blackpeanut.com

Had been waiting for this for some time now! Hopefully new body brings new skill and inspiration!

I think when people grow up, they make more sense of more things, and perhaps have more senses to feel more things as well.

I did never feel this much feelings and emotion last time. Or perhaps maybe I felt them but didn’t take note or simply when time passes, I forgot.

At this age, I think my only fear is time, that if it passes too quickly and I would have loss the ability and power to control my own destiny and shape my own dreamt-of future.

A long hiatus since I last blogged. But in real life out of the internet, I think mine is still a pretty interesting life. I enjoy feeding one of the kid (patient in the ICU) beehun goreng when I was oncall the other day because I was there when he can’t eat at all, till today - eating a little bit too much. He is 2.5 years old. And I enjoy playing with that skinny Indian girl in the ICU, chasing her around the nurses table as if I can’t run, and teaching me all sorts of bad indian words. She is 7 years old, and few months ago, she can’t even walk. The nurses would be quite happy if I can force few extra pieces of ayam down her throat. She is such a picky eater. Her arm’s diameter is almost only the width of my 3 fingers coming together.

As much as I dread to go to work in the morning, but I enjoy seeing kids. Fatherhood building up maybe. LOL. A bit early for that.

I had a week in the hospital daycare as well, seeing kids with leukemia, thalassemia and all sorts of crazy malignancies that you, even thou knowing the answer to this question, would still like to question God why they deserve that. I kinda come to a conclusion that bad bad diseases most of the time happen to really bad families. As if poverty wasn’t enough, a sick child would still come and challenge the brains and emotion of these parents. A kid with haemophilia, a kid with Down’s syndrome, a kid with ALL, can’t even imagine the burden in the parents’ head.

Can’t do much but to whisper to them that they are good fathers and mothers, and their kids are just as bright and cute as others. And that they are doing a good job, bringing them for regular follow ups and transfusion. And sometimes would just reassure them that it is not the length of life that matters, but the quality n love given.

In this life we cannot always do great things. But we can do small things with great love. - Mother Teresa

On a lighter note, I’m finishing my paediatrics posting in a week time. Moving on the A&E. Hopefully it is going to be fun.

For these passed 4 months, I guess I had enough of upgrades. Bought a computer (desktop) and a 32 inch LCD tv as monitor, some books, some shirt n shorts, so I think it is enough of spending for me for the time being. No more bombastic gadgets (even thou am thinking of getting an electric guitar TODAY) but nevermind la, it can wait.

Gonna treat my mum to some buffet dinner today for Mother’s day. Hehe.

Happy mother’s day to all!

I understand that my blog posts are getting wordy. Lack of pictures and colours. Like those really packed meat that make u feel wanna vomit after eating them.

After a bombastic call with the weirdest cases on earth, I’m a bit numb with what am I suppose to do not. Lack of rest, lack of everything.

Thinking what to eat as dinner.

And thinking how to make this life more perfect if it is still holes here and there.

I must do it.

Up to certain extend, I love to experience things first hand. It is like people who not yet watch a movie and like other people who already did that to keep quiet, I will do minimal surveying, and if can, experience the whole process by myself, as the first time, without any help, so that I can know what I’ll do, which path I’ll end up choosing, and how is the outcome.

First time sitting for some external exam this is, and it is great experience I think. I reached there early, experienced the insomnia the day before, found the venue (2nd time going to UM) found my name, and finished the paper as it is. Even thou I would very much hoped that I have passed it and could experience OSCE instead but that didn’t happen.

The paper was tough, up till the extend that even if I would have 1 more month to prepare, I wouldn’t have cover those things that they asked.

So, it did roughly give me and idea of what they are looking for and what they expect from us. All and all, is a good experience, and I’ll be more prepared next time.

No joke, I think this is not new news but it is new to me, a bit left behind I know.

Seriously. Study chemistry, understand structure, and come out with their own eggs.

Now I’m not even sure what I’m eating is authentic or not! Maybe next time need to buy a piece of land to keep chicken, goat and cow together. Even meat can go ‘organic’.

if it is nobody other than you.

Sometimes I do think that being in this profession is underrated. Too many decisions to make, to many details to look for out and of course, if small things are missed or done wrongly, end result could be fatal.

Practically if you choose to be a doctor then you can wave bye bye to your any existing happening social life or whatsoever.

