An old adage that never gets old. Those were the words our clerkship director J left us with on our first day of clerkship before we ventured out to the affiliated hospitals – right after warning us that it’s going to be a very tough 8 weeks to come and we should be mentally prepared for it. Maybe because of that, I was expecting the worst, and that made the past 8 weeks seemed bearable, enjoyable even, if I daresay. Now that surgery clerkship is over for a week, I’m having withdrawal symptoms. For one, it’s so strange to be able to go home before 6pm. The day is still bright when I leave, imagine that! But. Not that I’m complaining. 😛

Onto 4 weeks of neurology now. Brains and spinal cords. So far we’ve seen quite a number of stroke patients, some Parkinson’s, a relapsing MS but could potentially be an optic neuritis case, a nutrition related neuropathy, and a chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (yep say it really quick 3 times and you’ll sound very smart lol). Apart from surgery, this is another one that I’m interested in. We’ll see if I still think the same at the end of the clerkship. I do have quite a fair bit to share on surgery though, but that’ll have to wait. For now, lots to review before the beginning of another hectic week. Till the next post, adios! 

That’s what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks.

No, not really. Not so much of rumination, I don’t think, but a lot of other stuff. I was told we’ll be seeing patients with all sorts of psychiatric problems- it’ll be interesting! Can’t wait, even though a part of me is nervous about starting my first rotation in psychiatry. Psych, of all rotations! They say it can be mentally draining, and I’m sure they’re right. But this is what we’ve all been waiting for- to learn at the bedside, to speak with patients, to try to understand them and their diseases, and to talk to them hoping that our words may provide some sort of comfort. Now that it’s happening, I really don’t care which rotation I’m starting with.

Tomorrow we will begin our day with ward rounds with the care team. The hospital I used to visit with my grandmother when I was a small girl seemed to have changed so much. I don’t remember much of it, but the fragments that I do remember, I can’t find them there anymore, except for the distinct smell of a hospital. In a way, it’s not a bad thing to have little to no memory about the place, because then I can build new ones without having anything else shadowing it. This will be my new ‘home’ for the next year, and we’ll see how it goes.

So! As I mentioned in the last post, we’re having our Transition to Wards course right now, and we’re almost at the end of our second week. Last week we focused on Basic Life Support, learning CPR, EKG interpretation, and how to handle emergencies / acute care in a hospital setting. There were many sessions of acute care simulation; each scenario is different from the others, each one has many learning points. There is the communication component of it, and then the clinical acumen part of it. So much to learn, absorb and internalize, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to allow all this to intimidate self, but I know, too, that the point of all this is not to scare us but to give us an idea of how it’ll be like in the wards and what we’re about to face. The goal is to equip us with a set of basic skills and a sense of the real setting so we don’t feel like we’re being thrown into the lion’s cage without any warning. In this sense I feel the TTW course has accomplished its goal. This week the focus was on medico-legal information and bioethics, the latter being one of my interested areas. End of life care, informed consent, truth telling, confidentiality etc. All of this is just so… messy. There’s no clear-cut answer to all situations, and every situation is different. Some people don’t like it, but it’s precisely why it’s so interesting to me. This is the humanity part of medicine, and it’s one of the main reasons why I’m doing this. I just hope I don’t get all jaded by the end of housemanship…

Some photos taken during phlebotomy and scrubbing sessions. Was too immersed on practicing instrument tie and two-handed knot I forgot to snap shots of my ugly sutures. Next time maybe. 🙂

Day after day after day, we do the same thing, repeating the same routine, not realizing time has passed by so quickly. Can’t believe one and a half year has gone by since we first stepped foot onto this interim campus, becoming the first students of this school. But now- look where we are! End of GTS courses! It’s a bittersweet feeling that I have. Glad it’s over, felt it’s a tiny milestone we’ve accomplished; yet a little sad it’s ended. No more sitting so closely with each other, no more passing snacks/cookies around during class to help wake us up, no more complaining about terrible cafe food, no more sneaking food into classroom to eat. I’m going to miss being in this class, with this group of people.

The perks of being the ‘first’ – be it first child in the family, first in class, first batch of a new burgeoning med school etc. – is that you get special attention and care; you get to try everything firsthand; you get to explore, discover, and set benchmarks. The downside of it is that you probably have a certain invisible expectation to live up to.

On 21st of September, 2012, we held our white coat ceremony, a ritual that many medical schools in the US (perhaps also some dental, pharmacy, physical therapy schools etc.) keep, to mark the student’s transition from preclinical studies to the beginning of the journey of becoming a clinician. Most schools have it on the first day of medical school, but we have ours on the beginning of second year, as do our affiliated school in Baltimore, mostly because the school finds it more apt to robe us with the white coat after getting through a full year of medical studies and having some exposure in the clinics. As we start our second year of studies, we would appreciate the significance of the white coat more so than before, knowing that the journey has only just begun, and the path is long and tough ahead, that we have the responsibility to not only take care of our patients but also ourselves.

Many, if not all, people wanted to be a doctor at some point in their lives, yet not everyone makes it. Of those who did, some stumbled into it and felt that it was a mistake, but had no choice (or so they think) but to trudge on. For the 24 of us here, though, we’re so thankful we have a second chance to achieve our dreams. And so on this day, we pledge our profession of values, using it as our guidance, our Polaris if you will, of our future conduct in our profession. Many thanks to all who made our dreams come true- friends, family, frenemies, etc. 😛