Sunday, December 18, 2005

i'm only a first year medical student, y'know?

i have two uncles who are doctor doctors, as in not PhD. one's a dentist and the other's a urologist.

as they're both based outside malaysia, it's a huge occasion whenever they come home for chinese new year or relatives' weddings or cuz they miss the fab assam laksa at the glutton street, whatever.

and, as they're both doctors (fine, one's a dentist, but he gets a gelaran "dr.", so he's a doctor), they have to answer friends' and family queries about their health from the very moment their feet touch malaysian soil.

for instance, my cousins would get my dentist uncle's opinion about their teeth when he comes back. "does he need braces?" "is that a cavity?" "did you bring any free dental floss back?"

as for my urologist uncle, he gets all sorts of non-urinary system related questions. "is this hypertension drug legit?" "i've been having palpitations after exercise. is that normal?" "so how does aspirin work, anyway?"

now, i've only been a medical student since august. the most interesting thing i can tell you is that the reason you feel like going to the toilet after a meal is cuz of this thing called a gastrocolic reflex, though i dunno how it works.

which is a bad thing cuz the countdown says i have less than a week till my summative 2. eep.

but people think i can answer their questions already.

this morning, my sister explained that the reason she couldn't go for a midnight movie last night/this morning because she suddenly ached all over and felt nauseous after lunch and still feels a bit sore today. then, she looked at me expectantly.

like i'm supposed to say something impressive like "well that must be because you ingested a pathogen which attacks your central nervous system and is now eating up your sympathetic dorsal ganglia, thus affecting the chromaffins in your adrenal medulla. too much norepinephrine. causes constrictions of your peripheral blood vessels."

..."-_-

i just gave her a look of what i hoped was empathy and told her to take it easy and get some rest. it was all i could do not to ask my nurse to give my sister some paracetamol ("three times daily, after meals") and charge her RM50 for consulting me.

then, my dad came over and said...

"hey, you're a medical student aren't you?"

glad you noticed, dad.

"my scalp hurts when i touch it. what does that tell you?"

...""-_-

i told him that it tells me he should go consult a dermatologist.

then, i threw in that line which the behavioural science lecturers told us to never use because it communicates a lack of self confidence: "i'm just a first year medical student, i can't help you much."

which is the truth. i don't know enough to help you.

i haven't even learnt pathology yet! i can still eat banana leaf rice without worrying about weird parasites.

i haven't even developed the "medical student syndrome", a real psychological condition where medical students start diagnosing themselves as having rare diseases just because they got a rash from using a new brand of shower cream!

good grief.

when my uncles told me that having to answer medicine-related questions from friends and family will be part and parcel of life as a health professional, i had no idea it was gonna start within the first 6 months of my life as a medical student.

and seriously, maybe i should start memorising large chunks of impressive medical jargon, screw what we learnt in behavioural science, and practice spewing them out without so much of a blink of an eye...just to give my loved ones what they want: an affirmation that their worst fears are true.

then maybe they'd stop asking me questions which serve no purpose but to remind me that i have a long way ahead of me before i join the ranks of my two uncles. sigh.

*note: that whole central nervous system and peripheral whatnot in blue is crap, btw. i'm only a first year medical student, y'know?

lishun at 11:24 AM

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Tuesday, December 13, 2005

interesting

i met up with my friends from sajc yesterday. the two highlights of the day were the two guys who showed up.

none of us had seen ashwin in at least two years, not since he ditched us for form6 and then decided to cease all communication with us. hmph. it's ok, we still love him. hehe.

as for edward, we last saw him in july, during a trip to genting. he had semi-long curly hair then. yesterday he was sporting shoulder-length do...which was straightened.

o_O

he's the first guy i've ever seen with rebonded hair. it took some getting used to - i could not stop staring! - but i guess it's alright. he said he wanted to do something different. well, it's certainly different!

anyway, we caught up with one another, and, being 20-yr-olds now, the topic naturally veered towards relationships. or lack of.

the three of us cool nerds in imu wound up looking at each other in despair. every one of the other girls in our so-called "gang" is either attached or has at least(!) one eligible guy anonymously leaving dessert at her door.

the three of us, on the other hand, are busy dating our anatomy and physiology textbooks.

i've said before that my current single status doesn't bother me too much, but the first thought that went through my head when my friend meiyin indulged us in the latest gossip was...

good grief we should have stayed in singapore where the malaysian girls are lonely and the malaysian boys are under pressure to find malaysian girls because their parents don't want them eventually becoming singaporean!

yes, that was a really stupid, irrational and absolutely ridiculous thought, but hey, it explains the state of our non-existent love lives!

it's funny, cuz recently there's been a little debate about why girls - specifically medic girls - in imu have trouble finding suitable, erm, suitors.

the first "lonely in medicine" story was written by a girl who felt that the guys were too busy with books and dota to think about girls. my friend prasad wrote a reply to the first article, arguing that the girls just weren't giving the guys a chance.

i personally think that...there is no definitive answer.

there are so many things my two friends and i can blame our still-single status on...

1. none of us live in the apartments opposite the uni. therefore we don't participate in alot of events and can't go for supper parties and whatever other form of socialisation people in vista take part in.

2. we were not from taylors.

3. we are constantly in each other's company, hardly mingling with "the crowd".

4. thanks to the conditioning we received in singapore, dating books instead of boys is perfectly acceptable to us, especially since in jc, to not date books may mean *gulp* termination.

5. boys suck. =P

hmm.

anyway, if anyone has a good explanation as to why malaysian girls in singapore get hooked up faster than you can say "peer pressure", please drop me a line. it's a horribly interesting phenomenon.

lishun at 10:01 AM

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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

worries

we talked about worries today. we discussed our concerns about our exams, our futures, our plans...

i am most worried about my mother.

my mother is 62 and a diabetic. she is losing weight but refuses to go to the doctor. she has a daughter in medical school, but she's too stubborn to see a doctor and consider the option of taking insulin shots. too proud to be crippled by the need to inject herself.

her most faithful companion is my dog, may-may. my dog is now 9 years old. she has at most 6 years left in her.

the dependence of my mother for my dog's company worries me alot.

what's going to happen when my dog leaves us for the happy hunting grounds? my mother is going to lose the only member of my family who spends each day faithfully by her side.

will it make her even more stubborn? if complications occur, will the death of my dog make her lose her own will to live? how do i choose a new dog to take may-may's place? what if the new dog is too young or too stupid to be my mother's companion?

and if my father should one day find himself alone, how is he going to make it through life? he can hardly function normally when my mother goes for vacations. can he survive when my mother finally goes off for a permanent holiday?

i know these are all really morbid thoughts, but they are very very real.

no matter what the bible says, i cannot help but worry about my parents. there's no point in living day by day and not anticipating the future. how then can i be prepared?

for a life without my parents? or a life with invalid parents? how can i care for others if the people i love most aren't cared for?

how can i even have the ability to love if the only sources of love i know of now aren't going to be around for long?

lishun at 11:06 AM

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