For All it's Worth!

I've been meaning to pen something down for quite a while. But I was too caught up trying to keep up with my study schedule. For once in a very long time, I actually constructed a revision time table on an Excel spread sheet, specifically on the 6th of April which I called "My Race to the Finish".

Am I managing to stick to it? Not as much as I would like to. But it's there... As though I need it to remind me that after a tiring day of tutorials, ward rounds and seeing patients, I have to hit the textbooks.... That in exactly one months time, I would have already finished my surgery written and would be one hour into my medicine paper.

It's been like that for the past many years of my life (7+ years) that I feel like a ping pong ball bouncing from one desk bench to another, from one pack of notes to another and from one exam to the next (with a few, very intermittent, extracurricular activities in between). Devoting 90% of my waking time at home studying seemed like the natural thing to do...

Then came in the greatest procrastinator tool of all time... Facebook! Now, I don't have Facebook and don't intend to ever have Facebook, reasons for which require another blog post. But my other medicine friends who hang around with me in the library do, and they pay it a visit every now and again in between periods of study. (And on a very bad day, people study every now and again between very long periods of Facebook.)

Hearing them giggling stupidly at their laptop screens stirs up my curiosity and slowly, slowly I am lured into this display of photos and Facebook walls of people living a very different sort of life. During holidays and weekends, people go to parties, go on picnics and camping trips, go swimming in Easter (and sometimes even in February, you know, out of tradition). You get people making time to enjoy the sun, talking about the Pope and everything that's going on whilst I'm cocooned around the four walls of the hospital.

And people tag photos, type silly things on their Facebook walls... And I look at my books and ponder on the hours I spent with them and wonder to myself... At the end of the day, is it really worth it?

The Future of the Species...

The Heart: A muscular organ in the centre of the chest on which the future of the individual depends.

The Uterus: A muscular organ in the centre of the pelvis on which the future of the species depends.

As you can see... I'm studying gynae...

Thought I'd post these plush toys to keep me a little company as I read about how that cute looking uterus can be destroyed by tumour...

Quote No. 1

Just when I was asking what the hell I was thinking when I decided to become a doctor, I stumbled across this in my Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (my medicine text book)...

The pleasure of a physician is little, the gratitude of patients is rare, and even rarer is material reward, but these things will never deter the student who feels the call within him.

Theodor Billroth

Oh God! Talk about depressing! It can't be that bad surely... Or is it... ?

If anyone can supply my morale with Gatorade... Leave a comment...

Three Years Old

My blog is three years old today... with the first post being written on a Wednesday to herald the start of the Y4J Lenten talks Let's Face It back in 2007. And here I am typing the 80th entry today three years later.

Mind you, there was much to type and harp about these last couple of months, with the most tempting topic being the saga featuring the rattle snake Daphne Caruana Galizia crossing swords with the woman looking "like a cross between Worzel Gummidge and the back of a bus" i.e. Consuelo Scerri Herrera (a.k.a Consie). When the medicine and surgery starts getting dreary, I just find myself trying to get the latest scoop from her blog. Yes it's rude, crude, raw and quite off putting for some readers but I find the raw honesty and crudeness way too entertaining. Thank God there is no Wifi in our lecture rooms!

Then there are the more internal issues that people outside the world of medical school will find very boresome to read; and in my opinion, anything that doesn't keep people entertained is just not worth penning down at all! Thing is... Not knowing who your readers are makes it difficult to keep them entertained, isn't it? Blogs are usually faithfully followed by "friends", a word that I have to unfortunately use in inverted commas.

Friendships at medical school was something I never really had problems with (until recently). Friendships in community, admittedly, is a totally different matter for reasons that are numerous and multi-factorial (for example, me not turning up to meetings since before Christmas doesn't help the situation at all).

But now, with less than 3 months to go for the final exams, people at medical school really and truly change in the face of fierce competition... Including so-called "friends". I was lucky to have seen this coming from miles away. Any longsighted individual would have had a taste of "what is to come in 5th year" last year. All that had to be done was have Prof. Charles Savona Ventura dish out a logbook to a class of 60 students to complete in 7 weeks, and what do you get? Colleagues fighting and back stabbing each other over mothers giving birth as though these poor mothers are pieces of fish in a lake of killer whales... All so that they'll get their obstetrics and gynaecology logbook over and done with on time with the least amount of hassle (there would be pathology text books waiting for us at home).

