to you, who never judged, always tolerated my bugging
and embraced my weirdness
to you, on ur 22nd, let's go swim with fishies again ((:

I just sent the most excruciating email ever in my life. It took me forever to type it even though it was only three lines long in the end. Every word was carefully chosen so as to not seem too lacking in confidence, too unkeen or too arrogant all at the same time. My pulse rose ridiculously high for some unknown reason and I typed and retyped the email, each time saying something slightly different but with the same general idea to get across. Now that I've clicked the send button, all I can do is wait for your curt response, if you respond, that is. Oh, joy.

On a random chirpier note, I ate a patient's cake today! :D

Today, I met the chioest pair of shoes, ever. Utterly bimbotic, I know.

Yesterday was the start of my two week block of student-selected component (SSC), knowing me and my weird likings, I chose to do two weeks of the eye. When Max and I turned up at Royal Free, we met our consultant, Mr. A. We did not have a clue what we were meant to be doing for the next two weeks, especially when our assessment was just meant to be attendance, so we technically need to know what we need to attend so that we can actually attend it, right?

As it turns out, Mr. A had no clue either and being the laidback do-whatever-you-fancy kind of surgeon, his answer to our question of what we were meant to be doing for the next two weeks was "I guess if you are under me, you are meant to follow me. Whatever I do, you do. Basically, stalk me." He then proceeded to give us instructions on how to stalk him, meaning times and places where he supposedly will be - and hence, where we will be.

He told us to go to the Whit on Monday afternoon to attend some ocularplastic clinics, which I had completely no idea what ocularplastics was and it turned out to be just eye surgery which kind of touched more on the plastic surgery part of the eye, not so much eye diseases. Max cycled from Hampstead to Archway in the rain while I popped onto Rod's beloved C11 and barely made it in time for the clinic and the best part of it was - wait for it - Mr. A wasn't even there! So much for stalking him. Ocularplastics seemed kind of boring and I spent most of the afternoon helping the lady doctor transport her patients from wheelchairs to the consultation chair. It got really boring by 5 and the clinic didn't look like it was ending any time soon so Max and I made some lousy excuse and got ourselves out of there.

Today, the stalking continued as we waited for Mr. A to turn up for his clinic at the Whit. We were beginning to suspect that we had been sent on another wild goose chase but he eventually turned up. The chair for the patients at the clinic was incredibly wobbly and we spent a good half of the clinic trying to solve the wobbly chair situation and preparing to catch patients who could not keep balance (which proved quite tricky especially since many of his patients were obese diabetics on wheelchairs with an average age of 90 years old).

We went to surgery in the afternoon and witnessed the power of Mr. A and instantly realised how he can get away being the way he is. He had an average time of 15 minutes per cataract operation. 15 minutes! Swift, sleek, steadypompeepee. It is ridiculous. It took the registrar an hour to complete the same procedure. Madness. Oh, the operating theatre was so high tech, it was like a huge computer game. While Mr. A was using both hands for the surgery, his left foot was placed on what looked like a game console remote control box with a joystick to control the direction of the microscope camera that he was looking through and the right foot was stepping on this pedal that controlled the equipment on his hands. It looked so fun, but also looked like it requires a lot of hand-eye-foot coordination which I seriously lack. My brain and my feet are totally not connected, it makes me sad.

8am start tomorrow at the baby care unit, let the stalking begin.

This weekend was mainly about the new Woos and their sweet new ride.

Woohoo! ((:

"Wen-Ling, your surname is Woo, am I right?"
"Yup!"
"haha, not yet!"
-_________________-

Today has been a pretty weird day. I started the day by being hurled verbal abuse at by the phlebotomist who was venting his frustrations from another student on me. I was *this* close to tears and wanted to run out with my tail in between my legs but he later apologised for being unreasonable and it was all good in the end, albeit traumatising. All the way through being shouted at, I kept praying for calmness and indeed, calm was I.

I had another futile attempt at getting an assessment form signed off in the afternoon/evening-ish. I was told by the registrar to clerk a patient that I can use in my assessment and get signed off. Somewhere in between clerking the patient and the initial intended presentation to get signed off, I was swept off by theyap into clerking, presenting, bleeping then shouting at the biochemistry team to speed up with the blood results, checking up chest x-rays and ecgs, lending stethoscopes so my incompetence at completing physical examinations can be covered up for and after everything has been sorted and done, all the forms had been filled in and finally, handing the patient over to the on-take team. The main irony being that I did way more than what was needed to get signed off, yet I did not get signed off because I was so caught up with the job that i kind of forgot about the form. Even if I did remember the form, I probably wouldn't have pulled it out anyway because now that I think about it, it will totally ruin the learning experience.

In retrospect, although it seemed like I was thrown into the deep end, there was a safety netting to fall back on. Who better to review the patient with than someone who knew exactly how little medical students are capable of, experienced enough to basically, fill in all the gaps without making the medical student feel redundant and useless, yet being reassuring and pushing you to discover and develop your capabilities all at the same time.

That is one pretty damn amazing doctor.

I was on-take today and my whole day seemed to revolve around old(er) and very intelligent men. The 12 hour day can be divided into three main parts, each about 4 hours long.

The first part of the day was spent listening to this 36(?)year old, very straight-talking and amazingly smart man with a very dry sense of humour that I can totally relate to, lead a troop of doctors on an investigation to find out what's wrong with the patients who were admitted into hospital the previous day. Also, this meant that the n00b medical students were also thoroughly interrogated about anything and everything that comes into his mind ranging from 'why does metformin cause lactic acidosis?' to 'why does polo now produce fruity sweets and not just mints?'.

