Life as a Junior Doctor

Working in this field has taught me alot about life. One of it is life is very fragile and unpredictable.

Almost everyday or not every other day, I see life seeping out of patients from predictable to unpredictable ones. After pronouncing more than 30+ deaths to family members, I thought this would have made me a tad bit heartless.

Last week, I received a phone call from my sister in the middle of the day while I was busy working. Thinking it was odd for her to call me, I picked up the call. In a very sad tone, she informed me that our paternal grandmother has left us. At that moment itself, I actually felt numb. It felt like another death being pronounced. As I was unable to attend the funeral due to work schedules, I felt guilty but I prayed for her to have a safe journey to the other side.

That night itself, I offered my last respects to my grandmother via videocall. The moment I saw her face, I burst into tears. (Nopes, this job has not made me anymore resilient to all these emotions.) I might not be very close to my grandmother but seeing her for the last time really tugged on my heartstrings. She was very fit and well the last time I saw her (maybe around a year ago?). I wished for her to be at a better place now, away from all the negativity that she was facing in these recent months. 

So people always say that doctors are heartless which I do not think its true. We might pronounced deaths with a pokerface but that is just to maintain our professionalism. A little bit of us still dies inside everytime we face a death especially if its someone dear to us.

Therefore, take care of all your friends that are having a hard time (whether they are doctors or not). Mental health is still a taboo in society nowadays. But it is up to us, to change this perspective :) 

Lastly, always appreciate those around you while they are still beside you so you would not have any regrets when they are gone someday! 

Photo by Severin Höin on Unsplash

It has been about six months since I first started working in the hospital. Honestly speaking I am still trying to get to get the hang of everything that is going on around me. Even after working as a second posting junior doctor, I realise that there are still a whole lot of things that I simply do not know or even heard about them.

Gone are the days whereby I could say that I am a first posting junior doctor and being excused from the mistakes or things that I have missed sometimes. Now, I am expected to know most of the things, if not all of them.

The only thing that I know for sure in medical field is in fact the uncertainty of it. There is totally nothing that you can be sure of 100%, be they the effects of your managements on patients or simply the workload that you might have on daily basics.

For instances, not every patient will react to the same treatments that they have been given similarly. Some might recover completely from the conditions that they are having while others may succumb to death despite all the efforts you have put in order to get them healthy.

I can clearly recall one incident that happen in the ward that I was taking care of previously. Martha was a 60 years old lady who was diagnosed with blood cancer in early of 2019.  She was then admitted into the hospital for multiple rounds of chemotherapy.

Initially she responded pretty well to the treatment, albeit losing all of her lustrous locks day by day until she was completely bald, needing wig to cover her head. Nonetheless, her condition started to deteriorate and during her admission to the hospital for fourth chemotherapy, she became unconscious and passed away despite various attempts to bring her back to life.

Same thing goes to the workload. You can never be sure of the amount of work you have everyday. One day you might be free for the whole day and the next day you may be as busy as a bee, running around requesting for scans, tracing blood results, clerking new patients and the likes.

All in all, some might see the unpredictability as a beauty of working in medical field. Others, might beg to differ. I certainly, belong to the latter group. However, the only way to deal with uncertainty is to go along with it and try not to be too stressed over things that are unforeseeable. Life is after all unpredictable it self. Cheers.

Thought Monkey

Today marks the last day of my Surgical posting. It has been alot of back alley interrogation and body excrement handling.

Through these 4 months, I have been through loads of ups and downs. From being the chillest posting to one of the hectiest due to lack of manpower. From handling 2-3 patients to handling a whole lot of 25-30 patients alone.

 So how's surgical overall? For a person that enjoys hands-on and fast results, surgical has been fun. Although I did not managed to do any open appendicectomies (did not encounter them during my last month as EMOT HO) but at least I've managed to do a saucerisation of a back carbuncle. I have enjoyed the last month of this posting more although we were working like we are in medical because my new medical officers has been very helpful (some of them were my senior HOs during my first month of work). Just when we are about to get used to things, then it's time to change postings (damn! 😅)

One of the few things I have learnt after transitioning from a student to an actual doctor: Work smart AND hard. There will be days that you will feel like breaking down and giving up but always remember why you started this. A senior once told me that if you have not cried even once during housemanship then you are not a houseman because that is the purpose of these 2 years: to break down your walls and make you rebuild them with thicker materials.

2 days ago, a new batch of housemans started work. It did make me think that I was in their shoes just about 4 months ago. How time flies~ (although it felt like a year or so). I do pity them for coming in during this messy period with the lack of seniors to teach but that is life. No more medical school style where people can repeat a few times until you understand. It's "see one, do one" style. It's a field that sometimes scolding does make you remember things better so please bear with it. You might feel very wronged at times but before that, make sure you have tried your best. If you had done so, then there is nothing you can change but at least, you know there is nothing more you could have done for the patient but you didn't.

I hope my words would be able to enlight some of you and make you bear through these 2 weeks of dreadful tagging. Just keep trying! We are too young to give up and blame the world at this age!

I will be starting my medical posting tomorrow. So I will be going through 2 weeks of tagging again as well. ALL THE BEST TO ALL OF US!