lost in translations

Relieve is

slipping your feet into the soft soles Nike pair after one whole day of dreading them in the painfully dashing stilletoos


Irony is

watching the next top model wannabees while finishing the thick slice of creamy chocolate cake from the weekend without a single guilt


Comfort is

the thought of what tomorrow might serve


Guilt is

losing the fight between righteousness and self-ego plus tiredness


Love is

the mental image of Aya with broom in her hand and towel on her neck imitating Bibik's daily chores


Emptiness is

eating nice dinner while watching nice movie all alone cracking potential jokes with your potential friends only in your head


Confused is

missing people unnecessarily

Sunday musings

I break the record of not blogging everyday like I did last week. I'm sure nobody missed me that much anyway. He he.

Nothing really new happened. 2 patients died under my care, one elderly man with heart failure passed away peacefully while I was asleep in doctor's res last week. He was NFR (not for resuscitate) status anyway. Another lady died last night. A known patient to me, background psych patient, NFR too, she was under my care for a week when her oxygen saturations went haywire and she stopped taking all her medications. She desaturated to 60% the night I was on-call, it took me the whole night to look after her, ordered CXR, ECG, tried to calm her down despite nearly giving myself a needle-stick injury when she struggled after I jabbed her wrist for ABG blood. I will remember her last moment in health when she was knitting a very nice green coloured table-cloth in her isolation room.

A friend was consoling me about her death, saying there was nothing I could do when her time comes. I begged to differ, there's always something that I could amend in managing her from the beginning. I could've been more thorough and thoughtful. Though it won't change anything, I learned my lessons through this one. A blessing in disguise you say..

Well it's Sunday again. I am in rebound of my past happy hours activity. Cooking, it has always been. Though this time there are less mouths to be fed, I am one happy feeder nonetheless. Yep I miss home, but I have to move on.

Issue 1: Please next week come running!
Issue 2: Am I allowed to be turned on watching Transformers? zzzZZ hot!

Sunday blues

I woke up today feeling very empty. And FYI I'm like this every weekend, before I pretend to make myself busy and head up to the city center.

I think I miss waking up on the weekends in my old flat with the sound of Yanie in the kitchen cooking mee goreng for breakfast. I took that for granted for too long, now that I'm here I miss the familiarities of the old place with the familiar old people. I haven't ate any noodles/pasta eversinced I moved here. The mojo's already gone.

Don't get me wrong, I like the new place, a much bigger place to accommodate just 2 people. It's just that I'm slowly adapting to the new foreign air here. I kinda miss the comfort silence my old flatmates and I shared, the mutual understanding we have in terms of social space, the dishes each one of us mastered cooking in, the laughters from the jokes that only us can understand, the friends that crashed the place over the weekends. Well yeah, people come and go, I know I shouldn't have stucked to the past.

Somebody just told me to get engaged/married soon to heal this blues. That I'm not a student anymore and it's logical that I'll feel this way on the days I'm not working as long as I'm single. Well you certainly have a point. But my point is - kalaula cari laki tu senang macam beli ikan kat pasar.. I'm sure there are men everywhere, but to find 'the man' is not easy.

Like Neesa said, semua ni jodoh Tuhan yang tentukan..

Happy weekend, mine's full of blues..

I need a hug

and a good sleep..

p/s: post call

I miss you today

What do you usually do when you miss someone?

Myself, it's always logical to do what the person I'm missing love to do. That way I feel as if he/she's closed to me, though in reality he/she isn't.

Like when I'm missing mom, I always go and eat something orangy, like Jaffa cakes or Terry's Chocolate Orange. You know the way old people think that chocolate can only be mixed with orange as the other flavour. That's my mom. She always go for chocolate with orange, like Zip Orange, or Crispies Orange, or Kit Kat Orange. Never strawberries or raspberries, what more mints or anything like that. Which I think is cute. And I always feel closed to her whenever I enjoy my Jaffa cakes or Terry's from here.

As for dad, I feel him when I'm most simple. My dad is the simplest person on earth. He grew up in a difficult time, being the eldest in his family. A lot of sacrifices, even to raise us being what we are now. So when it comes to food he's not fussy. So I miss him most when I eat soup or anything very simple.

