Truth be told.....

...sometimes I think I have become too old to be a doctor.


Denny summarising how I usually feel postcall period.


Seriously.

It was a really bad call last night. Clinic was unsatisfying due to the fact that due to the absence of the boss, I couldn't really decide on whether I should get the procedure arranged or whether the patient needed further work up. It was pretty quiet in the afternoon, which should have warned me that a rocky night lies ahead of me.

So I ended up with an intra abdominal injury, a guy who broke almost all the fingers in his hand and both bones of his forearm, another who basically smashed his shin bone, a guy whose bone of the big toe peeped out of his wound and the icing on the cake, a 'mat lalok' who broke basically half of his jaw.

It was at 3 am this morning when I was contemplating that perhaps I should take a different pathway to what I am doing now. Maybe I should give being a KK (Klinik Kesihatan) MO another try (urgh, I take that back - nggak mungkin walau seribu tahun lagi [no way, not in a thousand years]) - working office hours and having passive call can be rather attractive. I had just spent 5 minutes trying to elicit cervical tenderness in the almost unresponsive mat lalok and the xray was actually taunting me. I was exhausted to the bone, my throat had a bitter taste and I can barely keep my eyes open.

It is at times like these that I contemplate, 'Surely there is more to life than this!' - but as it has all the times before, the statement is thrown into the void that is the dark of the night - unanswered as it has been before.

Because I know, despite feeling that way at 3 am this morning, I will still wake up excited about getting to work. I love looking at an xray and figuring out ways I can make it better. I love the thrill of working out where I should place my incision, which plane I should be dissecting on and how I choose to close my incision. Despite having staples, time permitting, I would always prefer suturing my wounds. All these run through my head as I scrub myself clean.

So I persevere with being awake at 3 am when I have been working since 8 am the previous day because there is always hope that my next call will be a cool one. and even if it turns out to be equally 'jonah' - I hope to still have a sliver of hope and sense of humour to laugh it off and say, "Tis life!".