So the 8 weeks long surgery posting sort of ended today with my end of posting test. It was quite interesting and as usual, even with the knowledge and assurance that my examiner is extremely nice and that everyone passes, I was still unable to sleep th night before. Some weird mechanism in me I guess. Anyway, the test went smoothly and even though I missed a few things here and there such as a right iliac fossa mass which was almost non-existent and the history seemed rather vague, I thought it still went very smoothly even though I do not know the verdict (Pass? Fail?). With the debrief tomorrow, I guess I can say that I have completed the posting.
The 8 weeks posting was rather uneventful. Except for perhaps, the people factor. I made a few Tou Dai (disciples in Cantonese) through this 8 weeks. I am pleased that all (S, E and J) their cantonese actually improved by leaps and bounds with everyday speaking and listening to Mcdull as well as the infamous Snow White cartoon. haha...They can now hold meaningful conversations in Cantonese. The teachers are great at TTSH. Of course there is the fatherly figure PL who always asked if we are all right. Then there is my favourite American accented consultant DK as well as all our favourite registrar CWC. I think most of us, including myself are very inspired by this fine tutors who really leave an impact in our journey to be a competent doctor ourselves. My CG mates are fine, there is constant sharing and we will never leave each other behind. Just that, perhaps a little more chemistry could have been even better. Well, in life you can never ask for too much.
Alright, enough of positivity. Now for the negative parts. hahaha
Seriously, everyday, without fail, I feel so stupid. The immense amount of information just drowns a person. Coupled with a rather low confidence level, things become a vicious cycle. What is more is that I totally lack the motivation to get out of the vicious cycle at all. Well, I do try to read up on my textbook every night but the amount of knowledge is like a vast ocean and it is really a bitter pill to swallow. Thus I thought perhaps, that droplets of information can fill an ocean one day. I remembered I read somewhere that hard work is an unsaid life long commitment that you made with medicine when you decided to pursue it. Oh well, I guess it is still not too late to realise it. However, the reality is you just feel SO tired everyday that you just feel like sleeping half the time. Fortunately, you do get sudden spurts of motivation when you really want to find out more about possibly, a patient's condition or when your tutor hammer you with so much questions that you are determined to answer something the next day.
I need that motivation. But I don't know where to find it. I need something to push me to keep going until the end of times but where is that much needed motivation? Did it leave me together with all my pre-clinical knowledge? sigh! If my missing motivation is reading this, please kindly make your journey back!
Initially, I thought I might enjoy surgery as perhaps a future career but through this posting I guess not. Still, I will keep my options open since we are very much clinical infants at this point of time. And I finally realised the need and importance of well trained primary healthcare providers. It does have its own challenges and you are more involved with the people in the ground just like what a grassroot leader would be like.
To end off, we sort of celebrated the end of surgery posting with a pizza hut meal together with PL's generous treat of tonnes of pizza which all look the same.
