Saturday, June 10, 2006
"Je veux aller aux toilettes"
Raymond says I need to post a end-of-posting review on my surgical elective, and also I think people don't want to keep reading my teratoma post (I know my excitement is a little over-the-top, but indulge me a little, thanks).
Well after four weeks of surgery at SGH, I should say my feelings about the posting are still rather ambivalent. Surgery in itself is an exciting practice, that I don't deny, especially when you see surgeons pulling teratomas out from the abdominal cavity, or even just assisting any kind of operation. I think what made the posting rather tiresome was the general lack of direction and organisation: we only had one tutorial a week, and early on in the posting we unanimously agreed that the cases in vascular OTs and clinics tended to be the same old things and not highly interesting, so we had to try to seek out the "flowers in the desert, and corals in the ocean" by ourselves. Thanks to S--, though, the posting became a lot more structured because we found ways to get to those flowers and corals, and time was much better spent than if she were not in our elective group, so many thanks.
The amount of learning seemed to hit a peak ironically during the last week of the posting, when T-- organised three head and neck tutorials with his elective tutor and invited all of us along to do some learning, and of course it was most useful, especially since TTSH doesn't have a head and neck team and I found my head and neck surgical knowledge to be rather deficient despite the great teaching provided there during my GS posting. I felt quite stupid during those tutorials; despite reading a little bit before attending them I had forgotten most of what I had read (I fear my brain is degenerating, oh woe), and I realised, even though I don't want to do surgery in the future, I still have to pass my M.B.B.S.! Shucks. Better work harder, if not fail final exams and enter a downward spiral of gay sex and drugs. (no offence)
But all in all, like the GS posting, it was a good posting (I think so far the only posting which wasn't good was the psychomed posting, bleh), firstly because of the great company. Thanks H-- and S-- for being such fun to be with and talk to, and apologies to S-- for putting up with my nonsense for four weeks; I laughed so much I forgot how long it was since I had so much fun in a posting. And my tutor was also a lot of fun, being really humorous, obliging and just really nice (this sounds like what we wrote in the card to him), no wonder B-- and K-- said he made them love SGH surg. I was totally amazed by how extraordinarily nice all the HOs were, because when I started clinicals last year only about half the HOs I encountered were so friendly, no idea why, so it definitely made the SGH experience really pleasant because they were all so obliging when we tagged along during SDA, catheterisations, blood culture taking etc.
Of course I mustn't forget all the crushes I had (the most in a posting since NUH medicine); I won't mention their names, but H-- and S-- would know. Sigh. I'm mired in more scandals than I'd feel comfortable with.
So starts our two week holiday, and I'm going off to Malaysia tomorrow, a first long holiday (3 days is not really long, but considering how I've not gone overseas for more than a day in a long long while, it is) in ages. I hope to buy lots of cheap stuff, eat good food, and try not to get fatter, and generally have some fun. But I'm also bringing books along, haha, because I have this curious love for going overseas and sitting in a hotel room reading; it's such pleasure. So kill me.
Off I go, and I'll be back on Tuesday, so don't wonder if I don't reply to SMSes or e-mails. Have a good holiday.
P.S. If anyone is wondering about the to-and-fro exchange regarding my post title, I'm like trying to learn a bit of French from S--, to great disastrous failure at spelling, heh.
Avaris / 6/10/2006 09:42:00 PM
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