First of all you will work earlier than other people, come back later than normal people, will never get much weekends off, and most of all, the tedious tiring on-calls. Try to sleep 4 days to do a week’s job and do it repetitively like forever if you are in this job and you will know what i mean. Having 3 oncalls in a week is not something new anyway.

And there is the stress to please everybody, your boss, your seniors, your peers, your juniors, your lab technician, your patients, your patient’s parents, your patient’s cousins, your patient’s grandparents, your patient’s great grandparents, your patient’s unrelated frens, your patient’s aunties and uncles, the media, the ministry, the hospital, the visitors, the janitors, the PPK, the nurses, THE EVERYBODY! People expect from you, is utmost professionalism, which sadly i think need to come by time and training?

And when time goes by, because the decisions you make are effecting more and more on the outcome that you have to start opening books, start studying, start paying attention, start discussing, start brainstorming, start worming in the books, start blaming urself for having bad memories, start to be paranoia with all the details and worst of all, start hallucinating veins and arteries and signs and symtoms.

Sometimes I do think of other job which doesn’t involve me communicating with another human being in the much direct way, or my mistakes do not cause much problems, like a computer technician, teacher, part-time tutor, software programmer, musician, professional gamer, waiter in the McD, or owner of a small restaurant, or a kiosk or 7-eleven, some supermarket supervisor or something. Things would be pretty easy and life would be less stressful with less guilt.

But to bad, who will do this job, if it is not me.

It is not going to be easy when people watch your back while you are doing procedures. The idea that someone is watching your every steps, even thou it is a routine procedure, can be quite disturbing.

ISO is something that many people fear, in the hospital. Of course not the patients.

It is well known that a lot of procedures are designed and forcefully implanted into our brain in order to protect ourselves.

I do understand the concept and concern behind it. However, I do not agree up to a certain point.

Okay. For example, the blood taking procedure.

The idea is pretty simple. You take the syringe, make sure that certain investigations were ordered by the MO, and you walk to the patient, inform him/her regarding the procedure, and take the blood. Easy right?

No!

You have to remember to wear the gloves. You have to remember to bring along the sharp bin so that you can throw the needle you used straight away after the blood taking. You have to use the proper tourniquet to type the patient’s arm.

1000 things can go wrong!

Once there was this product specialist who came to give a talk regarding blood samples for investigation and the correct technique and etc. She did kindly show the power point and the studies conducted by people that actually much percentage of investigation error happens at the pre-analysis stage of a blood sample - which means the time of the HO taking the blood, label the sample, send it and up until the blood sample reach the lab.

Honestly, she was quite sinister regarding us HO.

First of all, if you are not our boss, you don’t call us houseman. You call us - doctor. That itself already put the presenter in a very bad condition. And it wasn’t a surprise that most HO leave the talk before the end and none was enthusiastic at all to answer any questions.

Secondly, if you do not practice blood taking, don’t talk about it, like you are a phlebotomist. She was on and off commenting regarding the HO’s blood taking skill. And the silliest part is, even a slide was presented to show which vein to aim, a slide for how should the needle pierce into the vein and etc.

I was like ‘hello, if i got xray vision (with contrast) then i would have put in all the branullas and taken all the blood in one shot’.

Plain stupidity.

Come on, nobody wanna hurt another person without any reason. If a task was given, we would want it to be done fast and correctly. Who wouldn’t wanna get the blood they want in one go and who would want to spend hours on a patient just to get the needle into the right vein?!?!?!

She obviously think we doctors like blood sucking and like to do it with multiple attempts.

There are obese people whose veins are not visible and felt, how to take blood? There are chronic patients whose hands are swollen from all the blood taking and no veins can be seen, how to take blood? There are small kids who struggle and give you problem during blood taking, how to take blood? Not to mention the obese powerful strong 10 years old that probably can punch u can give u a blue black, how to take blood? There are tiny premature babies the size of my keyboard here with their veins so small you thought it is like thread, how to take blood?

Yet everyday litres of blood were sent. And the lab nicely rejected some of them which they thought are not labeled correctly or clotted or insufficient. Do they know that blood taking is hard? No. Do they know that there are simply not enough blood flowing from the veins? No. Do they know that the small amount of blood they happily labeled insufficient was taken after the 10th try and most probably taken in the middle of the night like 2 or 3am? No.

