It's human to err

Tagline for the day: It's human to err.. Don't passionately speak about other people's wrongdoing because you just can't guarantee that one day you might accidentally do the same thing.. I told ya, it's human to err..

It absolutely puzzles me how time flies... Abang has finished his exam today... err today?? that's so unbelievable. I want to be with abang abang and abang. Initially I thought of going to Jordan for his convocation but I guess that's not what Allah has planned for us. There goes our london ticket and london holiday down the drain tsk tsk tsk T_T

It's my off day today, and I have never taken a proper off except for 1 day since my 1st day of working. I am contemplating between manning the clinic and bringing Ameer Faheem to his music class. Haisyyy that is the problem with me, I can't stop working. Hardworking? No as I don't really feel like I'm depositing any effort. Workaholic? Maybe. Passion? Yup. Ambitious? Undeniable! Oh maybe I should spend some time at Kakak's , forcing her lazy printer do some work. Been trying to compile the mrcp mcqs given to me in a softcopy form.

Today is Day 50 of my ortholife. Ok so the aim for today is to finish my CPC 1 and 2 and the first draft of CME. Gambatte! Day 50 of my working days and I've started to stress myself with the upcoming MRCP exam in 10 months time (that is the earliest possible date to be qualified). I don't feel stress but I can't stop the engine that's driving me like a manic. Something must be perilously wrong with me! Oh now I really miss Elmizah who would surely makes me feel very normal beside her 'manic' hardworking personality ;p I want to stay in HSB as  an MO, and it is not going to be easy to compete for the place. But if I am being offered a place to do Ortho in HSB, I might take it. Let me think, can I imagine myself as an ortho surgeon?. Huuu horrible, just hope I won't be regretting it my whole life...

If any medical student is wondering how different a working life would be, let me share. When I was a student, I went to the hospital at 6.45, came home at 6pm, I slept and then I woke up in the middle of the night to study. I type my notes, I do my slides for seminar, I finish my case write ups, I did on calls. Now I go out at 4-5am (you can always come at 6.30 but I like to be early and get many things done), come home at 7pm, I still wake up in the middle of the night to study, I type my own notes, I do slides for seminar, I finish my case write up, I still answer mcqs, I do on calls and sleep like a nomad. More or less the same, except that you get to scrub in doing OT, you get your own chair in the clinic and attend patients (rather than standing around daydreaming), you walk into the ward greeted by works to be done (rather than walking to and fro aimlessly roaming the hospital), you have a punch card and an ID that gives you access to many places haha, Please don't ever forget that when you are a houseman, and please don't ever forget that a houseman is a trainee. Grab the chance to learn!

Btw we had a mentoring family dinner last night at Subak. Was fun, everybody was there except for Nash. Will try to upload some pics later if only I can grab 'em from Aida ;)

enough rambling, work gotta be done :) 

people always see what you have, but they seldom see what you have done to have what you have... that is life..

To continue from where I stopped last time, I was sent to 5D barely a month after I started working. I don't want to elaborate on this matter except that few housemen are sent to this female ward, because of its nature. most of the cases are chronic, most of the patients are old, and most of them have osteoporosis, alleged fall and sustain fracture around the hip. It's something like a geriatric ward, I would say..

Initially I was very upset when Dato and my mentor told me about it. I felt like I was deprived of a chance to learn. As of today we have 5 HO working in the ward with a total of 3 patients! How pathetic does that sound? I don't really like the ward except during grand ward round when I don't have to memorize too many cases haha. Eventually I started to fell in love with the comfort zone- jadi malas plak huuu. I started working on my CPC during office hour, the first draft is currently being evaluated by my mentor, and now I'm working on my CME.

Can one really imagine that we take at most 10mins to finish the ward round, and most of the time we are left with nothing to do after the round! Semua pun tunggu operation date haihhhh. Usually I come down to join my mentor's clinic, and I decided to come on my off days to join my mentor's operations. Huuu, this is so pathetic. And currently I still hate the grand round (the case memrorizing part), but I love the round for its teachings..

Know what, I don't feel much different if I were to compare between my medical student days and my ho life...

The BEST part of the day is when I arrive home every evening, my Ameer Faheem never fails to run to the door, reached out his hands, mintak dukung :D that is the seriously the best part. And I'm waiting for the best of the best part- when I can come home to a romantic husband :D Abang will finish his exam in 3 days time insyaAllah, hope all will be well, and he can come back home ASAP! I defnitely miss abang, such that no word can describe it....

