Reflection

People who do a lot of reflection become an expert faster than those who don't. 

My tutor mentioned this in one of our tutes.

Reflection is part of learning and thinking. It enables us to learn from our mistakes. 

I think the reason why I have repeated the same mistakes over the past few years is because I have done a proper reflection.

Thank you Dr. R 

A Meaningful Life

Taken at Bondi Beach during winter. This beach never fails to amaze me.

“For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.”

Excerpt From: Gawande, Atul. “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.”

The sleep doctor

I am doing my anaesthetic rotation right now and to my dismay, I enjoy it so much. Many of my friends hate it because of its lack of human interaction but there is something about being on the end of the operation table, behind the screen created by the sterile drape, and ensuring the patient is in deep sleep so that he or she does not feel any pain. 

When I told my friends that I really like anaesthesia, they were surprised because they thought it would be too gloomy for me. I am surprised myself too.



I feel that anaesthesiologists do not get much credit they deserve. Imagine going through surgery fully awake and conscious. We would die from the pain, if anything else. 


The fourth case scheduled for the OT I was assigned to was a gynae-onco case. The patient was a lovely 57 years old lady who did not scream or yell when I inserted a second IV line on her hand. She had stage 4 ovarian cancer which was sticking to her bowel. I took a look at her CT and the radiology report. Her cancer was massive. It was bigger than a newborn size. Her husband has passed away and they had no kids. As a lady from a remote area in Malaysia, she thought what she was having could have been treated with traditional massage. She held my hand before she slept and asked me to pray for her.

My anaesthesiologists had discussions about her.

"This patient has diabetes, hypertension and congestive heart failure. Her ejection fraction is not great either"
"Her Hb was 8, then they transfused 2 pints. Now it's 10"
"Put arterial line and central venous line"
"I am going to put another IV line to anticipate things"


The Gynaecology resident came in and when she saw how my consultant was scrubbing in and getting ready to insert a central venous line.

" Ah, you guys are inserting a central venous line? That means this case will not be starting soon!"

My anaesthesiologist shot back.

"You do know that we won't be doing all these unless they are really necessary. And your department has the worst mortality rate. We are doing you a favour so that the patient does not die from massive blood loss as you guys cut her open."

Arterial line was inserted because she wanted real time more accurate blood pressure monitoring. Central venous line for not overloading the patient with fluid given her heart status that was unable to pump effectively. Arterial blood gasses were taken through out the surgery to ensure that all electrolytes were normal and she was not retaining carbon dioxide. Heart rate was kept to below 80 in order to not tire her heart. Emergency meds were on a tray to anticipate bad things. 


Medicine is more than just science and knowledge. It is an ever evolving art. Despite the stress and ever constant struggles, I am grateful to be a doctor. 

Better by Atul Gawande

My friend said ," Weird, I don't remember you as an intense reader back then."

Well, now that I am in the last bit of medical school without (major) exams, I have time to do what I have always loved the most. And, I guess I am just trying to learn and distract myself from whatever is bugging me. And so far, it has been working really well.

Right now, I am reading Complications by Atul Gawande.

Perhaps, if you are a medical student or geriatrician or a social worker, you have come across his more well renowned work, Being Mortal, which is really good as well.

However, I prefer this book as it highlights what has been missing in me to become a successful doctor.

Diligence is a perpetual effort.

That's the most striking sentence I have read in the book so far. 

I could have achieved better marks, lost weight, had better skin and sofort if I had had sticked to whatever regime I was doing and perpetually improving it. 

Basically, I am lacking diligence in my life. I am just not patient enough to keep putting effort and strive for the excellence and greatness in my life like what other doctors have done.

A lot of great figures in the past are obsessed with perfection and borderline OCD if I may say so ( no offence to people with OCD ). 

Thank you Atul for making me aware of this before I fully embark on my medical career.

Sunday Soundtrack

I hope you guys had an amazing weekend, especially for those who celebrated Eid over the weekend.

I have been listening to this song over and over. It's quite refreshing after being subjected to Justin Bieber's sorry whenever I enter my friends' cars or a restaurant. 

#GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amorusso

As a final year medical student, I don't have major exams. All we need to do is to get good PIAs ( Pre-Intern Appraisals) to pass every posting/rotation. This gives me plenty of time to ponder about where I am in my life.

