Sunday, August 07, 2005

Sundays are too conducive for bumming

So much for this being the most free weekend in a long time, I almost got no reading done yesterday at all. Just a smattering about arrhythmias, and subendocardial infarcts from Chia BL's ECG book (which kind of confuses me because my intepretation of some of the ECGs doesn't match his explanation, indicating that I still don't understand ECGs). The problem is I can't decide where to start, and whether to study with a slant towards passing the end-of-posting test, or towards a more holistic view of Medicine in general. I want to do the latter, but the former seems to be a more realistic approach. Drat.

It's one of those days when I feel there's a theme running through the morning. It sounds somewhat schizo, but sometimes I just pick up some kind of trend in the things I see in the newspapers, and on television and the internet, and that trend kind of evokes some musing on the subject. Anyway, I saw a letter to the Forum section of yesterday's Straits Times (which I read this morning, because we didn't collect the papers yesterday, anyway that's another long explanation in itself, so I'll skip it) that echoes what I've been secretly feeling for very very long. If you're even remotely interested in what letter it was, you can go look, because I won't read it out here.

And, something from aestalitz:
True Story. A religion teacher assigned her class an essay on what makes a good Christian. One student wrote about praying nightly, say no to abortion, banning gay marriage, and donating money. The other student wrote about talking to God and allowing people to enjoy their lives, and supporting gay marriage. The day the teacher was to hand the papers back, she called up the second student and told him she would pray for him when he went to hell. The student asked why would he be going to hell, and why he got an F on his paper. The teacher told him that Catholicism is against gay marriage. The student looked at her for a minute, then said aloud, "I'm gay." The teacher kicked him out of class as if he had said fuck or worshiped Satan. A girl in the back of class who had a boyfriend and was obviously straight got up and left too.
If you would leave the classroom, repost this. It doesn't matter if you're straight, bi, or gay. It doesn't matter if you're Catholic or not. Everyone is a human being and deserves happiness.

I'd like to think I'm open-minded about sexuality issues, even though sometimes the opinion of the masses can be so strong it makes you reconsider speaking out loud about such things. But this is not just about sexuality, but about freedom to live as one wants to. Doesn't every person have the right to do what they want to do in their pursuit of individual happiness? How can any human think to be great enough to say that what some people do is wrong, and condemn them for just being happy? This, admittedly, is a deep subject that has been debated over for years, and I don't think I will try to add to it with my miniscule opinions, but it needs thinking about. Especially when schools in the U.S. are beginning to teach their students that Darwin's Theory of Evolution is rubbish. That's really scary.

Point to note: I have absolutely no intention of antagonising any Catholics or Christians out there. This is not a religion issue, or at least I don't think it's one. It's more of a life issue, of attitudes towards lifestyles and choices. It's just troubling when you have people thinking they know best and saying that what you do is wrong when all you want to do is be yourself. That sucks. If I can tolerate you being different from me, why can't you tolerate me being different from you? *rambles incoherently* I think I should stop before I cause irreversible damage; I think I'm digging a deep hole here.

I'm currently trying to pick up at least some Malay, and I've managed to learn at least two phrases this week from following ward rounds, because there are quite a few Malay patients in W55, but sometimes the MO rattles off a long string of Malay and I get totally lost. And almost all the doctors know at least some Malay, so hopefully I'll have reached that stage by the time I graduate. And now that Singapore's going to start teaching Malay in schools to non-Malay students perhaps I can pick up the textbook or something, mwahaha. There was even a sample page in the Straits Times yesterday, so now I know how to say, "My name is Andre", and "What is your name?", and various greetings. Learning a new language is fun, yay.

Following rounds with Prof Evan Lee is scary, because he keeps firing me with questions that I can't answer. And then even though I look blankly at him he doesn't give me the answer, only saying, "Think about it, and tell me tomorrow." Which kills me, because I still can't find the answer anywhere. And his "tomorrow" referred to Saturday, so I was like, "He expects me to come on Saturday?" But even with the high stress level, the rounds are great because I've learnt so much from the team. And Prof Lee is like the human manifestation of Medicine, often pointing out things that people never care about, and explaining how there's always a reason to seemingly-mundane parameters. And he keeps asking me to check JVPs. So far I've embarrassed myself immensely, because I told him I couldn't find the internal jugular pulse, when the external jugular pulse was obvious, but I ignored that because what have we been taught? That the IJV is more reliable than the EJV. He then proceeded to lecture me about the obviousness of the EJV, and how it can be used in some situations.

I do believe my skin is getting thicker in clinics, what with doctors constantly firing questions at us, and patients rejecting attempts to talk to them. I suppose it's definitely better to make mistakes as a medical student rather than as a full-fledged doctor.

La Tendo has brought in the SEED Destiny Photo Collection Cell DX Phase present and tv, which looks really pretty. If there's something that delivers a killing stroke, it's always the sight of pretty art. That's it, I'm definitely going down to La Tendo to check it out, and hopefully the price hasn't gone up from the previous Cell DX Phase, which was already insane at 10 dollars a pack. Argh, there goes any hope of saving money this month.

Avaris / 8/07/2005 12:57:00 PM

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