A lab tech simply put the sample into the machines, wait for result, and oh the computer screened showed that the blood is insufficient/clotted. Oh have to inform the doctor, and move on to another task.

The doc, have to explain to the patient/parents that why the blood was clotted or insufficient, ADMIT THAT IT IS THEIR FAULT WHEN HALF OF THE TIME IT IS NOT, APOLOGIZE, and repeat the whole blood taking procedure of pricking for maybe another 5-10 times before getting enough good sample from that hard blood taking patient. Label the sample, despatch and when we look back, oh 2 hours have passed and there you go - the precious sleeping time.

Lack of understanding. Lack of compassion. Too much bull shit.

Even thou the speaker in that talk speaks with accent. The whole talk simply shows a no-brainer. Sorry to say -lah.

Same goes for the management. If they want us to use tourniquet for blood taking, they should probably do a survey on how many tourniquet is available in which ward (not more than 3, if more than 3, most probably 80% of them are not in good condition).

The standards that they put down is simply ideas without any follow up.

If they want us to throw our needles stat after blood taking, then supply more sharp bins! 2 bins for a ward is seriously insufficient. Not to mention 2 bins for a whole 30 patients ward with 50% blood taking happening almost everyday.

-_-’

Now, there would even be a team to monitor how HO take blood.

Sigh.

Houseman nightmare.

Sorry i almost forgot my wordpress password. It had been so long since i typed something here and i think people had already think i officially abandon this blog.

Actually, not writing here means there are too much to write about -lah! The extra-internet life is a bit too busy for me to even update here. Duh. Now I’m biting on my dinner (the verb is used because merely wanna make the food particles smaller so that the swallow mechanism can take place and I wouldn’t get any regurgitation later). I don’t even know what this rice tastes like.. hmm.. okay.

Not to say that I’m hating the busy life. But if it drags long enough then I’ll feel like exploding. Those episodes did happened but it was suppressed forcefully thru some unknown mechanism, for example spending a lot of money for UNNECESSARY things.

Nowadays a lot of social problems lah. Everyday i’ll see a baby whose mother is not married or is a teenage girl. Almost EVERYDAY lah. So teruk. Why can’t people use condom?!?! Ops. That’s not the point.

Some even more teruk one is that they don’t even know they are pregnant until the baby is out! Reminds me of lottery a lot. It’s like Kaboom! and hey you got a newborn to take care of and please be careful because you might even break a bone or two if you are not careful *sinister*.

*just noticed that the whole packet of rice only got 1 prawn. Damn TIPU punya!*

Ok finished with dinner.

Beh tahan need to do rounds in another 30mins. I just came back like 45 mins ago leh!

Definitely no mood to share any interesting or non interesting rant here today because it had always been rush and rush and rush and RUSH! Any free time will be used to do this and that laa and the only time for myself is fully utilize for myself only like locking myself inside the hostel room or sleeping. My entertainment bar (like in the Sims) is quite low. Social bar oso must be in yellow colour now. Power might as well also be in yellow bar.

Hmm.. The next holiday that I’ll be hoping for will be next month. Ahhhh so long away. Yet I hope April will not come (for some reason). Ok my stomach is full, time to go work again. DAMN.

Sorry for the lack of entries.

Had been kinda busy lately. In fact I’m typing this in a post call condition. But life is still great. And actually I do not have much to say actually.

Let’s hope everything stays good and something nice would happen later!

Adios

Today planned to travel north a bit to see those few remaining sights on the list.

Started the journey to the Royal Temple MengWi after stopping by in Krishnan to get some batik.

In term of entertainment value, I think this place is not really worthy to be on the list because it is closed and you can only walk around it using the path built.

However, if you went there for the sake of photographing the Bali postcards, you can still make this trip there.

And after that we drove all the way up north (around 1hour journey or something like that) to see that temple in the middle of the lake, which is surprisingly situated on a mountain!

On the way, stopped by for an expensive/not reasonably priced buffet on the mountain

Temple - lake - on a mountain?? At the Bedugul.

Dinner was that duck dish that everybody talked about.

Not a bad dish to try out.

Basically all we did whole day was sightseeing. Not too productive by my standard but this can certainly cancel a lot of destinations off the list if I am to visit Bali again. So hopefully next time I’ll be here for the crazy stuffs!