Do you ever smile on your own when a song is on the radio and your thought went away to meet the people who love the song? I do that a lot. Like when I miss my friends, the closest ones from matriculations, I listen to SO7's. Always helps. And few people that I know what their favourite songs are. I even have an album in my iTunes entitled 'Adik's Favourites'. And those will be full of R&B, Soul, Pop, the types youth nowadays love to listen to (and my bro always had out loud on the radio in his room). And another album with Alleycats', The Carpenters', ABBA's, for the big sis.

Today I'm missing Maryam my old friend from the middle-east. I went to the bakery near the hospital entrance and bought viennese whirl. That used to be her favourite. I never actually seen her having anything else from there other than the viennese.


My favourite would be the coffee square, but I bought this one instead and ate it on the way home. It felt like Maryam, it really was.

And what would you do when you miss your Creator?

So it's logical too that performing solahs and reciting the Quran are the best things to do for that. And hopefully that won't be wearied till I blow my last breath. Amin.

I come in peace

You see, I literally live beside the hospital. Literally coz though the apartment is really just beside the hospital compound, I have to walk out to the main road and walk in the hospital again, coz there's a gate just parallel to the way. People used to climbed over the gate for a short cut but now the path is already closed off with trees and all. Who knows what's in there now.

So everyday I have to walk out and in again. The whole walk takes about 10-15 mins on days when I wake up late and had my sloppiest un-ironed tudung and shirt, but usually 20-25 mins on days of shining natural radiant beauty and youth (muaha).

The thing is, almost half of the population of the Woods (the compound where I live) are health care workers of the hospital. The funny thing is three quarter of them are non-Irish. Today I crossed the big field to go home and noticed there were more Rajus and Sanjits than Davids or Marks playing football on the field (probably few Raveenas and Preetis on the field side holding water bottles for their beaus). The he.

And I bet a group of them are the nurses I must've ignored, didn't answered bleeps of, gave my cold replies and probably bitched to (probably I said). Don't blame me, if you wanna know I'm one of the nicest junior doctors with fair replies. Ask my colleagues how many bleeps they've ignored. And it's not like we're drinking coffee all day in the cafe ok.

Now I'm calculating, what are the chances that they don't make a pack and burn my apartment down for what I've done to them?

Man.

i just need to talk to you

Judging by the progress of work, I probably won't have to stayback till late to finish my work anymore. Hurray! Tima kasih la semua yg memberi semangat utk terus bejuang..hehe. That means the blog will be updated quite frequently now and it also means that I'll continue to bore you with my random thoughts I have post-hospital hours, just whatever I feel like writing once the bottom meets the comfy bed. Feel free to click the X button on the top right if you're bored and if you feel like I don't make sense of words anymore.

There's a new locum consultant in the team. The good thing is I know him really well. I was in the last batch of students he taught in the other hospital when I was in my 3rd year, before he left for M'sia to teach in Penang. Now he's back. Yay! The first thing I said to him when I met him was,

"Dr __ , you used to teach me in 3rd med. I still remember your 9 steps of auscultation of the heart you taught me!"

Thinking back, I would love it if my students say that to me, not in a boasting way of course but in an appreciative kind of way. That's why I think I'm gonna end up teaching in one of the hospitals at home. Can't wait!

We had a meeting with Big Boss regarding research as well. We're working on a really cool research (from my point of view), on analyzing pre- and post-call hand-eye dexterities and co-ordinations amongst the doctors and the surgeons. The results would be very interesting, one of it says an idea whether one is more suitable to be a surgeon or a physician. Cool aa?

You have a great day oowwriiiteee!

what's the craic?

First of all, I was just messing down there. The SHO is a sweet-talker big time. And the picture of my uncle the bilal of Kg Alor Gajah in Melaka giving me advices before I left M'sia for the first time 5 years ago, about never forgetting our roots and culture/ethnic keeps playing in my mind like a continuous film on a replay each time I was going near this whole Grey's Anatomy mode. Thank you bapak, I'll never forget your wise advices! Damn it I know that show is contagious!!

Well the weekend was well spent. In both ways; time and money. I had a good craic with friends, sharing stories about work and bitching about people. He he kidding. There's new Dunnes Stores (equivalent to Jusco in M'sia, smaller maybe) being opened in Henry St and they sold everything at half-price. When I say everything I mean EVERYTHING. So kalau mende tu 30sen jadilah dia 15sen kan!

