Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Wizard of ID

Just thought I should do a little update since I'm relatively free today.

3rd day of Infectious Diseases posting at EssGeeH, and I'm really enjoying this posting. It's the most fun posting since year 5 started (Med EssEyePea was close, but I don't really consider that a posting heh). The tutors are really brimming with knowledge about matters related to infectious diseases, and even though we've had three different tutorials on the same topic, somehow we keep learning more in each tutorial, it's amazing. And they're all quite enthusiastic in teaching, talking to us throughout ward rounds. I know the entire world knows I love EssGeeH, but I just really want to say it again, I love EssGeeH! Haha. The schedule for the posting is quite friendly also; we follow ward rounds in the morning and then have a tutorial after that, so our afternoons are left free, "for [us] to read up", as Dr T said. Thus we finish quite early every day and we don't really do much clerking or examining of cases so we -ahem- go home and "read up".

ID is quite a fun subspecialty; after all that madness of mugging MicroBee in M2 it's nice to be able to apply the loads of information I crammed into my brain (amazingly there are still shreds of it floating around in there); unfortunately I have absolutely no memory of antibiotics (I'd like to blame BT) and I never do, so it's always an uphill process trying to remember the coverage of different types of antibiotics. If there's anyone that's best qualified to teach us about antibiotics, though, it will have to be the ID people. So far they've taught some useful stuff about antibiotics, hopefully I will be able to remember it and make good use of the information in the future (though I doubt I will remember it). I do find ID one of the more exciting and interesting subspecialties in Medicine, but somehow I haven't really considered it as a career choice; it just doesn't feel like something I would be doing for a lifetime. The fact that ID is a consultation-based specialty (i.e. mainly blue letter referrals, and you don't really manage patients from admission to discharge) is probably the main factor that makes me not really want to do it, I guess.

Looking forward to more ID! It's a shame that we only have 2 more days at EssGeeH; I really can't get enough of the place heh.


On the not-so-academic front, it seems my life is starting to degenerate into more and more indulgent anime- and drama-watching when I should really be cutting down and fuelling up in the preparation for MBBS. Which is not a good thing, of course, but I am such a horrible procrastinator I keep thinking "I'll cut down after finishing this series", but there's no end to anime and drama series. Woe.

Finished watching Hana Kimi a few weeks ago, and really enjoyed it. It's such light-hearted fare I always feel better after watching an episode. And just after I finished, they started airing Hana Yori Dango 2 on cable (channel 56, Saturday evenings at 9 p.m.), so I get more Oguri Shun, and a little bit of Ikuta Toma (he has a cameo in the first 2 episodes, albeit as a bit of a jerk). Admittedly I only watched the last 2 episodes of Hana Yori Dango, but I guess the story is largely self-explanatory heh. I think it's awesome that they got Matsushima Nanako to have cameo appearances as Doumyouji's sister; it's been a long time since I saw her in a lead role so at least seeing her in a cameo is nice.

WM got me to start watching this other drama Ichi Littoru no Namida (1 Litre of Tears) which is this horrendously tragic story of a 15 year-old girl who gets diagnosed with spinocerebellar ataxia and gradually progresses to being unable to walk, eat, and talk, and how she copes with the disease along with her friends and loved ones. You'll probably cry 1 litre of tears by the end of the drama, it's super sad. And it raises some thought-provoking ethical and social issues too, so I'd think it's a good drama for us meddies to be watching (heh that's me trying to justify excessive drama-watching). I've been sleeping late for the past 3 nights watching it, it's that addictive (and tear-jerking).

I'm immensely annoyed with EssGeeH (or more like, the SingHealth cluster) because it's gone and blocked a whole bunch of websites from being accessible from the computers in the hospital, including all video-streaming sites (YouTube, Veoh, etc), Facebook (woe!), Orisinal (though I can circumvent that by using the www.ferryhalim.com address), all blogs, and even AnimeSuki (Peer-to-Peer is FORBIDDEN!). And so, what in the world are we supposed to do in our free time (of which we have a lot)? I pity the doctors who can't even read blogs when they're free. So rubbishy. And, I can't watch any anime or drama on the computers in the student's lounge because they have zero codecs, and I can't run any codec installation programme on them because I do not have administrator status. Thus I am completely disinclined to stay in hospital longer than I need to, now. Bleah. If anyone knows how to circumvent this problem with codecs, do let me know.

Avaris / 10/17/2007 08:39:00 PM

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