Sunday, September 29, 2013

The forgotten-part one

I stumbled upon some thoughts today:
What do I really want to become in the near-future?
What's the purpose of living such a stressful medical student's life?

The scene need to be rewind to about 7 years ago...

I was a cheerful bubbly & plump girl who loved Biology. I was so fascinated by the anatomy and physiology of human bodies. I also believed that an interesting life should be driven by passion and full of challenges. Someday I read in the newspaper that revealed much of the populations in Malaysia who are still living in poverty were neglected in terms of healthcare. Those were also the time of Earthquake happening in China, with the news keep on reporting how the doctors from all around the world willing to step out from their comfort zone to lend some helping hands to the earthquake victims. I was so inspired.

When I was young, I spent a lot of time thinking about LIFE. How to live a fruitful life? How to live without regrets? And before I die, is there anything that I can do to make this world a better place? After driven further by these "ambitious" thoughts, I finally decided that the only profession that I would love to spend my lifetime pursuing it is to become a DOCTOR.

I told myself that, no matter what happens, my dream MUST come true! That contributed to my inner-strength, to stay strong even when I need to leave my home just a few days after I successfully appealed and got myself a place in Pahang Matriculation programme. I cried almost every night due to the cultural shock that I was facing, and of course nevertheless-homesickness. But I kept on reminding myself to stay strong and never forget about my dream.

Eventually I conquered Pre-University programme and was lucky enough to get chosen by USM as the first batch of APEX medical students. If you ask any medical students, I believe that they will tell you almost the same story, that our lives were really miserable awful stressful, with all those medical textbooks we need to read, thousand of diseases to understand and countless clinical skills we need to practice and acquire. Well, people often talked about when you succeed in getting what you want, you'll tend to forget how precious and how it meant the whole world to you in the first place.

Mind you, this is so true.

to be continued...


Thursday, September 26, 2013

Calling for a final boarding!

I still couldn't believe that Im already a final year medical student.
Oops, provided if I pass my Final Professional Exam :)
Because nobody could predict the future.

It's not that Im not a confident person,
but if my medical knowledge & skill is still lacking,
I'd rather spend another extra 6 months in medical school,
to make sure that Im REALLY competent to become an HO,
to cater to the sick & needy patients as much as I can.

♥    ♥    ♥

Nah...
Sorry for starting this with such a melancholic tone ;P

Here comes the end of 3rd out of 5 weeks in Surgery rotation. Final year is indeed much stressful compared to last year as most of our major postings have been cut short for at least 1-2 weeks, in spite of the usual 6  weeks. So practically during the first week of each rotation we are expected to recapture everything we learned in the same rotation last year; the second week is for us to escalate and brush up whatever knowledge which we didn't afford to do last year due to time limitation; the third and fourth weeks are for us to practise, completing logbook & case report; and here comes the fifth week which will be our end-posting exam. Mind you, some rotation eg: Orthopedic was given only 3 weeks duration! >.<

Not only we must concentrate on our current rotation, we also need to do revision on other rotations by practising short cases with friends during weekends, and doing past year questions. Yea, sounds damn lots and scary huh~ But as Ajahn Brahm said:" Doing it is easy, thinking about it is the difficult part." So most of the time I'll just stop thinking about stress and just complete whatever daily learning issues I assigned to myself. Then, keeping my fingers crossed that everything will turn out just alright :)

End posting exam is no longer a big issue for us, as we're now more concerned about our true capability of functioning as a HO by next September. Listening to our lecturer's scolding about how scarce is our clinical knowledge now hurts a thousand times more compared to last year, because deep down inside everyone of us is so worried that we won't be able to become a good doctor next year. Whereas listening to our lecturer's encouragement and praising our efforts means a thousand times more as it builds the confidence within us. 

Im always been a believer of love & encouragement. Those are the vitamins that feeds positive mind and energy in us. To me, being harsh and scolding leads to more negative mind and energy among people, eventually they will feel defeated and stop trying.

This is about it I guess. Im still holding on. Thinking about all my friends who're "boarding the same plane" with me, somehow gives me some relief. May all of us be trying our best to learn and practise more. If our seniors can do it, we can too^^

Tata :]