I was talking to this HO for a short while today. During the conversation she asked me what I was doing, when electives were ending and I realised they would officially end TOMORROW. But I never felt it the end because after tomorrow I'd still be popping down to NCC to finish the paper and I even plan to say hi to the patient I've been following up this week.
Yea electives end tomorrow. The next time school starts will be in M5. I've been dreading it, but somehow it has been some elaborate plan of the universe for the past two months to serve as some kind of orientation to Life in Medicine, or rather the No-Life.
I mean after reading friends' blogs, I thought electives would be holidayish and enjoyable in the literal sense of it. January's MICU electives were something like that and February was a little tiring cos of the Emed shifts and the pressure to set successful plugs.
Come April, I really felt a significant level of stress. Not least because I had this awesome tutor who taught a lot but also demanded a lot, and her tutorials involved me getting screamed at in a ward on a Saturday morning because I missed the pleural effusion. On top of that there was the pressure over ESMO submission, only 2 weeks after I returned from India, and the hassle over authorship. I don't deny I've learnt and I embrace the challenge
May started off pretty slack and if you happen to follow me on Facebook I was following the GE, treating it as some welcome break to Medicine. I was also feeling rather lost and meaningless in Onco until the weight of the ward rounds started coming down on me. Ward rounds were enjoyable and had much learning value but everyday I woke up at 515am to reach at 715 to pre-clerk patients and present. Now I know this can't compare to what the Paeds and O&G sip people do but it was tiring enough for me. More to come don't worry, we all get there.
As an additional challenge there was this other registrar who demanded a very high level of detail in my history, examination and presentation. Once again, I admit I did learn a lot from him and I may go into a more detailed discourse in the future.
On nights when I am alone or stressed, there is a part of me that wants to go back to teenage years, to childhood, to run along the hills of Ooty or the beaches of Mahabalipuram and Pondicherry. To the rar-rar NUS orientations of 4 years ago. But there is another part of me who knows that that stage in life is dead and we only look forward. In fact, that happier stage is so dead it almost seems remote. To be honest now is a happy enough stage, not happy in the carefree sense but happy in the fulfilling sense.
It may be all the small things subtly causing the change. The tiring routine, the stress of projects, the humbling experiences seeing your cancer database patients in the flesh, or knowing of your personal patient's very poor prognosis, or seeing someone younger than you receive the shocking diagnosis of metastatic disease.
Or the nearqueen lorrysecond (codename for something that I won't publish) who's been harrassing you and your friends and suddenly you realise things like human relationships and even "religion" aren't so rosy anymore. On a side note it makes you wonder about the spirit of things, the nature of true faith, but once more I digress.
I don't admit to have turned super mature or something but I think things did change over the past two months. But hey! June holidays have arrived and I can be a boy again, and maybe up there in the Vietnamese highlands I can forget that the unpleasant events existed.
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