Emo Compliment

© Tim Burton

Was not going to post for some time. Blogging seems to be inhibiting my productivity. Like now, when I’m supposed to be in bed already since I need to be in hospital before 6am tomorrow.

Also, Internal Medicine is killing me. Our firm is crazy busy with way too few students and a whole lot of nonsense I can’t really go into right now. And some super-rude patients.

But during our Call last night, I made a comment to the registrar about how one patient’s daughter seems to fancy herself some kind of unofficial doctor. Which is true.

To which the reg responded (laughingly),

“You know what I like about you? You’re so emo! Has anyone ever told you that before? I dig how you’re not fake just because I’m your registrar. Your… Tim Burton-ness is awesome.”

I think she’s right, although I’ve never considered it to be an “awesome” trait. More of an annoyance really. I’ve been compared to Juno (of the movie) before, which I suppose has the same emo undertones.

So anyways, I’ll just take it for the compliment it is said to be.

It was funny though. I don’t think a doctor has ever complimented me on anything, nevermind anything non-work related.

Blog it for Babies: About How I Almost Wasn’t

In keeping with my general broodiness and my current Neonatology rotation, I couldn’t let “Blog it for Babies” go by.

BIFB is an attempt to raise funds and deliver equipment to a clinic in Bangladesh, where infant mortality is extremely high. They want to raise awareness too, so if you can’t afford to donate (like me), just be aware.

BIFB encourages bloggers to write about their own birthing experiences and reflect on how things could have been different. I don’t have children (being a student), but both my and my sister’s births were extremely difficult, so I’ll share that.

We were born in a time where many non-white South African citizens did not have access to good healthcare. I’m pretty sure that if I were of a different race, or if my struggling parents had not managed to give birth at a private facility, my mom and I may not have made it.

Mom’s pregnancy went well. I was her first, so she did everything by the book. As with a primigravida, labour progressed somewhat slowly, but surely. There was no cause for concern until I was supposed to be crowning and things weren’t going as anticipated.

I was in occipito-posterior position. Normally, babies are born occipito-anteriorly. This basically means that instead of the sharpish backside of my head crowning, my forehead was the presenting part.

But that’s not always a problem. Last year during obstetrics I delivered two occipito-posterior babies. My head was poorly flexed, so much of my face was presenting. If you think about physics, this is not conducive to an easy passage.

Mom had a wonderful obstetrician. He did shout at her often, she recalls. There were times when he shouted that if she did not stop pushing now, she would break my neck. And then there were times where he threatened her with a C-section if the baby didn’t come now. After all that exertion she did not want to be wheeled to theater.

First an episiotomy happened. When that didn’t help, they decided to attempt a ventouse delivery. That’s basically delivering the baby by means of a vacuum. It’s not an easy procedure and can often lead to a massive subaponeurotic bleed.

Fortunately it was successful.

Things that could have happened in the absence of good doctors:

• they could have not realised that something was wrong and tried to deliver without further interventions
• they could have not performed an episiotomy, leaving Mom to experience a third-degree tear
• the episiotomy could have been poorly looked after, leading to infection
• I could have died

The same thing recurred with the birth of my little sister four years later, so the doctors diagnosed cephalopelvic disproportion and my little brother (four years after that) was born via C-section.

My family, even in South Africa, were so blessed with access to good healthcare. If possible, please donate to any organisation that helps mothers and babies. And if not, count your blessings and be aware.

The Unhappy Doctor

My presence in the medical community has not been lengthy, but I’ve noticed one thing: A lot of doctors are terminally unhappy. I know they think we don’t notice their scowl, their rush to get out of the hospital, their snide comments when the patient is finally subdued by the anaesthetic.

I see it. I see the way their shoulders sag and the way they hate talking about news regarding medical science. I see how rude they are to each other, to their nurses, to their students and even to their patients. And it means one thing: They are miserable.

Medscape’s Mark Crane recently revealed a study where it was found that doctors are miserable. Only 54% would choose medicine as a career if they could go back in time. It’s an American study, but I’m willing to bet that South African doctors would have similar results. Perhaps even more so.

Anycase, much of the cited reasons for the disgruntlement relates to finances. Doctors don’t “feel rich”, they earn a substantial salary but also have substantial debts to repay.

I hope that this reason will disappear off the radar soon. There is a perception that doctors are rich. Firstly, I’m really not sure that one should enter a field to get rich. But secondly, those days are long gone. Patients are poor. The economy sucks. Managed healthcare and medical aids are sucking the life out of healthcare professionals.

To prospective medical students: If you want to get rich, this is not for you. Medical school is one of the most expensive fields of study imaginable. It’s long, it’s painful, it’s expensive. If you want to get rich, you need to go into the stock markets, into business, into innovation. Not that you should do that to get rich, either…

Another reason is time lost on administration.