People went mad, so did I. You could hardly find anything on the shelves, semua sapu bersih! I took the chance to buy stuff for home; new sets of mugs, tall glasses, baking tins, BBQ grills, vases, paper flowers. One time I realized that I was talking with an old lady about how things cannot go wrong when you buy a set of 18 tall glasses for EUR4! And a set of fancy mugs for EUR2!! And then I realized that I was indeed been really talking like a real adult, to people mostly more than double of my age! Oh geez..see how the work is accelerating my aging process. They said you should mingle with younger lads to stay young forever. I probably have to agree that..

So it's Monday again, and I'm back to work. The sun's out and the day has been smooth. Probably the barakah of 1st of Rejab, some things I thought would go wrong went right in the end. 2 weeks really flew, and it's gonna be a month in no time. Thank you Allah, for the correct hunches to poke in needles into the right veins, for the successful IV cannulas, for the quick ABG samples, for the smooth CXR and CT Scan requests, for the free tuna and egg sandwiches for lunch, for the sun and the air I breathe..

the room is in utter mess but I don't care, coz it's weeeekeeeennd!!

What would you do if your SHO told you that "You were in my dream last night. I told you that - You're nice. I think I even said it out loud in my sleep."

Do you;

a) keeping the cool, and ask back, "What was I doing at that time?" ---- sizzling!
b) stare down to your scrambled eggs and beans, pretending you didn't hear what he said
c) laugh out loud like a mad person
d) cough as if you've choked your beans and run to get the water and never come back


Ha ha just to heat this place a bit. Nayyy..I'm just elated that it's weekend!!

Oh sweeeeeeeeettt weeeeekennnnddddddddd.......

On another note, I began to realize the satisfaction of work that came from seeing how happy your patients are to leave the hospital in full good form. They thank you like you've really changed their lives (although you know you're only involved a tiny bit in the whole treatment process). They kissed your cheek and expressed how pleasant they are having to meet you, they gave you chocolates as their token of appreciations, and they promised that they'll see you again soon, not in the hospital hopefully.

For those, really lifted the heavy burden of long hours of working.

Happy weekend peeps!

akhirnya dapat ku pulang sebelum pukul 8

I've been working solid hours 8AM-9PM for the past few days. It's killing me slowly (and I'd definitely claim the extra hours without a doubt!). It's so happened that this month I'm covering the ward for daily admissions, so on top of doing the work for my team I'm also doing admissions for the patients who came to the ward for any procedures the next day. And being me (slow), I tend not to rush things around, take my little chats with the patients and end up going home late. Padan lah muka kan!

The SHO has been very sweet, asking me to go home at 5PM and leave the late admissions to the interns on-call. Today he even dragged me out of the ward and chased me away. I walked back in anyway. He accused me of being workaholic. I wish I am though. I'm just slow, and it'll be soon for him to realize that. But don't you just hate sweet-talkers with cute face? I'll be reminding myself before I go to bed at night that he has a girlfriend already, and that I am a good Muslim (trying to be) and as my patient was saying the other day, "This is no Grey's Anatomy..". He he. Well I probably won't have to do that as it'll be only few seconds after I put my head onto the pillow that I'd go completely unconscious anyway.

The first deadly on-call was last Sunday. It was deadly indeed! Nobody died under my care don't worry. It's just that I was never so exhausted in my life. From early morning I was running up and down the wards trying to settle the list of jobs that seemed to be expanding every minute. If my bleep could talk I'm sure it'll be cursing all the way.

Starting 9AM, I only got my 30 minutes rest for prayers and lunch/dinner at 6PM, interrupted with bleeps as usual (somehow they just loooove my number), and continued working till 3AM at night. By then my mind was going haywire, I was so grumpy I swear I was so close to kick the next person's calling me for jobs' ass. I mean I understand we are all concern about the patients and they're our first priorities. It's just that when you're darn tired and you know you have to wake up at 6AM for your early morning bloods and you only got to sleep at nearly 4AM, how could you not feel like eating human flesh when you've got a bleep in the middle of your restricted sleep to go up to the ward to do an ECG on a patient who's asleep, no chest pain, but just that IN CASE he'd have one coz he has a previous heart attack years ago and the nurses thought that you might wanna check that, just IN CASE, at 5 in the morning!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhh, retardddddddddddddddddddsss!!!!

I didn't go up don't worry.

Few calls after that one to resite an IV cannula on this patient who apparently was well, been eating and no problem swallowing, just that the team who looked after him put him on 24 hours slow fluid to maintain hydration. The nurse said something like this when I asked questions about the condition of the patient over the phone, "Oh, it's the protocol that if the IV cannula is out that the intern has to come up and resite it. If you don't want to and if something happens to the patient then you'll take the full responsibilities!"

