Si Kerdil Bercerita Non-Stop: Once its gone, the bitterness of the pain becomes sweet memories

The title might sound a bit, you know, romantic I must say. But am not gonna talk about romance here. Well, sitting here, early in the morning. Doing nothing in the ward (Thank God those babies and kids are all fine). It made me reminiscing those hectic days as a houseman.

Tears streaming down, growling stomach cried for food, stinky shirt, eye bags after sleepless calls, cramps muscle. Those are pain that we suffered throughout 2-year training in non other than, HTAR.

Look at the Logo, it shows someone is helping a collapsed guy. Guess what, that collapsed guy is one of the HTAR HO. lol

And am not embarrassed to admit that, once in Medical posting, I almost called it a quit. I was oncall that night, when everything bad happened. I was oncall alone and had to take care of almost 50 patients. With 10 unstable patients and endless admission. Extension beds were everywhere. While clerking this aunty, I asked the staff nurses to perform ECG on her. While waiting for the ECG, I took a short nap on the clerking desk. Then the aunty came back with her ECG after merely 5 minutes. That was all my sleep for the day!

After endorsing her medications, one of the nurses called me. "Doctor, I think you better go and see the aunty behind there"

I ran to the aunty and found no pulse. She was cold! The nurses pushed the Crash Cart while I performed CPR. I called out "Please call MO!!" After few minutes, my MO came and I blurted out the patient's history. We performed CPR for more than 30 minutes but the aunty could not be saved.

After settling the burial permit and talked to the family, I ran to my cubicle for morning rounds. After hours of rounds, there were thousands of blood investigations to be traced, liters of blood to be withdrawn and multiple scans to be done. At the same time, I had to perform Pleural Centesis, had to accompany patients to Sri Kota Hospital for CT scan (Ours was broken that day). It was 6 PM and I had not have anything in my stomach yet. Let alone to sit or sleep.

Depressed.

It was unbearable and it made me calling my mum and telling her how much I had suffered. No food, dried throat, extremely knackered, No shower for 48 hours. My mother understood and said that it was okay to stop.

So, that night, I went to the hospital. My intention was, to finished up all my Discharge Summaries which piled up with my name on them! Then, I met my friend, Vijay. Thank God he was oncall that night. I started to pour everything out including my intention to stop and let everything go. I was literally depressed.

Then, he said to me.
"I know it's stressful. I have been there. (He was my senior in medical posting for 2 months). But, you should never let people know that you have chickened out. You have to be strong"

Then I asked him whether, at least I should take Emergency Leave on the next day. He said "NO! Just come tomorrow and showed these people that you can do this"

The next day, I came... With the remaining energy left in me. And Vijay smiled at me that morning.
Things get better after that day, not that our workloads were lesser, it was just that, i got stronger and stronger. Every time a big wave of depression came, I kept reminding myself, "I HAVE GONE THROUGH WORST THAN THIS!"
Kudos to all my friends who were succeeded in their Housemanship training