This is a sad but true reason. Life requires paperwork. Lack of paper trails are the reason doctors have managed to give the wrong patient the wrong medication. Anywhere you go, there will be paperwork. I guess here we have to grow up and learn to deal. Or get an assistant (note, “intern” should not be synonymous with “paperwork scutmonkey”!).

But again, I’m going to be a little bitter about medical aid schemes here. The amount of paperwork they require and the amount of telephone-time they want is ridiculous. And they truly leach our patients of their money.

I had to make the decision to study medicine at the tender age of 18.

It’s a harsh fact that many of us decide to go into this field when we barely know ourselves. It scares me. I have so many other passions, and yes, sometimes I wake up and I dread going to the hospital. I don’t want to be a miserable doctor. But life sucks for some people, and we don’t always get to save the world like we dreamed to do.

Are you happy in your job (even if it’s not in healthcare)?

How do you maintain job satisfaction?

TTT: How to be a Great Blogger of Books

The blogosphere is weird. I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but here I am another week. I had a blog once before, it didn’t work out too well. Then I moved to this blog, and it hasn’t exactly skyrocketed, but I enjoy it.

This week, The Broke and the Bookish talks about tips for new book bloggers. I think my tips are kind of for any bloggers –  does one decide from the get-go to blog about books? I don’t know. But here goes.

1. Appeal to the laziness – yeah, some of us are total nerds and will read your long essay extricating the philosophies in the latest chick-lit, but even I have my limits. If you really have so much to say, divide it into a series of posts. This way you have people actually reading to the end of a post, and they come back for more. (I am also very bad at this.)

2. Your readers are kids (at heart) – and we all like pictures. If you’re reviewing a book, at least post a picture of the cover. With the rising popularity of fan art and pinterest you really don’t have an excuse for forgetting the visuals.

3. …but don’t be silly now – pictures should at least be a little relevant. And not pixelated. And don’t rely on a picture to tell a thousand words, unless it’s Wordless Wednesday or unless the picture really is THAT GOOD.

4. CAPTCHA – is bad. Say it with me. I hate CAPTCHA, and sometimes when the prompt jumps up I get too annoyed to comment. And by the way, Blogger CAPTCHAs have become crazy difficult. Take away the damn prompts.

5. Reply to comments – seriously, I think the whole “follow back” thing is lame. BUT it’s common courtesy to reply to comments. Also, visit the person’s blog. Manners are important.

6. Don’t limit yourself – so you want to blog about books. That’s cool. But I know and you know that there is more to you than books. So it’s okay to write about things other than (but relating to) books. Just like I don’t ALWAYS write about being a medical student. Ellie once wrote about annoying customers at her bookshop, and check this cute picture I found at TBTB.

7. Participate in challenges or memes – it keeps you from stagnating, it helps when you’re feeling like a dead weight, and it introduces to entire new circles on the blogosphere.

8. It’s okay to have a negative review – Negative reviews have stopped me from reading crappy books. Then again, so have over-enthusiastic positive reviews. ’nuff said.

9. Join Goodreads – if you’re going to be a book blogger, you want to be on this site. This is not me putting you into a box, this is a great tool (and procrastination method).

10. Get off your bum – go out and live. Blogging is fun, and great, and creative (and so is reading). But some places you can visit in real life too. And there are some things you will only truly understand once you have lived. Your writing and also your reading will change as you gain more life experience.

Clever Patients and Patient Education

During my two weeks in the Rural Western Cape, only two of my patients had finished high school. One was an elderly lady from a privileged background.

It was shocking to see how low the literacy rates were in that little place and how that affected patient education. Medicine compliance, smoking cessation, family planning… it’s tough. Especially with the high rates of FAS in the region (lots of vineyards).

But the biggest lesson was not health education to these patients. Rather, I learned not to slack on health promotion of the more “educated” patients. I look at my class, of whom probably 50% smokes regularly. Intelligent people make stupid life decisions.

I almost skimped on speaking to my patient (who had finished high school many years ago) about smoking cessation. Good thing I changed my mind. Turns out he thinks that puffing eliminates the cancer risk. So we had a nice discussion about oral cancer (yum).

You want to save the world? Figure out why health promotion rarely works. And find a way of making it work.

Ode to a Great GP

Med School is tough. It makes you feel like an idiot. The consultants don’t help much. They seem to forget that we are here to learn first, and only later to be examined.

So for Family Medicine, I expected to be supervised by a specialist family physician. Instead, we were one of the few groups working with a general practitioner. And from now on, you can give me a GP like him any day.

This doctor was so eager to teach. When I told him I had never done a lumbar puncture, he said, “That’s okay, I’ll walk you through it.” He definitely chucked me into the deep end very often, but he made sure that I managed to swim.

We made stupid mistakes often, and answered his questions incorrectly, and he smiled and corrected us.

When we did something without being asked, he praised us.

It was amazing. And did we walk all over him, like doctors appear to think will happen if they show a modicum of humanity?