Ortho part 1

It's 12.20am and I plan to take out few precious minutes from my daily 24 hour, to jot down something. Umm well basically surrounding my currentortho life ;p

I hope I will never forget the day I stepped into Ward 5A for the first time. It's the main orthopedic ward (male) of HSB. We have another ward- 5D which is the female and sleeping ward. I felt so inferior, I felt so disoriented, I was  not confident to work, after a year of holiday. Oh before I forgot, I requested to the Pengarah hospital to do Ortho, when he initially offered Internal medicine to me huu. I still requested for Ortho when the Ortho HOD (Dato' Zamyn) came to our orientation activity, and I am sure he tried to warn me when he said "Very rarely we accept a first poster into our department. If you really want to come to Ortho, make sure your knowledge is very good". I took a deep breath, enjoyed few seconds to rethink, and the next second I gave a confident, "Yes I am sure I want to do Ortho"

That was when everybody misunderstood the whole purpose of fighting for Ortho haha. Very few had the right idea that I don't really like the posting. Well a majority thought I was like head over heel in love with ortho. I gave a confident yet humble answer of "I love ortho the least, and that is why I want to be done with it fast". huu, I hope that didn't come as a disappointment to some. I don't really like surgical based posting except for O&G. And I don't really like medical based posting except for Internal Medicine.

So on our first day, I clearly remember the three of us (Afiq, Ishaq and me) met Dato and his right hand man, Mr shahrid (a spine surgeon) in the pantry of 5A with bihun sup laid before our eyes ;p. We were told to stand and introduce ourselves. The instruction was very simple, Dato' said "Impress me". I am not good at promoting myself to be truthful, and I don't like to commit to high-profile promises. So I went extremely low, such that among the three of us, I appeared like a hopeless mummy trying to be a houseman. Clearly he was not impressed AT ALL.

Then we were asked to prepare a CV and an essay entitled, "Why do I want to be a Doctor?", to be handed in the next day. Dato was pleased with my 5-pages CV :), and as for the essay, I didn't actually answer the question. I was very straight in answering, I said something about ibadah. Oh well I can't remember the content but I am definitely sure that I quoted this in my essay, "aku bukanlah seorangg perwira gagah menghunus senjata tapi hati rela berjuang walau dengan cara sendiri". That is so true about me, I am willing to give my best shot, but I always have to remember that I am not just a doctor. I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a trainee, and I am a lifelong student. With that, our tagging period started, it was tiring, indescribable with words. The toughest part was to leave my Ameer Faheem at home. Tagging started at 7, ends at 10 but most of the time it went far beyond that. I had many car-swaying episodes in the morning (I was so tired to the extent I fell asleep while driving), and that was when I decided to sleep in the hospital for 1 week, until the tagging ended. So Ummi and Abah sent me a big trolley bag loaded with clothes, other necessities, instant food and drinks. Oh how grateful I was to have such a supportive parents! I can't possibly remember how many times I cried, not because of the training, but because I couldn't spend time with Ameer Faheem. It was hard for abang as well. I didn't have time to answer his phone calls, I didn't have time to text him, that was when (I think) he became very depressed hehe, and call me just to say, "Ayang tak sms abang pun :(("

Ortho during tagging was severely depressing. It is not so much about the training, but the mental torture haha. I had a major difficulty to familiarize myself with the computer system, I initially couldn't tolerate Dato's formalities and Grand Ward Round was (I think) crazy like hell huu. We had to remember all orthopaedic cases in the hospital, the medical student way (history at length etc). They say, 'the grand round style'. We had to complete 30% of our logbooks, and once we do that, we had to go for psychometry test (in which we had to list down 10 orthopaedic things in 2 minutes, without using any shortform) and if we pass that, we had to go for an upgrade round in which we had to present all the case in 5A and 5D without referring to any notes. I was seriously severely depressed. In between that, we were called to Dato's room regularly (which was another source of stress at that time haha) for the mentoring session. I am glad I had Ishaq and afiq witth me along the way, and I will insyaAllah forever remember that I went through this with their help. we helped each other in fact, did our rounds together to remember the patient, shared procedures so that each of us can fill up our logbook, shared the stress, the anxiety, the sadness- oh we really went through it together.

1 good thing in dato which I doubt I can find anywhere else is, he remember each and everyone's name (his HO), and he calls me by my full name, "Maryam al Batul'. I am sure that depicts his sincerity and commitment towards the houseman training programme. Unlike any other.

Next was the mentor assigning thingy. Dato called us into his room, one by one, assessed our personality through discussions and finally assign us the best mentor by his judgement. I was assigned to Mr Shahrid (Dato's right hand man, a spine surgeon and an orthopaedic consultant). I couldn't describe my feeling at that time, but I still remember what Dato told me, "Maryam, Mr shahrid is a very good and intelligent doctor, I hope you will benefit from him". I remeber because he kept repeating the same thing from that day onward.

