there must be a conspiracy going on in Dundee...
had my biggest ward round ever yesterday. 13 people! can you imagine? once we draw the curtains around the patient's bed, there's barely room for anyone else. and guess what? out of the 13 people, 9 were foreigners! there must be some conspiracy going on! the consultant was a french (i think), and then you get a couple of Indian registrars and JHOs, then an Italian or French SHO and then of course me & Sheng Yeeng the 2 lost Malaysians. and all along I was wondering, Dundee must be sucking the rest of the world dry of their medical talents.
but seriously...13 ppl in one ward round is just too much. i could barely hear what the consultant was saying or doing to the patient. got quite fed-up after a while. and it didn't help either that most consultants/specialist registrars/SHOs here look right through the space we're standing as if we're just thin air. hello?? Medical student who's paying £18800/yr for your teaching standing here. and yes, you'll be telling me: Aiky, make yourself visible and tell the consultant you're there and get some teaching! yea right...try doing that! the atmosphere during the ward round is so tensed i could feel my eyes popping out. no one smiles. there's no time to stop for you to ask questions. even the JHOs don't utter a word. only SHOs, registrars reporting to the consultant. urgh. can't wait for this week to be over and i'll be done with this Surgery block.

i'm starting to have this dreaded feeling that i'm gonna hate this profession more and more. remember how before you enter IMU, you tell the interviewer :oh i want to be a doctor because i am compassionate towards patients, i want to relieve their suffering, i want to save the world...yadah yadah all that kinda crap? yeap, that's nothing more than 100% crap. somehow, i just don't see the nobility of being a doctor anymore. 1st you slot as a JHO, then you slot somemore as an SHO, then you SLOT SOMEMORE as a registrar (and all this while, having a consultant to report to and always watching your back for fear that you'll do something wrong causing a patient's condition to deterioate) and then after all that hard work, you finally get to be a consultant. how boring. oh well...already in 4th year...no turning back. if God didn't mean me to be here, he wouldn't have brought me this far.

my brains are failing me in a tremendous speed. i can't retain stuff in there anymore. i'll read about this drug today and the next day i can't recall anything about it at all. and i lack a lot of basic medical knowledge. i think the Dundee professors who did the PMS ranking will be cursing themselves for having chosen me once they realise how little i know. it gives me the shudders how i'm gonna survive this 2 yrs. but as Si Peng said: trust in God, believe in the theory of SOMEHOW.

anyway, depressing thoughts aside, i had a good weekend with extended LOTR dvd version marathon. was great fun watching it in the comforts of our own Nine Castle living room with great company, cozy couches, lotsa junkfood downstairs in the kitchen, and Lena shouting in excitement & sobbing at the right moments to add some extra flavour to the movie.

oh yea...i've developed this thing called Consultant Phobia Syndrome, CPS. they scare me. they're like the Nazgul, the Death Eaters, the Dementors. i freeze in front of them. the cause is idiopathic and of sudden onset. i was never afraid of HT or FA or TS back in IMU. but you should have seen the state i was in before my case presentation last week in front of my consultant supervisor. but thank God, it ended well. 'A Good Case Presentation' he commented. will blog about it the next time.