Dr. Ghost is supposed to help you pass your exams. I am hanging it on my table lamp, hoping that it’ll help me. xp

And perhaps, treat sick people as well.

Study week is making me go crazy.

Happy studying, my friends. All the best!

As for now, I shall turn into a full-time nerd for the next 2 weeks.

All the best, my friends!

Should try the place out. =)

Ended up hanging out with friends, a lot. Got myself a gift that I wanted for such a long time.

Feel like a small kid playing with his new toy. Clicked a few times after getting bored studying. =)

Selamat Hari Raya, my friends!

Anyway, I presented a case of intestinal obstruction.

“My patient, a 52 year old lady presented with generalized abdominal pain with constipation for the past 2 weeks. She had sudden onset of intermittent colicky pain one hour after having a meal. It was associated with abdominal discomfort and constipation. She did not pass flatus for 2 weeks….”

My lecturer was shocked with my statement and asked, “Are you sure that she did not pass flatus for 2 weeks?”

I knew something was wrong. I recalled what the patient told me. I checked my notes. Yes, I wrote down –  no flatus for 2 weeks. I replied, “Yes.”

My lecturer laughed and said, “It is impossible not to pass flatus for 2 weeks. It is too long. It is either she is dead, or *pause*…. she is dead, or *pause*…. she is dying from it.”

Gosh, I was so embarrassed and was laughing inside, how stupid can I be. It was such a common sense thing and yet, I did not get it.

At the end of it, he said that my presentation was not bad. Just require some rearrangement.

Lesson learnt- pass flatus everyday, for a healthy bowel.

Enjoying surgery posting. =)

I am starting to think that medical school might just have robbed me of my social life. I have holidays when my friends in Klang are having classes or they are all over the world. As a result, I would be staying at home the whole time during my holidays. How sad can that be?

I really envy seeing friends post pictures of their daily lives and activities that they are involved in. Seems really interesting to me. Leshvind and Willis went for Bungee at Sunway and did not bring me along. I was so bored at home that time!

My parents are encouraging me to go travelling during my semester break. I am torn between going for a backpacking trip in a third world country or save the money for iPhone 4G. Even if I were to travel, I might consider travelling alone for the experience. Or perhaps, with a travelling partner.

Country in mind – Cambodia.

Let’s see how things go.

Then she reminded me about the day we went to the Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah (HTAR), otherwise known as Klang GH. We were there together for a hospital attachment, which was part of process of applying for the JPA scholarship in 2006.

She told me this, “We met an old aunty in one of the wards. You talked to her politely, ask questions about her condition and listened attentively. She had an AV fistula, which she showed you. You touched it lightly. She was feeling a little cold that time due to the air conditioner, so you covered her with a blanket. I could see that from then, you are going to make a good doctor.”

I was surprised that she remembered that event vividly, despite it happening 4 years ago. The only part I really remembered was when the patient told me to feel the turbulence in the AV fistula. I struggled to remember if I did the others.

This made me wonder, where has that part of me gone to?

If I am not able to do all those, giving sufficient attention to the patients despite being only a medical student, what more when I become a doctor in a future. I really need reminders like this, to wake me up, to make me realize that we need to treat patients as a whole and not as a disease.

Secondary school was the same. PMR and SPM were the targets. We were told to study smart – leave the unimportant things and work on the commonly asked questions. Again, it meant worked on the past year questions. I went through STPM, apparently known as one of the toughest exams in the world. There was a saying that once you have gone through STPM, university life will be a cruise. I was one of those who were fooled by this.

It was until I entered medical school that I realized what a b**ls**t it was. Pre-clinical school was very much theory-orientated, however, it was a lot different from SPM or STPM, whereby the objective questions did not require much thinking. I do not remember the exact term, but I believe it is something about first level thinking or something similar, which means, you only require one-step thinking or not at all. Simply put it, regurgitate what you have memorized.

I love the questions in pre-clinical school. They require multiple-step thinking. You can memorize everything in the textbook or lecture notes and still not be able to answer. During that time, the main reason we study is to pass exams, semester by semester and to enter clinical school.

It was until I entered clinical school that I realized the reason we have been studying all this while was wrong! We aim to pass exams, and to some, they had the fear of failing, fear of disappointing their parents, teachers, fear of losing to schoolmates, fear of not being able to enter a course of their choice.

It should be the fear of not knowing, not acquiring sufficient knowledge that drives one to work hard and gain as much knowledge as possible for the future career. This is very true for the field I’m in. We need to realize that we will be dealing with the lives of our patients. Thus, it should be the fear of disappointing our patients and not being able to help them that drives us to go to the ward each and every day, to learn as much as we can.

I have been on the wrong path since I entered medical school. Being a top student back in school doesn’t help in the process of learning. I was too engrossed in staying ahead in the course, too egoistic to lose out, that I have lost the true purpose of learning. I was not able to appreciate the process of gaining knowledge.

However, I am glad that I was made to realize this early in my medical school career. It is of course, a great help if all of us are reminded about this from time to time, the purpose of learning; it is not for us, not to feed our ego, but for our patients in the future.