Nope.

The best part ever?

The doctor called us a bunch of over-achievers. This was by far the funniest, and most heart-warming thing for two average medical students.

The ABCs of Me

Gerry’s Space has nominated “everyone who enjoys this world of blogs” for the ABC (Awesome Blog) Content Award.

1. Share something about yourself using each letter of the alphabet

2. Pay the award forward to however many

So without further ado:

Afrique du Sud – the country of my heart

Books - my first love

Chocolate - my most guilty pleasure

Disease - the thing that gives me a profession, and the thing I work towards erradicating

Eltroxin - a life-saver

French – one day I will learn to speak it, and visit Paris, and own a quaint little place in the South of France, and it will be positively wonderful.

Growth - I’m not very tall, but I do as much as I can to ensure I keep growing in other aspects of my life

Hungry - I often am. Meh, the life of a student.

India - where I want to go for my elective at the end of this year

Jokes - I am not a funny person and I am embarrassingly bad at making jokes. But I do love lolcats!

Karate - I have a Brown Belt 2nd kyu

Love - I’m not much of a romantic anymore and I muse about what love really means a lot. But there is no doubt that I love my family, my friends, this life, beyond measure.

Montreal - one of my favourite cities

New York – another favourite city

Obstetrics - one of my favourite rotations so far. All I want to do is catch babies…

Paradise - by Coldplay, one of my favourite South African music videos by a non-South African band

Quiet - I can be quite noisy, but I love a quiet spot, to be alone with my thoughts

Raucous - I love being raucous with the friends close to me. It’s a side of me people rarely see.

Semester at Sea – I want to do it. I will find a way.

Ticklish - people should tickle me more. I need to laugh more often.

Untidy - if a cluttered desk if a sign of a cluttered mind, what is an empty desk?

Variety - I get bored SO easily. It’s part of the reason why I hate sitting down to study.

Worldwide - I consider myself a global citizen. One day I will travel the world.

Xhosa - a language I should learn ASAP. It will make my job so much easier.

Yesterdays haunt me. I am learning to let go and to be a more relaxed person.

Zhangjiajie - the most beautiful place I have ever visited, and I never knew it existed.

I am tagging a bunch of medical students with awesome blogs:

The Medical Rose

Action Potential

Dr Sprout

Jenn Duroy

Nazirah

Trisha

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Down

…but before I get to that, today I reveal my brand-spanking-new blog button, yay! I’ve never been great at the whole design thing, but I think I finally hit gold with this one. I hope you like it.

Now to get back to business:

 

 

The theme for this week’s photo challenge from The Daily Post is “down”. On weekends, I am lucky to be on the sixteenth floor right next to the ocean. I stare at the changing ocean and of course, at Table Mountain, most of the time. So perhaps it is important to look down sometimes, too. To remember where we are grounded.

I am also a bit clumsy. The Boy reminds me that I must be on the lookout for his feet so that I don’t step on his only favourite sandals. There they are!

Six Things I Learned This Summer

Friday I return to Cape Town. Monday I commence my fourth year of medical school. This year holds theory modules of Infectious Diseases, Anaesthesiology, the Skin and more. Some of the clinical rotations will include Forensic Pathology, Dermatology, Internal, Neonatology and Gynaecology.

It promises to be a good year, if I can remain well and perform my chairperson duties successfully.

But I am always sad to leave home. Cape Town is beautiful, but it will never be home if my family is not here.

I have had a lovely six-week summer holiday, with no studying required. It may be six months before I see my family again. Here is what my summer taught me:

1. I have forgotten how to push myself

Little Sister and I went jogging often. The most difficult part was no stopping when I felt out of breath (she helped though, she can be a mean coach). I realised that I had changed from high school, where I would push through several days without sleep to complete tasks, debates and whatnot. Pushing oneself is not always a bad thing. Exercise is a phenomenal way to remember this.

2.  I can cook

I perfected four dishes: Indian Butter Chicken, Banana Bread, Chocolate Cake and Marmite and Cheese bread. Mum says I need no longer live off tuna and raw noodles. Very true. Friend says he’ll place the Poison Control Center on speed dial, just in case.

3. I can clean house and still be a feminist

Many guests = dirty house. It was actually vaguely enjoyable to clean the kitchen (I’m addicted to Detol Kitchen Cleaner) and vacuuming the house is a major workout. I still suck at ironing. I consider it my female prerogative.

4. Social skills need constant maintenance

My family soon found that I was less talkative and more hermit-ish. Being outspoken, they told me that and I’m glad. I have allowed myself to shrink into the background too quickly, which is just not me. The holidays also helped me to talk about non-medical things a bit more fluently.

5. I can still read. Yay! You need only visit the last month’s posts to see proof.

6. Being a medical student does not absolve me from sunburn. Ouch.

Cut&Paste #2: Simple Things

“We like the simple things,

cos life isn’t”