Saturday, February 03, 2007

The absense of do-nothingers like me have made this place a quiet one.

I'm here at yw's request to update!

Snail and I have been so busy with attachment this past week that we're both absolutely exhausted. Especially snail, with her feet that hurt in the weirdest places.

Snail's utterly dependant on me and and the other JC3 students in the same attachment. Without us she'd just die and wither because of her inability to follow the signage in the hospital. Thus I am not allowed to leave the MRT without her each morning, neither am I allowed to leave the hospital without her.
Still, she kindly agrees to keep my locker key for me while we're in our pyjama looking scrubs which DON'T HAVE POCKETS so I am extremely grateful for that.

On the issue of scrubs. All non-medical students attached to A&E are required to don scrubs consisting of a white shirt with (or without, if you're unlucky, like yours truly) the hospital's logo and blue poofy drawstring pants. Snail is very bad every time I complain about my huge size M scrubs, which is not fair because she got size S scrubs and guess who is shorter, a fact she is always reminding me about.
Slug laughed the first time she caught sight of us in the scrubs. She said we looked like patients. -_-" Patients on the run. Anyone who has seen snail in her psychotic laughing fits would get the same idea as well.

For all the embarrassment we go through being seen around the hospital in our scrubs (and believe me people DO stare), the attachment has been fulfilling. At least for me. We got too see tons of different cases each day... people complaining of chest pain, with SOB (shortness of breath, not son of a b**** like that psychotic doctor claimed), with distended abdomens, with dizziness... even the odd psychotic patient or two.

This attachment has reminded us the importance of being fluent in our languages! And by that we don't only mean English and Chinese, but Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Malay. You won't believe the number of patients who come in speaking dialects.
Language is very important indeed.

The doctors have so far been tolerable of our intrusion into their work. And most of them readily share their medical knowledge, and allow us to listen through their stethoscopes even though we're not medical students! :)
So far, it's still mostly negative comments about the profession, except from the registrars and above.

The other students, non-medical and medical alike, have also made this experience extremely enjoyable. From the way we'd all go high after lunch, to doing our daily bending-down-to-open-our-lockers ritual. And it's been really nice just knowing them, as I'm sure snail would agree!

We've thus decided to extend our attachment, and also because we need to make that $52.50 we paid for admin fee worth it HAHA.

Snail and I have also been up to other stuff: namely volunteer work at the Assisi Home and Hospice. We had our second session today and it was sad because some of the patients we saw last week were no longer around.

Anyway, we're doing night shift tomorrow night! Just to see!

More updates later! (looks pointedly at snail)