After being diagnosed with failure-phobia ( which I will further discuss in subsequent postings when I have the commitment), I resort to reading motivational books. And my choice was #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso

Ignore my fluffy hairy legs as I have not waxed my legs for ages.

I highly recommend this book and there are some points in this book I need to reiterate in my life if I want to be a happier and more content person.

1. You'll appreciate your amazing career so much more when you look back  at your not-so-amazing  jobs in the past, and hopefully realise that you learned something from all of them.

well, I have not worked much except for being an english tutor for a few months and I figure helping around with ward work in the hospital does not fall under working too. However, the caveat here is, whatever bad crap that happened to me in the past happened so that I can appreciate the prospective good times. This includes the previous bad relationships.

2. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention.

When my mom told me that she does not agree with the idea of me working in Australia for my internship, I felt that my whole world shattered because I associate this with not being able to become a famous paediatrician which is equivalent to being a loser ( it still feels this way and I find myself crying every now and then ). Nevertheless, this quote helps me to feel better about my situation. Doing internship in Indonesia means I will gain more experience about other things that Australia is not able to offer ( you cannot do some procedures i.e lumbar puncture and pleural tap as an intern in Australia ) and I can offer the knowledge I have obtained from my rotation in Australia to the table. My goal is to gain MORE experience, perspective and knowledge to what I have hitherto learned. ( GREED IS GOOD)

3. Instead of spending my time trolling the forums and obsessing about what other sellers were doing, I focused on making my store as unique as possible.

HOLY COW. This should be my new mantra. I spend excessive amount of time obsessing about my acquaintances back home have achieved when I could have utilised the time, effort and money for my own betterment. I could have worked out so that I don't have to be jealous about their body. I could have studied so that when I bump into them, I don't have to feel inferior about my knowledge. I could have read more books. HECK, I COULD AND SHOULD HAVE SPENT MORE TIME ON THIS BLOG.

I highly recommend this book. And I figured, as a generation Y, we are just too bloody impatient. We want things fast. Hence, you see all the fast food and crazy diet pills being rampant. There are more points that I have learned from this book but I am not going to list all of them here as I don't want to get sued by her and I feel reading the book itself would offer the most substantial amount of benefits for those lost souls just like me.

I am still lost. I am still figuring out my way. But this book made me realise that this is not the end of the world. 

Finishing medical school is not the end. It is merely the beginning. 

give me a freaking job already

Here I am sitting by myself in a coffee shop at Hilton Hotel in Sydney CBD writing this blog post.

Well, so a lot of things have been happening in the past few months. Let's recap what have been happening in my life.

1. I went through a general medicine/aged care rotation and breast surgery at Monash Health hospital and they were amazing. Learned a lot and realised how much I have to improve to be a competent intern.

2. I applied for jobs in 2017 and hopefully I will get one. Really hoping that I will either get one in Melbourne or Darwin.

3. I got a really bizarre but somewhat good e-mail from one of the hospitals which essentially says that because I am not Australian, I was not shortlisted for the interview however they are happy to include me into the PMCV internship matching thingy that is happening in a week or so. So if I do get a job, I will be hearing from them in a month or so. CROSSING MY FINGERS.

4. Right now I am in my last week of my elective rotation at Nepean Hospital and loving neurology because I have an awesome team! Not to mention, my resident is such an eye candy and I just love staring at his beautiful face.

5. J has moved on and got a new girlfriend. So happy about this. I am honestly ceebs about him and how stupid I am to have made so many stupid decisions in the past. Not going to settle for futureless guy ever again.

Kinda seeing T, this ABC guy from Melbourne, but honestly, if things do not work out, I cannot be arsed to do anything or to cry about it. It is just too much effort and stuffs. I am more bothered about getting an internship or job or figuring out how my future is going to turn out to be honest. I am so sick of not being able to stand on my own two feet. I know I need to hakuna my tatas but do you know that feeling that you are just so ready to earn your own moolah and you want to be independent and start giving back to the people who have given up so much for you. Basically that is what I feel and honestly I feel I am not bad at all. I am quite hardworking and keen to learn.

I am just tired of feeling like crap all the time and i just want to get a job now. Hopefully I do get a job. Otherwise I might as well kill myself. LOL.