im a grown up yall

okay so i lied. I swiped the dustmites and took off again. Ahhh 

but I have a good reason. I'm coming towards the end of another week attached to Normah Hospital in Kuching.

 For my first week, I was attached to one of the two cardiologists there, Dr. Peter Wong, whose actually really good friends with my dad. 

So I think I had that advantage in the sense, he felt was awkward as I did when we spoke for the first couple of times.

 Haha I was always just walking through conversations between my dad and him, with the typical "Hi Uncle", "Bye Uncle" and smile politely as I scurry off to watch the last few minutes of Bones.

So he doesn't know me per say, but I guess he recognizes my face.

 So it was a bit of a shock when I introduced myself to him on the first day, as he wasn't even informed of the arrangement. 

Haha but he was nice and let me tag along behind him like a lost puppy. 

It.Was. Exhausting.

Few things I learnt so far being attached to Normah:
1) No one walks. Everyone either runs (ie. emergency) or walks -no sorry, more like- breezes across the floor. I seriously had some difficulty keeping up with him on the first few days. At the end of the day, my feet were really really sore from all the prepping for a marathon walking.

2) Don't try to be pretty and match your outfit with brand new shoes which you just bought from the UK. My feet were so sore and one time, I felt this slight sting on my left foot and thought it was a mosquito sucking my lifesource so I used my other foot to scratch it. I looked down and saw a small flab of skin hanging off my foot -.- The edges of my shoes had rubbed the top of my foot raw, so the skin was really fragile. -.-

3) If you thought of being like the doctors of Grey's Anatomy, where when it's lunchtime, everyone gathers around the cafeteria and gossip about their cases, think again. I've only managed to talk to Eric once throughout the whole two weeks because his doc was on the phone and I couldn't locate mine lol. All the doctors have different schedules and the number of patients that come for their consultation varies so it's usually only when there's nobody left to inspect, that they are reminded of the poor deadbeat medical students slowly staggering behind them. Haha I'm exaggerating (just a tad) but Dr.Love (my cardio) usually gave breaks whenever he remembered it but my current doc (Dr. Gabriel Teo - internal med) is on the dot about lunch time. In fact, he gives me like 2-2.5 hour lunchbreaks (WOOHOOO) cause unlike Dr.Love, Dr. Teo does actually go out for lunch. (Dr. Love just munches on a piece of chocolate and a cup of sweet black coffee. When I was with him, I just skipped lunch)

4) The doctors in Normah are busy. Like my cardio guy comes in at like 7am ish to do his rounds, and leaves around 8pm ish at night. Which I find amazing cause one time, he made me stay till 7.30pm to witness a PCI he was doing. I nearly almost just fell off my chair cause I was so tired from the entire day of running around. But it was interesting, I'll have to say, seeing the guy's messed up coronary arteries on the angio.

5) Healthcare is EXPENSIVE! Know what's not? Dieting, making drastic lifestyle changes, exercising EARLY! The percentage of patients I've seen walk in who are diabetic, hypertensive, or have some sort of health-related problem caused by their own doings, is astonishing. It's really bad the stats. Being diabetic already opens up so many dangerous health risk doors, like it increases your tendency of getting cardiac risks like CAD. Your cholesterol levels are so important. In percutaneous coronary intervention, one stent costs rm7-8k whereas ballooning costs about rm3-4. This patient had to have FOUR stents and TWO balloonings just in his LEFT coronary artery. His right side is messed up as well but the procedure would have taken too long and it was already 5pm so the doc scheduled it for a latter date as he didn't want to be weary from the estimated 4-5 hour procedure. And the guy is only 40+ years old, his heart is already so messed up. Ahh

6) I need to learn more of the local languages in East Malaysia. I only know Foochow, English, BM, and vague amounts of Hokkien, Mandarin. While being with Dr. Teo, half of his patients spoke Hokkien which I had no idea what they were saying so I just idly stood there as the doc replied them and consulted them. I feel so helpless, not being able to speak the language cause it's important to gauge the information from them.

7) Normah is COLD! Always forget to bring my cardigan. Argh.

Hmm, that's about all I can think of, lying in this really uncomfortable position on my bed, blogging. 

Haha well tomorrow's another day. 

But thankfully, Dr. Teo said it's only a half day tomorrow so I'm off by lunch.

 WOOHOOO! 

I'm such a bum, after a week with Dr. Wong, I'm so lazy to go to work now. 

Ah, I feel like such a grown up now. 

Hee :)