the anniversary

a year ago, i was young and dumb. a year later,

not that young, but still that dumb..

time seems to pass so fast, when youre too busy with work.as some would say it; 'i live at work, and sometimes i go home'. you go to work so early, and go back so late at night. all you can think of when you arrive home after work, was just to sleep because the next day is just hours away. and sometimes you cant sleep as soon as you reach, because you need to force yourself to eat knowing that the late prebed meal, was the only meal of the day you had and youre not sure when is your next meal on the next day.

in honour of a year of housemanship, allow  me to briefly, generally walk through the routines of the past 1 year. and hopefully put some sense on how other people's life is more greater valued than ourselves.

for starters, each departments have their own wards, and clinic. some departments have their operation theatre. As housemans, each places in the departments will require us to placed and rotated among ourselves in order to keep it running. and most of us will be stationed in the ward, where all the sickness and dramas are located. 

most of us starts the day with waking up feeling the relentless reluctant feeling to go to work. every day feels like a monday blues. arrival time at ward should be around 6-630am, some would need to go work as early as 4am to start doing works. the day starts with us reviewing the patients in ward, some are new patients who came in over the night, some are those who are already in the wards and we need to figure out how to solve the problems(read:diseases) and to allow the patient go home safely. youd be lucky enough if the only patient you need to review in the morning is less than 5. because at times, youd need to see more than 10 patients before your bossess arrive.

its like a 3 tier system. patients will be seen by the housemans, and then the medical officers, and then the specialist. these are the rankings of doctors in the wards that will see the patients. Ensuring Patients get the best treatments, and double/ triple checking to avoid any mistakes and avoid doing harm instead of good. 

usually the rounds will finish around 11am, and a lot of plans will usually be given to manage a patients during the so called morning rounds. these includes taking bloods that are seemed crucial to further heal the patient, referring to other departments for co-managing the patient. if indicated , to arrange for surgery or imaging that would require tedious process of the back and forth to the radio departments. Sometimes, managing patient's financial status would also be part of our job as healthcare workers. haha.most of this needs to be done before lunch hours as some of them are not available during lunch hours for obvious reasons. 

other than that, some patients are well enough and were allowed to be discharged and go home . and for these people. doing discharges and letters and other documents required may require some time. alot of time if theres a lot of other pending works. this also means, that when a patient is out of the ward, another will come in and hence the clerking process will start and we have to manage the new patients on top of the other things ive mentioned before. and after all of this is done, then only we are able to go back. black and white based, our working time is 7-5. but that is too absurd.

all of the daily routines doesnt seem that hard on paper. until suddenly a patient collapsed, unresponsive, or deteriorates drastically. and at times, it involves more than 1 patient at one time. and when things like this happens, it stalls your daily job, but still expects all job to be done within that certain time frame. and for the icing and cherry on top, the patient's family who tend to not understand our nature of work, and thinks what ever they knew from the internet just a few moments ago, is better than what the medical practitioners know.

and its been a year. the repetitive obstacle has become part of the nature of our work. and at one point, some of us grew tired, and the burning soul to learn and help humanity fades. why do we keep helping people but it makes us suffer? suffer from not having enough personal life, personal self care, and personal self respect. some would end up being so selfish and would push their work to other people so that they could go back on time. some would be more judging to new colleagues instead of teaching them.

as for me?
i try to keep reminding myself of the purpose of a greater good. its not easy.

bad things will keep on happening, and if not for the better version of yourself, guess its not gonna happen. And, i remember what a teacher once said to me during school

' good things, that do not oppose from what Allah has command, then it can never go wrong '
i interpreted it as that just keep doing the good things, no matter how tedious , no matter how small it is. sometimes its the little things that you do that matters most. we are where we are, doing what we do, its because this is how God has planned for us, and surely its for the benefit of us in ways that we find it hard to imagine. and when you realise it, you'd say to yourself, "i should have trusted God's Plan all these while"

and then. there are those people who still exist, those kind of people that prevails to keep being on the good side of work despite how terrible the surrounding is. And these people are mostly the seniors, some bosses and a few of them comes from the patients who can say thank you to us , just by doing our job. all the little things. that keeps us going, keeps reminding us that its not impossible to be good and to be nice, as i recall, being nice doesnt hurt anyone, except our ego.

i've seen how some of my bossess are just so nice, refuse to be consumed by the negative people around,  and thus  makes me wonder " maybe ill be like him later on. but how far should i tolerate " . It also makes me wonder " how did he/she manage to handle all the craps and negativity all this while", and ofcourse the answer is,

"as much as possible."

so in this blessed month, for the sake of not crumbling,
i hope that i could be a better person, to those who i care,
i hope that my patience is increased despite all the negativity that the world is throwing
i hope that my ego could be lowered and not let it consume me
i hope that when things go south, i wont let other people be affected by my feeble compromising side.
i hope that i could be a better doctor, a better colleague ,a better friend,
and most of all, a better person for my religion.

life is not going to get any easier, and as human, we will learn to adapt. and for that, no matter how bad the days are, or how terrible the day is, id remind myself that its just another day at work, and life goes on. take a deep breath, one step at a time, and carry forward. your life is always bigger than the petty problems youre facing now.

Happy Ramadhan to all my muslim brothers and sisters. may all of our works and deeds be rewarded. forgive my wrong doings. i know its a lot, but i hope its enough.