housemanship (part1)

As a houseman in this country, its basically a learning period given. Either you learn, be good and find your place in the medical field or your are screwed. Housemanship is like a legal torture period allowing senior medical officer to screw you and we accept it. We will be physically drained due to the oncalls and work thrown to us. Its either to break or be broken. BUT I was up for the challenge.

I still remember standing in front of the mirror, taking a moment, staring at myself wandering. Is this a face of a doctor? Maybe? Maybe not?. Put on the lab coat, hang the stethoscope around my neck and visualizing hmmm…. doctor… cool!!!. The next question was where to do housemanship. I knew if I wanted to serve, I wanted it to be a place of needful, with vase opportunities to learn procedures and my work to count. I thought east Malaysia (Sarawak and sabah). Fortunately, I had a bunch of friends who also felt the same way. More like 6 of us. So we applied to Sarawak and all of us got it. Yahoo!!!!!!! (mind you I had never been anyway close to Sarawak, do they live in trees, do they even eat similar food?)

I was happy.

I knew the life of a houseman, I knew the hardship that was before me, I knew the shitting things I had to go through. (kinda stupid knowing all that yet jumping in head first). I went. Packed my stuff, transferred my car and to Sarawak I went.

The first few days, I had wonderful help from a church paster bring us, (me and my friend) going house hunting. The paster was an angel. Thank God for him. By the second day we managed to secure a house, a 4 room banglo with a compound. It was nice. All 6 of us shifted in. For us I think we were use of packing and unpacking. During our student days it involve lots of traveling from uni to hospital to disctricts and so on. This was nothing new.

Day 1 – We meet the director of the hospital. He greeted us and charmed us with the prestige of working in that particular hospital. Whatever all I heard was bla bla bla bla…. I was nervous for my first day. Got the news, I was in surgical rotation. Went to the ward, meet my colleges, introduce my self to my bosses and then threw myself at work. Usual first days' dilemma, what the heck am I suppose to do?. Basically I was blurrrrr. Thank God there was a tagging period. It’s a time to pick things up, blood taking, clerking, ward rounds, procedures, oncalls, referrals, red flags to look out for and etc.

I was happy

Days, months,… work, work, work…. I admit it was tiring.DREADFUL As a houseman, one will get physically tired. When you are oncall, one will work for close to 32-36 hours straight. I would come the hospital before the sun raises and leave after the sun sets. I missed the sun. But I had good colleges, good medical officers that helped and teach, good boss that was considerate. (we were lacking of man power in Sarawak. Thus, housemans were doing about 10-13 calls a months. Meaning if you are oncall on Monday, you go back on Tuesday and bout 6pm and the come back on Wednesday to do calls again). Somedays were worst than the others. People were doing calls 1 in 3days, or 1 in 2 days. But its all for a good cause. So I ignore the tiredness, the pain in my joints and muscles, the tiredness of my eyes, the soreness of my back. Chin up and continue working.

I was so so happy