the long unrelenting AHHHHHHHHHHHH

there is that long, unrelenting "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" in the background noise of my head every minute of every day, a clue to the underlying stress.

final year is really a cycle of ups and downs - stresses and boredom. you keep looking at the same material, thinking you know it already, only to be shocked into stress when some doctor pops you a question on basic stuff on to find you've already forgotten it/ don't know it quite as well as you thought/ totally clueless.
(FYI, i am usually in the last catergory :( how daft)

my stress levels have been rapid cycling several times in a day, up down up down up down up down. something to that extent, maybe more!
it's enough to drive a person mad. plus i get resting tachycardias and sometimes i wake up at night with palpitations and drenched in cold sweat from an exam nightmare. AWFUL :(
worst of all is not being able to sleep because of the stress induced palpitations! :(
i should really start taking a beta blocker soon or i'm going to fall to pieces before the exams even start.

i'm manifesting my stress externally by having pain in every single place you can think of. my orthopod tutor was laughing at me for having more pain than an old granny.
i have chronic back pain, knee pain (from chondromalacia), shoulder pain (from impingement), thumb pain (from cheerleading, zookeeper's thumb), a mucinous cyst on my finger and toes, hyperlaxity causing flat feet and lax ankles.
and oh, neck pain from not sleeping well and headache from all the pain :\
no wonder he was lauging at me as he went through my list one by one! but he was very nice about it and offered to prescribe me beta blockers if i needed them. i think i'll take him up on his offer soon!

the long unrelenting AHHHHHHHHHHHHH? i have to learn to deal with it (no, i am not hearing voices yet. just one voice!) and hopefully it will spur me to actually studying instead of sitting in front of my books and mountains of papers pretending to study so my parents won't nag at me. :\

2 good things about this week:
1) ortho is FULL OF EYE CANDY :D my favourite tutor has a lovely sexy baritone and is really hot, to boot. he radiates charisma and i've obviously been swooning over him and my friends are so exasperated with me they roll their eyes at me every time he walks by. haha.
2) i saw cute medic boy (now a doctor!) and he remembers me! :D oh, joy!

happy valentines, you all! :D

countdown: 2 weeks

infectious diseases is over, and i have failed the test miserably. i'm a little shocked and dismayed (alright, make that quite, it's been quite some time since i was failing mathematics regularly). but i suppose i deserve it, having not studied as hard as i should have!

anyway. there is this new thing on facebook, a meme called "25 random things" (which reminds me, i haven't done dragonfly's old toy meme yet! oops i'm so sorry!).
and to my ultimate shock and horror, i realised that so very many of my classmates have put down: i don't know what i'm doing in medical school/i think medical school is the wrong choice for me/i shouldn't have chosen medical school etc.

it breaks my heart to read that. i know of so many others who would have given an arm and a leg to get in but couldn't because these people have taken up their places (not undeservingly though).

coupled with the facts that:
1) medicine is no longer thought of as a "noble" profession - litigation rates are up, patients are becoming more and more non-compliant
2) complaints against medical personnel are on the rise
3) burnout rates among doctors are higher
4) slipshod work is also higher

stuff like that gets you down.
i was really depressed for quite a bit to learn that so many people thought that way.

i was one of those people who decided that i wanted to be a doctor when i was young (i really enjoyed bandaging my sister and jabbing her to make her feel "better", all in the name of play, of course!), and i firmly made my choice when i was 14. nothing has changed my mind since then (except for a short period of time when i really felt that i should have done nursing instead, but i'm over that now. more on that some other time).

but such is medicine, such is the job and the demands on you.
i never expected to make such a huge lifestyle change, to have almost no "university life" to speak of, to be totally out of the loop with the rest of my friends in other faculties, to wake up early early early and go home late late late. so many things, so many things.

but it has never changed my desire to be a doctor, as much sadness and ugliness and frustration i have experienced (there has been a good deal more than most people, i am sure! largely due in part to my hearing problem and others). i still hold onto my idealism, and i can only hope it won't fade that much 20, 40 years down the road.

i still want to hold a granny's hand and tell her it'll be alright, we are here to take care of her; to tell a pregnant lady to keep pushing, her beautiful baby is coming out soon; to play with a kiddo and watch his smile (which will make my day); to tell jokes to an elderly gent and see his eye crinkle. people make my life, and my life is medicine. there isn't any other way.