Endings, Beginnings and Tiger Mums

Apart from not posting about finishing exams back in October (passed everything, yay!) or the 8 weeks pre Internship placement I finished by early December. I have had lots to blog about but not much time or inclination which is slack but I’m trying to live with the guilt.

About to head off to Hawaii for a couple of weeks of R&R before starting doctoring in earnest. Can’t say I’m hysterically excited about work starting but that may be because this won’t be my first ‘real’ job (And I’m not always a glass is half-full kinda gal). Still, I think the hospital I’m going to (henceforth the House of God, thank you Samuel Shem) is quite a nice hospital staffed by competent and patient doctors (important when you’re a terrified junior medical officer).

On a completely different note, I read The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua yesterday. She sounded nuts. But she struck a chord with me and so many of my childhood memories of my mother and father and Chinese parenting. And despite having spent a good chunk of my childhood feeling a lot like Amy Chua’s daughter Louisa (I could never quite summon the quiet dignity of Chua’s elder daughter, Sophia) – the screaming matches between my mother and I are legendary (still!) – I think the basic tenet of choosing what is best for your children and moulding them is something I firmly agree with. I mean, we don’t allow 8 year olds to make their own medical choices or decide whether they should go to school or not; it’s not a huge stretch to decide they should have other skill-sets like learning a language or to play an instrument and giving them a choice about that does them a bit of a disservice. But that might be just me (and a whole bunch of ‘Asian’/Tiger mums!).

Note to any unborn child/ren of mine – the battle lines have been drawn

Long time no blog….

Since January in fact….

Oh well. Such is the life of a medical student. Since then, I have done 4 weeks in the Respiratory department, 4 weeks in Neurology, 8 weeks in Obstetrics and Gynaecology (delivered my first baby!), 2 weeks in Otolaryngology, 2 weeks in Ophthalmology and have just started a 4 week rotation in Upper GI surgery. Also have had Obs/Gyne exams and passed. Had two ‘practice’ long case exams and failed, and just had the ‘real’ long case exam which seemed to go well – but I won’t know until September if I have to redo it. I have final written exams in just under 5 weeks.

Then no more exams for over 2 years! I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to the 28th of September after the last exam has been writ!

Can’t reflect much beyond saying despite feeling like I don’t know enough, I probably DO know enough to be a reasonably safe intern next year.

Snippets of London

British Museum, aka the Place to Plumb the Depths of One’s Ignorance

Standard facial expression for said museum

Cute little guy

Penis sheath… cue childish tittering

London Eye

Houses of Parliament, Big Ben from The London Eye in the rain and fog

Windy London

Grey Squirrel, mortal enemy of Red Squirrel, St James’ Park

Trafalgar Square

London Youth Orchestra, The Barbican

Snippets of Paris

Still my favourite city…

What’s not to like? Good food:

Beautiful buildings:

Beautiful artwork housed in those beautiful buildings:

Fantastic, if somewhat cold at the top of the Eiffel, views

My favourite church… yes, the inside is a little dull compared to, say, St Peter’s, but, GARGOYLES!

Snippets of Italy, Part II

More from the middle of the boot shaped country…

In Passignano

At Micheline’s for dinner L to R: Micheline, G, Jonathan, Sarah, Sila

Lunch with Liz in Montisi

The old house at Centoia

House for sale at San Egidio

Bella Festa a Firenze

Snippets of Italy

In Montanare. At Il Rifugio with Chuck and Shirley.

In the kitchen, Shirley climbing in/out of the chimney, the view.

On being ill away from home…

I caught a head cold so have missed a couple of days at the hospital in Edinburgh… suspect it may have been due to our soggy weekend in Glasgow. Anyway, I think I am recovered enough to drag my ass back in there tomorrow, if for no other reason, than to get out of the house (as G puts it, “you can sit around watching crap TV at home and learn nothing, why come out here to do it?”).

So after two days indoors and having driven G a little crazy, I’m ready to get back to it. I may even have gotten over the mini Twilight obsession I picked up (which had G more than a little worried as I was reading all sorts of Twilight related trash – what can I say? It was easy reading!).

The highlight of the last two days has to be watching ‘The Blind Side’. Sandra Bullock was fierce and warm and spectacular in her portrayal. Made me cry. Great movie for comfort viewing while sick, although I can’t say I understand much about American Football. Anyway, if you haven’t seen it yet, grab a copy… so good!

Self inflicted stress

We’re moving house – again.  Got a few quotes from removalists… ~$1500 to move stuff; Additional $16.50 a carton if we want them to pack.   So, we’re packing ourselves (and looking for cheaper quotes!); well, mostly G’s packing, I wander around him and look useless.  I offer cups of tea occasionally.  I’ve packed some books. He’s packed more.  I’m trying not to feel bad.

I’ve spent the last 2 weeks reading Janet Evanovich novels in ‘idle moments’ (and maybe some moments when I should have been studying)… I’ve read all 16 of the Stephanie Plum series in that time and now reading the ‘between the numbers’ series.  It’s light, fun reading – ‘beach’ or ‘airport’ fiction really.  My brain is on holidays even though I’m physically still doing paediatrics.  I’m trying to feel guilty about the time wasted, but my brain’s singing ‘lala lala lala’ and not listening.

I had to organise a student visa for the 4 week elective I’m doing in Edinburgh.  It was an incredibly frustrating experience. An overly bureaucratic and complicated process for such a simple concept. Lots of running around – I had to get fingerprinted for God’s sake!  And expensive – $385 for the visa, $30 for the courier bag and return postage.

On the elective note, I’ve been trying to sort out car hire, accommodation and the various train journeys needed to get from Italy to Edinburgh.  Also quite frustrating – Trenitalia has a temperamental website which only recently started showing me the tickets for the dates I wanted but then wouldn’t let me add them to my shopping cart.

And I have exams in about 10 days time.  Again.  Yay.   Hmm, faking enthusiasm doesn’t work, despite what one of the lecturers said.  Am I ready for said exams? Not even a little bit.

Oh well.

Fun with the kiddies…

Well, I can’t say I have talked to many kids the last couple of weeks. I’ve certainly seen a lot of kids. Examined a few. Seen a lot of surgery. As it turns out, I love surgery – who knew? But it requires more commitment than I have left in me. On paper, surgery is the same number of years of training as just about every other specialisation. The reality is the on-call time and the hours are somewhat heroic and I just CANNOT function for 36-48 hours straight with no sleep. I get grumpy. And my brain (limited as it is) stops working.
Oh well, general paediatrics next week…

Suffer the little children…

Well, not exactly. I haven’t actually had any contact with any kidlets. Started paediatrics block today and this whole week is dedicated to lectures on same; All I have now is a headache from fighting with Sydney traffic and now a whole bunch of prereading for tomorrow’s lectures. Oh well.