bonjour brightside

some people are overworked and underpaid. people like me are overworked and not paid.  

while  being in my final year necessitates me to behave like a junior doctor and be a part of the team, i feel like i’m swamped in paperwork and not learning much about my specialty rotation. it’s true that i can’t expect people to teach me much, since our team is tiny (just me, the resident and the registrar +/- consultant) compared to my previous team which was too huge (3 students, 2 residents, 3 registrars, 5 consultants).  i do try to absorb as much as i can while i’m on the ward, do as many procedures as possible etc., but running around to radiology chasing up CT reports and faxing requests to MRI is not my idea of learning. i would rather be stuck in ED admitting delirious patients than run around like a mad chook from department to department. on that note my registrar did make me admit 2 delirious patients in ED…… not fun at all because i thought i was gonna get hit(!!!!) but i’d rather be doing clinical work than paperwork.

it’s depressing cos i had such a great sense of achievement while i was in neurosurg…i would drag myself to ward rounds at 7am and leave at 7pm without complaint. over here i practically countdown to 5pm and hope i’m not stuck in some admission so i can leave as early as possible, because i feel like i’m undermined and condemned to menial administrative chores. ok i exaggerate, but the bottomline is: i don’t want to be brilliant at paperwork, i want to be a brilliant doctor!!!

last night i thought the neighbours were trying to jam a grand piano against my wall when i felt my house shake for 5 seconds, but facebook confirmed that other people felt it as well. a 4.7 richter scale magnitude of an earthquake! stupid plate tectonics.

enter Autumn (ie. March) and the start of freeze-ville! it’s still warm and the threat of bushfires remains imminent but it definitely is getting a little chillier, and i hope it stays that way… after that awful heatwave we had in January, i am officially siding with cool change. anyway i ended my neurosurgery rotation last friday and i was really sad!! i can’t believe how much i came to love it despite not being a ’surgical’ person and i have definitely learned heaps from being part of this awesome team. my new rotation, oncology, sounds a bit mehh after my glorious neurosurg days but i am definitely giving it a chance and hopefully the pace will pick up after a bit.. though i must say i was a little dismayed that the doctors don’t really read CT scans, they tend to click on the report and read it rather than view the scans…. and i was really dying to read the CT brains (because i learnt how to do so in neurosurg) but no one gave me a chance and this morning during grand rounds someone presented a case about brain lesions and i got the diagnosis right (because i actually could read the CT brain…..it is shocking how so few doctors can read a CTB decently) but anyway i was positively beaming!

so i was talking to a fellow fifth year whom i hadnt met before and she asked me what i was up to, and i said ‘Oncology’. to which she said ‘Oh. So you don’t diagnose… but you kind of make dying patients feel more comfortable…. right?’ can you believe how annoyed i felt upon hearing that? seriously. i can’t believe how people misconstrue what oncology is about. sometimes it may involve an element of palliative care but the fact is that most cancers are treatable and that is what oncology is about- curing cancer. i tend to get annoyed when all people think of when they hear the word ‘cancer’, is death. contrary to popular belief, not all cancer patients are dying patients. a sizable proportion of cancer patients make full recovery and actually go on to live to ripe old ages, and fyi more people die of heart attacks and strokes than cancer.

i guess i chose oncology as my specialty rotation because i wanted to gain a different perspective of medicine, and because i have an ambition to dispel the negative connotation of cancer among cancer patients and the general public. of course my other reason is because i owe it to oncologists that my father is still alive after 11 years of surviving cancer. my dad made it through cancer but he continues to suffer from the adverse effects of his radiotherapy…….. so my ever-inspiring aspiration is to help reduce morbidity after treatment and possibly make a positive contribution to every patient i see. another thing i wanted to comment about is that oncology is not ’sad’. for what it’s worth, i can say that a lot of the patients, even those with a bleak prognosis, have come to terms with their illness and don’t feel sad for themselves. i am constantly amazed at how ‘at peace’ they are with their situations and at the calmness at which they decisively refuse further treatment so that it gives them more quality time with family. i am even more amazed at how content they are with life and the fact that they are happy to have lived a full life….. if this is not inspiring… i dunno what is.