Sunday, 29 July 2007

My bad

When I'm taking bloods and I miss the vein, I'll be like "the vein is too tiny" or "old pt, vein move around alot" or "obese pt" or "very edematous pt" and so on and so forth...

And the other day I suddenly remembered something which my GP said during my GP posting: "Blame the singer, not the song" and I realised how true that was, and that I had been finding excuses for myself all along. O Well, I guess I need more practice...

Linkin Park - Shadow Of The Day (with subtitles)

Nice song from LP's new album... all the other songs are great too!

Saturday, 21 July 2007

2 more weeks

2 more weeks to end of SIP, and 4 more weeks to holidays! I'm sleepy everyday right now... waking up early in the morning and staying in the hospital the entire day. I think I'm getting used to it though... I mean, if I don't, I will be in a worse shape when I start my housemanship.

Anyway, the MO of my team just switched to another team, and we miss him pretty much. Initially he looked pretty aloof and dao, but he soon warmed up to us and was teaching us whenever we were walking from patient to patient during our morning rounds. Yesterday at around 430pm, I saw him in my ward and we said hi, and I asked him about his new posting. He asked me whether I had any good cases, which I assumed he was searching to bring the year 3s through. Then again, I was thinking to myself "hmm... he's not taking any year 3s...", and so I asked him what he wanted them for. What he said next completely surprised me... "to take you through the case lah!" Too bad I didn't have a good case, but nevertheless, I was really grateful for his initiative and thoughtfulness... what a nice guy! In the end, we went through the approach to lower limb weakness and he had to resume his work after 30 mins.

O well... btw, so far I don't think SIP will make me depress... maybe it will only set in after 1 more week... we shall see. =o

Tuesday, 17 July 2007

Sleepiness

I'm really very tired & sleepy. Good night!

Thursday, 12 July 2007

It's a Small World After All

I met my gf for dinner at TCC at Bugis today... and guess who we met as we were about to leave the place? Zhiwei and Jingyi!!! They were there for dinner too... and they saw us and took our seats. My gf had to leave as she was going for her piano lessons (some stuff with improvisations etc); as for myself, I went to the National Library to study. I was there for about 20 minutes before it closed... and I decided to go back to TCC to join ZW/JY.

Gf joined us after her lessons and in the end, we chatted till' about 10+ pm. Hmm... I believe that it is fate that brought us together as we had to be at the same place at the correct time. For this, ZW and JY... please SMS me a number from 0-9 asap... which I will put together to form my 4D-number... wish me luck!

Wednesday, 11 July 2007

SIP part 1

Just a quick post before I go to bed: I need to wake up at 615am tomorrow morning again.

On day 1 of SIP, I became a phlebotomist (a person trained to draw blood), as I spent the entire morning and the entire afternoon taking bloods. It was pretty exciting initially as it had been some time since I last took blood, but the excitement was short-lived. After awhile, it became more of a chore... I think they should hire phlebotomists to lessen this aspect of the Houseman's workload. Anyway, hopefully at the end of this 4 weeks I'll be a real pro in performing this task... hundred hair hundrerd hits (bai3 fa1 bai3 zong4).

Day 2 was a little more interesting as I did my 1st discharge summary and I had to stay for passive night call (up to 11pm). And I did my 1st ABG (arterial blood gas)... from the femoral artery. It was pretty exciting, though a little scary as well, to be poking the needle into an artery. Of course, I did it under supervision... and everything went well. The night call was ok... I set some plugs, took some bloods, clerked a new case, and reached home at 1145pm.

Guess what I ate when I got back home? One chicken-flavoured cup noodle and honey cereals with soya bean milk! Hmm... I hope I don't get diarrhoea... =o

Sunday, 8 July 2007

Holiday Blues

Sighz... tomorrow is the start of the busy year. I'm hoping that everything in the next 4 weeks (SIP) will turn out well. I'm having a mixed kind of feeling right now... anxious, excited, scared... o well, I wish myself all the best =p

The last few days of my extended holiday cum self-study period was spent singing ktv with my band friends, watching "the girl who leapt through time", solving the Rubik cube (I cheated, following instructions which I got online), packing my bag, and preparing myself for the upcoming semester.

Goal for the coming weeks: to be able to catch Harry Potter despite my busy schedule, and of course, to learn as much as I can.

Reporting time tomorrow: 730am; reporting venue: no idea.

Thursday, 5 July 2007

I am back

Yep, I am back after 9 days of rotting at home, studying bits and pieces of stuff, going to school to complete the never-ending microsimulation (I get to save or kill patients in the simulation) etc etc, and today is the 4th last day of my extended holiday.

Starting next week, I'll be doing my Student Internship Programme (SIP) which basically equates to sai2 gan1 warrior without being paid (although it will be a good experience I believe). It will last 4 weeks, after which I'll be doing my paeds revision posting for 2 weeks... and its holiday again!!! I attended the SIP orientation at NUS on Tuesday and the schedule stated that the programme would end at 545pm, just in time for me to make my way down to Jurong Point to have dinner and catch my 645pm "robots in disguise" movie with my gf. Anyway, I had this strange feeling when I met the Sydney girls and KY there. I guess that was cos' they reminded me of Sydney and it was weird seeing them in Singapore... well, I still miss the place!

The talks started at 440pm as planned but as it went on, I realised that I will definitely be late for my movie (and I really hate missing the beginning of movies). The final talk started at 545pm, which lasted till' 615pm. The last speaker was a current house officer and she spoke about her previous experience in SIP, which included feeling depressed and wanting to quit medicine as well as learning alot during that period... all of which I will talk about in my future posts when I experience it myself. Anyway, back to the point. Although the speakers were interesting, I was really hoping that all of them could speak faster so that the session would end earlier, but no, that was not the case. I was practically cursing and swearing in my head as the talks went on... "~!#$% late liao la.... ^%#@# omg... still say some more... and so on..."

As soon as the last speaker ended, I grabbed my bag and left, missing the introduction by the new class committee as well as the class photo-taking session (I'm not sure whether it actually took place after all). Furthermore, I parked my car at Kent Vale... which is diagonally opposite the Engineering faculty, which is extremely far away. I walked to the bus stop and seeing no bus approaching, I decided to walk to the Kent Vale carpark, thinking that I will arrive there faster compared to waiting for the bus. All the walking in Sydney had probably trained my leg muscles to allow me to walk at a very fast pace, which I did... but I forgot one thing. This is Singapore, with its warm, humid and shit-like weather, and as I moved towards my destination, I could feel my sweat slowly soaking up my shirt and dripping off my face... which made me feel like shit as well. As I was nearing the car park, I saw my bus over-taking me. Sighz... determined not to lose to the bus, I jogged a bit, hoping to reach my car earlier than the bus. In the end, I think I reached the car at the same time as I would if I had waited for the bus, the only difference being my legs were aching and I was drenched in sweat. The time: 645pm! I raced down the expressway (within speed limits) and despite Murphy's Law coming true (red traffic lights, slow-moving dumb car in front of me in the carpark at Jurong Point), I managed to arrive at the cinema at 7pm! I missed probably 3-4 minutes of the intro, which was not too bad after all.

The movie was excellent. It was initally thought to be a boy's movie as a few months back when I saw the movie poster, I was like "I'm definitely watching this show" while my gf was like "you go watch it yourself". My sis felt the same way too, unlike the other guys that I met since then, who were all looking forward to the show as well. After watching the trailer, my gf and my sis decided to watch the show... and guess what? After the movie, my gf rated the show 9/10! And she said that she did not mind watching the show again! Haha... boys' show owns.

Transformers, more than meets the eye... =p