Anootherrrr retarddddd....

No one will die from not having a slow infusion of fluid for the next 2 hours of his/her life, well definitely not this patient anyway!

Did I yell at her back? Of course not (she yelled at me over the phone). Instead I just calmly said that I will take the full responsibilities and I will go up at 6 to do the IV line when I do the bloods later. When I did go there, I could feel flames coming out from my ears upon seeing the patient was happily singing in the bathroom while taking his shower, apparently not dead as the nurse would picture earlier. I gave the nurse my 'jelingan berbisa' before leaving the ward.

Again, I could understand it's their jobs to fix things in the ward, but please be considerate over things that are not emergency. The doctors need their sleep, we have to continue working the next day for another 12 hours before we can rest again. So, again, please be considerate. You're saving yourself and myself, from cursing people (from the inside), which I don't like. Well I'm not doing any generalizations, I agree there are a lot of SUPER nurses around too.

Oh that's enough whining from me. Like the SHO said on Monday when we were all tired from the post-call, "I sometimes hate my job, it's frustrating, tiring and dangerous for us and the patients. I'm just tired. And I'm a grumpy b**t**d I know. Can't help it though.."

We have our bad days I'm sure..

life is a roller-coaster ride

I was at the edge of my frustrations yesterday. It started with failed attempts of taking bloods, one after another, that took me the whole morning to recover from the frustrations. Then from there the workloads kept building up, and more frustrations, and more works, and more frustrations hit. I didn't have any break for food or pee, and I even missed the compulsory interns tutorial. One more push I probably had surrendered and wasted all the built up passions I've been having all these while. Luckily I managed to swallow it all, painfully, and leave it as it was. I know that yesterday was not even close to be called one of the bad days in my career. So I slept all the troubles away and hoped to wake up to a new day.

I did.

Today was a total turnover. Bloods drawn out on most first attempts, 3 successful arterial bloods, 3 successful referrals to the physiotherapy, social worker and occupational therapy, an IV line in, and again, a medical student to do the Serial Data for my patient who had chest pain. I managed to pray zuhur earlier, and lunch was salad of olives and feta cheese! Been waiting for this a long time now!! So I can proudly smile at the end of the day and say my gratitudes to Allah SWT for if not for Him I wouldn't be able to survive this all along. Alhamdulillah.

Life is indeed a roller-coaster ride. One time you're flying high, you've your adrenalines all shooting to the roof, and the next you find yourself at the bottommost of the playground, inhaling the dusts and dirts of the system. But you know you're gonna be up again later, and the cycle shall continues. Interesting ain't it?

Few tips to share with the intern friends out there. I know you're (the ones who'll be working in M'sia) all be laughing at me for my not-even-up-to-M'sian-busy standards of daily job, but I guess some of you might benefit the experience I'm sharing here. Feel free to apply!

1. Always make a good rapport with the patients. Go and see them, ask how are they feeling now, did they sleep well last night (they won't usually, layan je la hehe), how's the food like, touch their hands when you talk to them, give comforting words (without overdoing one), etc. At least if you have failed attempts of bloods/IV line, they'll know that 'the nice lady doctor has tried her best to do her job and not hurting me as much.' Although you're da*n sure that you had hurt them pretty badly!

2. Know your colleagues from other departments. Nurses, physiotherapists, the technicians from the radiology departments, the porters, anyone at all. Respect them regardless of their level and jobs, call them by their first names and give your sweetest smiles to them (be sincere though! he he). They'll make your life much easier, and you can take my words for this!

3. Get dressed for success! The first day I was all ready to put up my best first day impression outlook. Wrong day for a fancy pair of shoes! Few cinderella moments occured when one shoe fell out of the foot to the bottom stairs while I was trying to cut time short by jumping up 2 stairs at one time. No luck that day, there wasn't any prince charming to pick up the shoe for me. I must be dreaming. The second day I was back to my best red Adidas pair. Cinderella moments no more! The point is, no one really care for your look, it's the speed and your comforts that matter! (looks like I'll have 2 pairs of stiletto heels I won't be using, at all!)

Cinderella lar konon..

I'll leave it to those 3 for the moment. Cheerios!

