually dread going into a new environment, with everything new and everyone's a stranger. In my case, going to a new department every 4 months. Surprisingly though, didn't feel it all that much this time. Perhaps, this department is crazily busy, and everyone's busy with their own cubicles, not much mingling around.

It is rather odd that nobody seems to have each other's phone numbers, unlike my previous department where everyone has everyone else's contact number. I was put to be in charge of a cubicle on my second day of tagging and before I even finish my 1 week tagging, I was put to be in charge of the subacute cubicle, reviewing 10-12 patients by myself. It wasn't the amount of patients that bothered me most, it was the stress of being new and not knowing the management for quite a number of things.

By the second week, I was put to be in charged of the acute cubicle, all by myself. Managing 6-8 acute patients daily is no easy task. With so many orders, so many bloods to take, so many scans to request from the annoying radiological department who rejects half the requests... and everything has to be done stat (immediately). I was able to cope fine, I just didn't really like the MO I was working under with. He has mood swings which I find it hard to deal with. Sometimes nice, sometimes bad. But I dislike him, regardless if he's nice or bad. Because I just don't like people who treats me nice as they like, and evil when they're in a bad mood. I get my work done, and my relationship with him is purely MO-HO, I don't talk to him unnecessarily.

So many have been asking me, why was I put to be in charge of a cubicle so fast, and more than anything else, subacute and acute cubicles within my first 2 weeks of being in the department. Well, I didn't ask for it, they scheduled me that way, I did not object. It was a learning process after all. I wasn't too afraid to take care of ill patients in the acute cubicle, the only troublesome thing is the frequent blood taking and every morning there will be new patients in my cubicle who are most of the time, very ill patients.

I have 2 other MOs in my ward, both nice people. One friendly chap who scolds and nags me if I don't know something to his expectations, but he is someone who teaches me something new everyday if I do rounds with him. He makes things interesting and stimulates me to study on things that I didn't know. I enjoy my rounds with him every morning, if only every other MO was like that.

Being on call in a medical ward is crazy. Being on call on a Monday is triple the craziness. I did not sleep a wink throughout the night as expected, the amount of admissions was crazy. Non stop from the time I started my call at 6pm right up the next morning at 7am. Even though I was doing passive call, but I did more work than the active caller as I helped to clerk half the admissions, run around the whole ward attending to all the patients (the most annoying part being setting an IV line for IVDU and ESRF patients). The medical wards are really poorly maintained. So many things not available, they don't even have a proper plaster to fasten the branullas, resulting in the branullas coming off so easily, adding on to my work fixing their branullas all night long. Other than that, attend to collapse patients, accompany unstable patients to scans, check blood, go to ICU, this and that, this and that. Passive it seems, NOT!

Despite all those, it's still bearable. I'm surviving.

So fast 4 months has passed. Completed surgical posting, a department that has so many nice medical officers and surgeons. Truly it has been a great 4 months working here. Learnt much, seen much, experienced much. If I had to work in this department any longer, I really wouldn't mind. But of course, I want to move on too. On a second thought, nope, I didn't wanna stay any longer. Although I had the best bunch of bosses, but I had the worst bunch of houseman colleagues. Technically, this is not my first posting, and it intrigues me seeing no difference in junior and senior posters in this department. So in a way, I'm glad I'm out of that place.

Honestly, I do have problems with a few of my colleagues. But that kinda happens everywhere. In that sense, I'm glad I'm out of there. Did my last on call 2 days ago and it was the weirdest on call ever. The colleague I was on call with, had a fight with him and we didn't communicate throughout the 24 hours. How difficult and weird is that. I normally tolerate most things pretty ok, but when it reaches a certain limit, I just can't tolerate. So instead of arguing all day long, I choose to just ignore the person and thus resulting in communication breakdown. However, all work is done and nothing was screwed up although we had some really ill patients in the ward.

Time flies when you're having good times. That's how the saying goes. I guess it's quite true, I felt the time flew. It wasn't too long ago when I just stepped into this hospital, and now, 4 months passed. I will miss this department and all my MOs. I've never worked with such people before. You wanna compare the people here and the ones I used to work with? I think I just came out from hell.