And that was just a prodrome! Now, we're getting patients complaining that their abdomen has been palpated as though under a hand presser made of steel, just so that they can possibly get a feel for his small difficult-to-detect polycystic kidneys... Even if it has to take them 1.5 hours of the patients time and agony! Such students are few. The majority are quite a polite and considerate bunch. But unfortuantely, when they come with the best of their bedside manners, they would still be greeted with a disappointing:

"Ħaqq il-medical students li ħalaq Alla!"

And this wouldn't be from a typical Maltese qattani! Because when the house officer convinces the patient, "They just want to feel your loin. They have exams in 3 months", iż-żejt jitla’ f’ wiċċ l-ilma and his side of the story comes out as though he would have just been given three drops of truth potion.

There were other stories of the sort... like students crouching with their ophthalmoscopes seven at a time to see a poor blind man with Retinitis Pigmentosa whilst waiting for his transfer at an old people's institution. He was a very nice man but, fl-aħħar, he had had enough! And I don't blame him in the slightest! (Even though I didnt' get to see him.)

And your friend asks you for patients. You give him/her a couple. Then you'd expect him/her to return the favour. Wara kollox, kull qalb trid oħra... mhux hekk? And two things may happen...
1) Your "friend" may either just walk away and not give you anything.
2) Your "friend" will purposely send you the patients who are "social cases" with no findings, discharged a week ago or they send you to take a "good history" from someone who is deaf...

And this is just in a class of 57 5th years. I cannot even begin to imagine what the situation will be like in 4 years time when the 5th year class will be a 130!

Rant #1

It's the 2nd of February and my blog has been on stalemate for 2 months plus. Reasons? Miscellaneous... Including the fact that things got very hectic after the psychiatry module. Since that time I...

• Started and finished obs and gynae attachment
• Finished and handed in my obs and gynae logbook
• Celebrated Christmas and New Year's Eve/Day
• Went to one funeral of a dear friend
• Could have potentially gone to two others (including that of Prof. A. Cuschieri)
• Got my driver's licence :D
• Had a Family Medicine Exam in January (25th)
• Had my Foundation Programme job interview last Friday (wasn't that bad)
• Is close to finishing the surgery logbook as the list of tutorials piles on

In the meantime:

• Surgery revision lectures are practically over
• Obs and gynae revision lectures are also practically over
• All 5th years have the fear of God instilled into them for the upcoming finals in June

Yes, in 2 months we did all that and still... NO PSYCHIATRY EXAM RESULT.

This concerned many of us, so one member of the class took the initiative to send an email vis-à-vis when the psychiatry exam result will come out.

The reply?

"I cannot give you a straight answer when the result will be issued, but I can tell you that progress has been made and hopefully in the coming weeks, the results will be issued.

Warm Regards"

I give up!

I <3 the King!

Just thought of posting a summary on what this year's youth weekend was all about...



Now THAT is MY King! :)

The weekend was awesome! I honestly did not want it to end. And I just want to say a big thank you to anyone reading this post who made this youth weekend possible. Thank you. :)

RT: Practice Makes Perfect

Summer has been rather busy with so much work to get done before turning a new leaf and start my final year at Uni. For a first time in a long time, I was actually excited to get started this year. Though the pressure really is at its best as the finals draw closer with every passing day.

For people with a voracious appetite for knowledge, 5th year can indeed be exciting. But the worrying hearsays regarding the tribulations I'm going to have to endure have commenced already. In fact, at this rate, I'm just really hoping that by June they won't get the better of me (especially in front of Dr. Parveen Kumar as, apparently, it does you know favours; 'specially if you're female like me).

Most people say the practical component to the final exams is the core reason behind all this terror. Though, in all honesty, what's scaring me the most is what will happen later...

But let's not go there and not think so much long term. Exams are an overwhelming reality as is and they have to be tackled very judiciously due to the heavy practical/hands-on compnent to them. And as stated in this very striking poster that inspired me to write this...



Still, all practice and no theroy, like I discovered yesterday at casualty whilst trying to learn something, is like sailing an "uncharted sea". Putting it in modern English... you feel utterly lost and confused in your sea of patient complaints and medicine problems... You would be asked very intimidatingly... "Allura tabiba, how are you going to manage this lady?" But whilst summing up the affairs of your brain, you simply draw nothing but a blank...

If you ask me... I think that is what really is scary!