Monday, November 09, 2009

Letter 460: Salvation

About an hour after my cousin changed his status from "Married" to "Single" on Facebook, my mother sent me an MSN message asking if I knew of his circumstances ie whether he was, in fact, separated from his wife. From the crumbs of messages that I've been fed every now and then over the last 6 months, it had seemed that my cousin was having some relationship difficulties. So when he announced that he was "Single", we wondered if that was true.

My mother hates seeing families breakup, especially when kids are involved. A friend of hers had confided that she was hesitant about commitment after going through her parents' divorce. But who is to say that a person wouldn't be a commitment-phobe if he or she didn't hail from a broken family? No doubt, family breakups can be nasty, but on the flipside, if things don't work out, why bother staying in the sticky situation which is only going to make things worse? Who says families aren't allowed to crumble? Why does everything have to have a happy ending? What's the point of clinging on to hope when there is none?

The problem with Asian families is that we tend to be a cohesive unit without much communication.  Stereotypically, Asians generally don't talk about emotions, nor express them explicitly. We don't discuss relationships and love-- we keep these matters private. We don't announce that we're seeing someone-- we let our parents discover the news on their own accord and intuition. And we certainly don't talk about breakups and how much it hurts-- until the hurt becomes too painful to bear. We value family more than anything else, yet ironically, we seldom let on to family members what we think, what we feel. So most often than not, there is a lot of assumption going on. Like assuming my cousin's separated (for all we know, it could be a joke on Facebook), or assuming that he was happy in his relationship, seeing that my cousin is a father to 2 gorgeous toddlers. But is he? Has anyone even asked how he's felt in his relationship? Of course, even if someone had done that, there is a chance he might not open up. But, assuming that he's happier being free, I am standing firmly by my cousin no matter what his decision is-- even if it is a selfish one.


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Friday, November 06, 2009

Letter 459: Long Distance Love

Of all the things I'm afraid of, marriage emerged as a surprising affair. Of all the things I'm disappointed with right now, love lingered on top of the list. Of all the things I used to believe in, LDRs are, unfortunately, not one of them anymore.




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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Letter 458: On the First Day of Gen Med

Every time I write the heading for an entry in the case notes, it automatically comes out as "Surg Intern (Jun)" before I realise my mistake and had to re-write it as "Med Intern (Jun)". Every time.

Every time I answer my page, I reflexively chirp "Hello it's Jun here Surg Intern!" into the receiver, before ultimately learning to stop myself mid-sentence and correctly say, "Hello it's Jun here Surg.. oh, sorry, Med Intern!". Bloody hell.

Every time I see low potassium readings in a patient, even if they're on Slow K, I instinctively top it up intravenously with at least 30mmol of KCl, or chlorvescent if the patient doesn't need/ have IV access. Like, hello, why do you think it's called Slow K??

Every time I go through my patient list, my mind automatically asks: Is the patient fasting or on clear fluids/ free fluids/ light diet/ ward diet? Now, I need to re-train my mind to think: ward diet/ diabetic diet/ soft diet/ speech path diet. Yeah, how about the Atkins/ South Beach/ Cabbage Soup diets too?

When I was on Surgery for the last 5 months, I used to obsessively count the number of pagers I'd received during the entire shift. Today, when I had a look at my pager as I was walking towards my car, I knew I'd lose count even before I get to my car, so I did the most natural thing one would do: Deleted all pagers, switched that damn thing off, got into the car, slammed the door, and heaved a sigh of obscenity: "F*cking hell!".

Damn I actually miss Surgery. (Yes, even though Surgery is more demanding and more hectic-- at least it's more exciting. No offense to all my friends who got into Basic Physician Training next year-- at least y'all will be better at reading ECGs than I am ;p)

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Letter 457: Raw

For a split second, she appeared in my dreams, palpably real as if she was still alive, except her wrinkled torso was covered with a mixture of neurofibromas and carbuncles, and what remained of her left hand was a stump. She was chopping up a carrot with much difficulty with her tremoring right hand-- for she was plagued with Parkinson's-- while trying to steady the orange root with her non-existent left hand. Her emaciated body was bent over, revealing a kyphotic hump, but there was no mistaking that it was her when she turned around and smiled at me with those gentle, forgiving blue eyes (I could never figure out why she had blue irises), as real as if she was standing right in front of me. I remembered the shock of encountering such a familiar yet foreign figure, and the wave of sadness and anguish that came with the helplessness. The next thing I knew, I was crying. I didn't know if I started crying after waking up, or if I had drifted into consciousness whilst weeping in my dreams. I didn't know the time, but I lay sobbing long enough to realise a thunderstorm was approaching, and before I could resume my dream-- for there were so many unanswered questions I was dying to ask-- the strong winds had brought forth a torrential downpour. The heavens, it appeared, were moved to tears, too. But I never saw her after that.


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Monday, November 02, 2009

Letter 456.7: Into the Nights-- Status Habitus

Apparently a certain quirk of mine has posed a bit of an enigma and intrigue to my Night Partner, because on the final morning of our rotation, he came up to me as I was drooling over yet another food blog while waiting for handover and asked me...

"Jun, why is it every time I see you, you're looking at pictures of food?!"


OhLaLa over OChaCha @ Raffles City, Singapore:
Slurp:- Azuki Freezie
Yum:- Azuki Matcha Cheesecake


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Sunday, November 01, 2009

Letter 456.6: Into the Nights-- Achtung!

During one of our relatively quiet nights, my Night Partner called me to his desk to have a look at an abdominal x-ray.

"Jun, how good are you at reading AXR's?"

"Er, I can't say I'm excellent," I confessed. "Why, what's up?" I asked, scooting over to where he was sitting.

"Take a look at this," he pointed to the screen in front of him. There were massively dilated loops of small bowel, with some contrast-enhanced material in the colon.

"Man, he's got some intestinal obstruction that's for sure," I said, pointing to the air-fluid levels and the bowel loops.

"Yeah," he agreed. "But what is this?" he asked, pointing to the contrast-enhanced material.

"Did the patient have a barium meal or something recently?" I asked, suddenly remembering a similar scan that I had seen before.

"Yes, I think he had a barium study about... 3 days ago?" he scratched his head, trying to recall what he had read in the notes earlier.

"Awesome!" I exclaimed, turning to him with a "mystery solved" expression on my face. "You know what it is then?"

"No, what is it?" he asked, curiosity written all over his innocent baby face.

"It's radioactive shit, my friend," I grinned, patting him on the back.


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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Letter 456.5: Into the Nights-- Consults

The other night, my Surg Reg caught sight of me in ED having a deep-seated discussion  with a Med Reg over a patient's ECG.

"Jun! What are you doing? Who is this?" he asked, pointing to the ECG.

"Oh nothing for you to worry about, D, it's a psych patient with chest pain."

"Chest pain??!" he looked at me with mock incredulity. "C'mon, Jun, you're surgical! Not medical!" he teased. "Sort this out, and come over to put a nasogastric tube in for the patient in Cubicle 5, ok?"

Then he strode away, staggering tall in his dark blue scrubs, chuckling softly to himself and shaking his head in mock disbelief. "Chest pain..."


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