The second part of the day was spent cannulating arms with this 32 year old rather tall, dark and handsome man who previously had a degree in psychology, went on to work in M&S and eventually became a branch manager before he decided to go for medicine and that's how he ended up here. The session proved to be quite enjoyable but bloody. Rod once said that this man walks in a very irritating manner whereas I think this person has really to-die-for eyes! Sigh, why did he have to be gay.

The third part of the day was spent hunting down patients with this really really tall 45 year old man who is absolutely lovely. He was completely mortified when he said 'oh, i graduated in 1985 with my first degree in physics and chemistry' only to realise that I wasn't even born yet. He then went on to work a good many years in banking while thinking 'I should have been a doctor' which he eventually decided one day that that was precisely what he was going to do, quit his job and went to medical school. He has a 2 year old daughter and a wife he described as 'gorgeous and very petite'.

It is interesting how well I get along with people older than me. Maybe it's all the training from eating everyday with all the really seriously older uncles in JB. Medically speaking, today's take was rubbish. However, looking at it from a non-medical perspective, the take was absolutely brilliant. John was a pretty awesome partner and provided good entertaining company with his life stories. I sure hope i become more interesting as I age. From where I stand now, I am pretty much the most boring person on earth. Hurhur.

The reason why I haven't been blogging much is mainly because I don't have much time to do so and partly because I don't have much inspiration to blog. As much as I feel like I want to record every moment, every experience and everything I see, learn and do in the hospital, I don't want to bore the bejabbers out of this place by turning into medicgeekland.In addition, a lot of it will seem to pass off as mere whining and complaining which I personally have been making a conscious effort not to do. Don't get me wrong, clinics can truly be frustrating and everything can go wrong in a day which leaves you utterly demoralised, exhausted and very very hungry. This is all the 'hard work and personal sacrifice' that we were warned of when applying for medicine and it can only get worse from here. I'm glad I have Jesus. (:

A brief recap of the past few weekends (for me to remember!)

1) Saturday 18 October, Rosemary and Cubillas' wedding! (:

It was really beautiful, especially for me because I've seen this relationship right from just before it started and seeing it grow and them getting married was just that bit extra special for me. However, after attending the wedding, I now feel like I absolutely want to make it for jibaobao's wedding, by hook or by crook. Do you think I can convince the medical school to let me work around the exams I have during that period of time and fly to Singapore for the wedding? Pretty please? :(

2) Saturday 25 October/Sunday 26 October
Generally unremarkable, was on-take on Sunday 8am-8pm, spent most of Saturday after tennis and hog roast sleeping in preparation for the Sunday shift. I remember the start of Sunday was the weirdest ever. I was meant to be on-take with my firm mate, P.

At 7am, I received a text from him that said, "hey, when you finally get here, please come down to ISIS." That was the Sunday that British Summer Time ended, so I thought he forgot to turn his clock backwards by an hour and basically, reached the hospital one hour earlier than he was meant to. When i got to the hospital at 8am, I went down to the ISIS ward at A&E and there P was, messy haired, bulgey eyes staring at me from a hospital bed, in a hospital gown. He was admitted the night before with several symptoms and basically, in a septic shock with bp of 80/60 and pulse of 300bpm. It was funny the way he described how Khoon (who was on surgical take on Saturday night) tried to cannulate him claiming "I've done 6 cannulations today! Trust me, I can do it for you!", only to find upon further interrogation that he had a success rate of 1 out of those 6 patients. P then told Khoon to "F off and get the damn nurse to do it". Lol.

Since P was admitted into hospital and obviously not well enough to do the take, I was on-take alone on Sunday. The only annoying thing about being on-take on Sunday was the fact that I had to miss church. Other than that, it was quite a good day. I did not try to be funny like my other firm mates who went to try to clerk P! I did visit him with Marc and Charlie on Monday though. He was given a side room on the ward and basically, had a really nice room with a brilliant view. There, I realised I could see the emirates stadium, Gherkin, London Eye, UCH and Royal Free, all from the Whit! That has got to be the best room ever with the best view. P was discharged on Monday and basically, fit and well, since he threatened to have me for lunch (again).

3) Saturday 1st November - jb/concord-filled day; Sunday 2nd November
Firstly, Keith came for tennis! Shocku! In addition, he was the only punctual one besides me. Double shocku! I was very happy to see him. Secondly, it was bfb's birthday! However, due to obvious geographical difficulties, this part of the world did not celebrate for him. After tennis and hog roast (again, man I'm so going to die of CVD), I went over to Sam's place in the evening for dinner with Sam (duh), Zen, Chekkie, Suesue and Alvin. It was wicked awesome fun pigging out on meat gyozas and the sneaky taugeh filled gyozas and basically, having conversation topics that mainly hovered around bodily wastes (read: diarrhoea and vomit). Man, how I love talking about gross things over dinner.

On Sunday, Eujin was in London and we had lunch with him after church. It's interesting how he is now the youngest store manager in the South-east region and yet he is still the same cheeky monster. I guess we all have our professional 'work face' when the time calls for it.

That's three weekends covered. This weekend, I have absolutely nothing on for now, which probably won't last for long. The next few weekends look exciting, including a brother's registration and a possible ocf retreat. (: This post turned out much longer and waffly than I intended, I guess it is the innate ability to procrastinate at work again. On-take again tomorrow, I probably should bum off to sleep soon. Goose night! ((:

my richest gain I count but loss,

and pour contempt on all my pride.