Luckily aida (I met aida on my first day, a very nice colleague, who was very eager to help us in anyway possible) was also Mr shahrid's mentor. She really taught me what to do- how to write Mr shahrid's name in the logbook, how to do the tea serving ceremony, how to deal with him- the do's and don't and the list went on and on hehe. I followed most of her advice, but of course Aida is Aida, and Maryam is Maryam so both of us had our own perosnality and way to deal with things. Really I couldn't thank her enough. She actually made me rehearse for the tea serving ceremony!!

Tea serving ceremony is a ceremony whereby I had to prepare a cup of tea for my mentor, and while I serve the tea, i had to tell him, that I wanted to be his mentee, and that I hope he would accept me, and if in any case he doesn't accept me, I'll be an orphan forever. It was damn funny initially, I felt like acting throughout, but truth is, that ceremony has an intrinsic value of its own. We did it in Enzo Kopitiam (in the hospital) in the presence of my brother and sister mentee, then all of us talked for hours, getting to know each other well. I was of course bombarded with questions including personal ones such as, "Why did you get married so early, tell us about your husband, what do you do on weekends, what do you like to eat" and such. It gives a sense of belonging.

The rest of my ortholife was sometime stressful, but 1 thing that kept me going was my own intention to be a doctor, and the presence of my mentoring family. yes the family definitely keeps me going. Aida was the first to leave (she's in medical now), followed by cindy. It is sad to let them go, and I have 3 more months to go, I have already felt sad to leave. next will be syaril and nash, that would be such a big loss. I will never forget how Aida and cindy coached me in every single thing, or syaril offered to do a fake psychometry test for me to be offtagged and taught me procedures and examinations, or how nash was there with me during my first OT day (when I was so blur I simply didn't know what to do and where to go in the big operation theatre) do have adik2 mentee- 3 so far Intan, azrul and another aida :)

I was offtagged on Day 14 alhamdulillah followed by Afiq and Ishaq. I was given a day off the next day, but I came back during the PM shift, hoping to help afiq and ishaq to pass everything as well. It didn't seem right to enjoy the holiday when your comrades are still fighting the battle.

I was actually very lucky as 2 of my classmates- Zatul and Kak Rai were in the department. Zatul is the clinical assistant, so she helped me a lot. 1 month into the posting, I was transferred to 5D.... and that is 1 whole new story which I hope to continue later.. 

Too cute for words

Oh I still take time to write, because I know that I would one day love to read back everything that i had gone through.. :)

Today is my off day after a pm shift. I actually did my on call in the oncall room, sleeping the whole night gee~ Was supposed to be in the emergency OT, but there was no case last night, what a rare occassion. In fact there were few cases which were cancelled due to various reasons- incomplete consent, multiple comorbids etc. I was also on night duty the day before, taking care of 2 wards and that was like killing me. i had 1 hour of sleep, the nurse kept calling me to inform stuff like "Dr Maryam, patient ni nak balik, dia taknak duduk atas katil", "Dr Maryam, patient jatuh katil, nak kena buat x ray ke?", "Dr, patient ni demam baru 1st spike" haissyyy I did feel like bursting, What do you expect me to do??? Stay all night with the patient so that she won't climb out of bed again??? Luckily one senior houseman was there, and she happily gave that makcik a dose of alprazolam huuu.

I came back at 12pm ++, performed my zohr prayer and slept, and slept and slept... now I do feel guilty. I actually missed my mentor's sms and replied very late, what a shame. I bought a chicky meal for my dear Ameer Faheem and spent the day with him- what a refreshing change. As for today, by hook or by crook I have to finish my first draft of my 1st CPC, and if I'm lucky, I can discuss it with Mr Shahrid tomorrow.

Everybody thought I was insane when I requested to start my training with orthopaedic posting, especially when I'm being posted in HSB. Ok, I'm gonna say something really crazy, I actually love the posting and the department, and my fellow colleagues (except for the HORRIBLE GRAND WARD ROUND T___T). Oh yeah, I'm a total insane. Beiing a first poster is not easy, you keep making mistakes after mistakes, you keep forgetting things, you need someone to check and recheck your work, but definitely I am gaining confidence insyaAllah. Working is fun, but leaving my Ameer Faheem behind is seriously hard. I really cry everytime I leave the house, it is seriously depressing. And now I'm really looking forward a holiday with abang ;p Oh how I can't wait to look at his handsome face again!

Ameer Faheem is a big bow now. His manner is definitely improving. When I say "Allah" he will continue with "Akbar" and when I say "Muhammad" he will continue with "Rasulullah" :) Guest what are his 2 favourite words now?? 1. Nak 2. lapar hahaha. I could have die out of laughing when he says "Lapar, lapar, lapar" He is too cute for words! Alhamdulillah and alhamdulillah :)