BTW, my physiotherapist happens to be someone who can pass for a role of the next Superman. And yep, I mean this! :p

my bad IV lines day

I had a hunch that Day 2 won't be as smooth as the previous day. I was right. Today is my official bad IV lines day.

Day 2 marks;

1. 2 patients cried after 2 attempts of putting 2 IV lines failed miserably
2. the lukewarm air between me and the Intern is in fact getting warmer, in a bad way that is
   
3. I need more speed, desperately, too slow today, bad bad!
4. the orientation is still bad, got lost trying to find the way out after sending blood cultures to microbiology. Women, heh..
   

Probably few good things;

1. better rapport with staff each day
2. getting better at doing new admissions and ordering tests
3. growing confidence
   

I started having the headache even before noon, gradually worsen throughout the day and was at worst around 3-4pm. Then it magically disappeared once I went home and had a nice peaceful shower and dinner. I diagnosed myself of having hypersensitivity reactions towards the Intern, to add up on my hypersensitivity lists. He's my official contender. I'm in no competition, doesn't mean that I'd let his little holier than thou game going on. 3 words for him, bring it on!!

Another pat on the back, I survived Day 2! Alhamdulillah..

Day 1: SURVIVED!

I don't know about you guys, but I look forward to writing this entry for a long time now (just as a proof at the end of today that I'm still breathing allright) . So people, I SURVIVED THE FIRST DAY OF WORK! *woooot wooooot* ALHAMDULILLAH!

So for the sake of future entries on workstuff, I will from now on address the following people as follow;

1) Consultant: Big Boss

Tall, broad shouldered, fatherly look, most inspiring when teaching also when giving advices, big into cystic fibrosis (I mean really BIG, like got referral from the States for advices), away on holidays this week!

2) Registrar: Small Boss

Moderate height, curly burgundy hair, mostly Irish features, talks very fast, works very fast, means business everytime, but a nice person overall, I see a future hope as a good mentor.

3) Senior House Officer: SHO

Small for a guy, cute Irish accent, smooth and kind, good teacher, a 2nd year SHO at 24 years old (I envy him!!), dating another cute SHO for 5 months now (first day gossips)

4) Intern*

Tall and lean, diagnosed himself with ADHD, talks too fast, jittery and sweaty most of the times, big into philosophy, the cute SHO my current SHO's seeing (up there) is his recent ex (I thought this will be too awkward, but they seemed OK with that. Man now I think they're just an awkward bunch. What a world!)

*not too confuse people but I'm also an intern and he's my teammate, but from now on if I mention intern that'll be him unless stated otherwise

So today was smooth sailing for a lot of us, mainly because we were sh*t like scared the day before so prepared for every possible outcomes for today. As for myself, other than mentally rehearsing the procedures (putting IV lines, taking bloods) times and times again in my head the night before, I was left with prayers and hopes that I'd pass through the day fine. God answered my prayers for the first day of work, I passed the day allright. Alhamdulillah. The Small Boss was most understanding, giving us chances and time, allowing first few hiccups and led us through. The SHO was the cutest teacher I'll ever have. He's too kind. Nuff said. Well those are on the first day impression basis.

If you asked how it feels like being a doctor, well the first ward round I had with the team part of me was still playing the med student's role, like a space-cowboy most of the times, minds everywhere till the Small Boss mentioned about things to order then only I grabbed hold of my thoughts and decided that I needed to keep in focus. One time the nurse called out loud "Doctor!" and I turned to my back and searched for the doctor she was looking for, till I realized that she was actually calling for me, the Doctor! God it felt awkward in the beginning really!

So first day went allright. First IV line put in with no difficulties, first few bloods taken, first consent with the help of some medical students, you get me right, first day as a doctor I've already had the students doing consents and physical examinations for me haha. Big bully am I? No I think they'll learn a lot that way. I did when I was a student anyway.

And not to forget the kind-hearted nurses who had mercy on me on my first day of work. I think I explained myself best from the anxious and nervous face I had all day which managed to fish out sympathies most of the times. Muchas gracias! It was no play, I was in fact sh*t like nervous. OK no swearing I know.

So outcomes and plans after surviving Day 1

1. work faster
2. manage the time better in order to be able to pray zuhur earlier
3. keep up the good rapport with the staff
4. avoid backbiting
5. keep the friends close, and the enemies closer he he
6. work harder and keep things steady and low at the same time

At the end of the day, I'm just plain grateful that I'm still breathing. Thanks to Allah..