A mizdiagnosis

Why did I choose medicine?!

Friday, August 31, 2007

Batu Pahat, here I come

My first meal in Batu Pahat today.

Chicken rice.

Me: "Char-siew-kai-fan"
Chicken rice man: Huh?? *thought for one minute* Oh! *translated in Hokkien*..
Me: Haha.. sorry! Sini cakap Hokkien, ya?

How embarassing. Trying out my Cantonese in a Hokkien-speaking territory.

But in the end I made a new friend, the chicken rice seller.. he kept trying to teach me more Hokkien after that!

The chilli they give you with the chicken rice was green in colour, and if you mixed it, you'll notice that there's kicap underneath it so everything turns black later. And the soup they serve is bak-kut-teh soup! Yummy!!

posted by Sha @ 12:18 AM 5 comments

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

The secretary

I'm having a blog-diarrhoea.. bear with me.. :p

It started with a Mr KarSeng, when I was paired up with him in the same ward in Surgery:

Phone messages:
Wei, your beds are ..., ..., ..., ... etc.
Tmrw got CP (case presentation) with Dato. Cover your beds.

Phone call: "Wei, sleeping is it? Dato is having CP with us in half-an-hours' time! Come quick!"

Then he started calling me about where classes were and what time they'll be..

Hady: KarSeng, Sasha's your personal assistant is it?

The nickname 'secretary' only came when we were doing our Internal Medicine posting. He was examining a patient with Dengue, and I was there to accompany him. The patient had marks all over his chest, which we both found out were 'panau'. Later as we both washed our hands, I asked KarSeng how long ago did the patient have 'panau'.

"Go ask him."

So me being the obedient fool, asked the patient and came back with the answer.

"When he was 14 years old. Oi, since when I became your secretary? Doing your work for you??"

So that's how he finally started calling me his 'secretary'. The whole posting group found out about it.. what's worse is that the whole batch found out about it! *sigh*

When we're having a study group, someone would yell, "Secretary! Write this down."

When I make a phone call, " Yes, secretary?"

When I wear a mini-skirt, "Waa.. secretary trying to make her boss happy, is it?"

Then O&G came,

JennYi: KarSeng! I'm taking your secretary!
KarSeng: OK!

Basically, I ended up being an alarm clock for her in that posting. Wake-up call, anyone?

"Sasha, what post did you hold in Student Council?"
"Secretary"

Argh. Meant to be.

But before you say anything, let me tell you, I am GOOD at my job as secretary. But God knows I'll kill anyone who tries to make me into their secretary next semester.

Me: Wei, I resign from being secretary already-lah.
KarSeng: If not secretary anymore, then what? Girlfriend?!

*pengsan*

I really like this picture SiewLian took of us having a discussion.. I look like some smart-ass, wei.. cool!

posted by Sha @ 6:29 PM 3 comments

Sunday, August 26, 2007

It's finally over

I passed my exams!! Yahoo!

This semester was the worst semester ever.

Coffee tastes good when you study. But who knew they can give you a hang-over the next morning?

To put it simply, being a final year medical student is hard work. To make things worse, this semester made me realise how much bad luck I can get. If I had a nice examiner who gave As to students in exams, I had to have the bad luck of having a difficult case to clerk or being totally unprepared for the exam due to a change in schedule.

Actually, when I think about it, it's really all my fault. I just didn't work hard enough.

Trying to study multiple postings at the same will drive you crazy

So when finals started creeping up and I had to learn everything from surgery to internal medicine to family medicine to psychiatry to orthopaedics to paediatrics to obstetric & gynaecology to ENT to ophthalmology to dermatology to emergency medicine to radiology to anaesthesiology in 2 weeks, I thought, "Die."

I thought long and hard about what to put in this entry after having a long 'blogging-constipation'. I could tell you how I studied. Naa.. Bo-Ring. How the exam went? What's so different with this exam and every other exams?

I think the real challenge this time was the test within myself. After bad luck after bad luck, it's only natural that I'd be scared of the finals. My head kept saying, "You'll fail. You weren't good enough before this. You're not good enough now." Batchmates were having nightmares of failing the exam. A batchmate had this funny dream of a professor failing her and he was wearing a green shirt in her dream. On the day of the exam, she got him as an examiner and he was wearing a green shirt! Talk about God having fun messing with our heads at stressful times.

JennYi, Azman and CheeYoong: Would you trust them with a scalpel?

At one moment during my many panic attacks, I wanted to yell really loud, "OH *%#$ !!"

Heehee.. I ended up just yelling, "GOD, DO SOMETHING!!"
God decided to make my radio play Avril Lavigne's "Hey-hey-you-you.." song, which by the way, made me laugh. Like I said before, He has a weird sense of humour, but I guess He knows what works and what doesn't.

I'd rotate this picture.. but it's refreshing to see Z and Jenn from this angle.. heehee

Anyway, in the end, I had my bad luck turn into good luck in the finals. I could answer most of the questions and on the last night, I was happy enough with my performance that I was willing to spend all night clubbing in Trilogy.

SiewLian to Azman: Faster share the Maggi-lah! My brain needs energy!

But that still didn't stop my heart from going into palpitations as we waited for our results the next day. God, it's wonderful when you learn that all the hard work was worth it in the end.

Hady being the O&G specialist, me being the stressed-out maniac.. don't ask me why there's a huge jug in front of me.

I couldn't have done it without my posting-group mates, study partners (Azman, CheeYoong, JennYi, Z, sometimes KarSeng, sometimes Hady), other batchmates, my father and lastly, God. Thanks guys! Thank you JennYi and SiewLian for letting me come by your condo so often to study and use your laptops and internet! And thanks for cooking dinner for me too.. *hugz*

"Often we define success by the accolades we receive, but success is really a state of mind, one that acknowledges your abilities before anyone does. Knowing that you can accomplish a task and doing it is already success, However, when you get that pat on the back, the satisfaction makes success all the more complete, and sweeter."

posted by Sha @ 10:01 PM 2 comments

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Name: Sha
DOB: 6th July
Email: shasynergy@gmail.com

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