Super sensitive me.

What a see-saw week!

My neurosurgery posting began quite disastrously.

My MO is a very crude man. He doesn't speaks, he commands. He doesn't ask, he demands, and he doesn't believe, he suspects.

Neurosurgical patients are a hassle to review. Checking their GCS is a chore, especially those who refuses to cooperate or purposely playing dead, and poor me have to cajoule them every day so that I won't have to record a drop in their GCS. GCS is a scoring system to grade a person's consciousness. 15/15 means alert and very conscious. And you can't get anymore comatous with a 3/15. Then sometimes when the patient wants my attention (after I ignore her for a while) she starts banging her pulse oximetry on the metal bars of her bed or slides the detector off her thumb and the oxygen saturation drops and the pulse oximeter starts beeping. Damn those vegetables!

My MO never lets me finish any of my sentences and he is so impatient, and I feel so hurt that he doesn't trust me even a little bit. There was a patient who had a MVA and was sent to the surgical ward but it was not specified whether the patient was admitted to genertal surgery of neurosurgery, so my MO asked me to clerk the patient and process her... but after he left the MO for general surgery came and started assessing the patient and the HOs told me that the patient was under them, so I didn't clerk the patient. My MO came back and asked me why I didn't clerk the patient, so I explained the simple fact that she was under general surgery.

"You sure ah Sharon? Are you sure that the patient is under general surgery?"

I was SO MAD.

What the fuck?

I said, "Dr. S, come with me."

I brought him to the general surgery HO at the nurses' station.

I said to the HO, "Dr. L, please tell Dr. S that the patient is under your unit. He doesn't believe me."

My MO gave me a jaw-dropping expression.

"Sharon, you're too much la. Accusing me of not believing you."

And then he smiled.

During the afternoon rounds, he offered me a sweet, but I didn't want it because I just brushed my teeth after lunch.

He was little taken aback I guess. "Sharon, I know you hate me. But don't be like that la. We have to work together."

I just feel very misunderstood all over again. I think it's just my face la. Or I'm just a bad pretender.

And he shoved the strawberry sweet into my hand.

And I threw it away after the evening rounds.

Then the following day I was called to paeds surgery because a patient was (?)fitting and the regular HO there was called to the casualty to escort a patient. The 11month-old child was not fitting but having a really bad bout of spasm. I called MO I, he didn't pick up. I called MO II, he asked me to call paeds MO, but paeds MO was away in another hospital and he said that my neurosurgical MO should attend to the patient stat and do whatever necessary first until he gets there. Then I called MO III, and he came (thank God) immediately. (I should have called him first la). So we resuscitated the poor child together and luckily he stabilized.

MO III asked me document EVERYTHING that happened. So I wrote EVERYTHING la, including calling MO I and MO II.

MO I was very angry at me. Cornered me after evening rounds and scolded me and even threatened me a little. I was so hurt. What did I do wrong? I was very upset that evening, so another senior HO explained that we sometimes have to "bend" a little when we are working.

That night I couldn't sleep, so I sent MO I a very, very long sms to tell him how I felt and that he treated me badly and unfairly considering that I was new and what I did was the right thing to do. He replied simply that everything was alright and that I should get a good night sleep.

The next day he was super nice to me. Taught me about everything that came up in each patient. Even gave me some homework to do so that we could discuss the following morning.

So that's settled.

But really la, I hate, I mean REALLY hate neurosurgery. It's a field where humans try to play God, and fail miserably. It's a field of empty promises. Most of the brain tumour patient end up vegetables after debulking.

Dr. V is back into the picture. Yesterday I was eating alone in the cafe when he walked in. He initially walked to the table beside me where there were several MOs, but he turned to my table and said, "Hi Sharon, I'll join you since you're alone."

I could only say, "Hi Mr. V." and tried to swallow a huge lump in throat.

He was eating something I've never seen before, so I asked what was that he was eating.

"It's idli. You're malaysian and you don't know idli." he said with a smile.

He then cut a piece of his idli and gave it to me.

I was surprised, but my spinal cord reflex was to fork the piece of idli and eat it.

"Hmm... that's good!" I exclaimed. And I could see his face lighten up.

Dr. V is so brotherly.

Then we chatted for a while. He asked me about how I was doing, whether I'm enjoying my current posting, etc. And just before another group of surgeons arrive at my table with their food trays, he said, "Sharon, if you want to do surgery next time, give me a call, wherever you are."

And there it was. We had broken up. But I was happy.

I just kept quiet after that, surrounded by 3 other surgeons and the head of department and several MOs. I heard Dr. V asking another surgeon how to bath a baby and that his first child was due next March.

I was happy for him, happy that he was happy.

:)

And the subsequent days of neurosurgey just seemed very fluid. And I looked more radiant too, even post call. My friends noted.

And Dr. Bear is now calling me "Sharon" instead of "Sharon Chin", so that's a start. :)

And my housemate, Pei Ling made me very happy last night because she said this after I was reading her something I wrote.

"Sharon, you would have been a good writer or journalist. What a waste."

I was happy because I for the first time, someone made me feel like that I could have been doing something else well and that being a sucky HO does not mean that I was hopeless. I don't feel mush regrets, maybe just I have many "what if"s.

I would sum my whole week as a very profound journey of self-discovery. I leanrt that I'm a very sensitive person. I don't take criticism (especially unjust ones) very well. And my OCDs have to go. You know my MO forced me write ugly and faster, and I was so upset the whole day. And I still haven't wean off liquid paper. He told me not to use liquid paper, but I couldn't resist. Those cross out words are getting to me. But this morning I wrote quite ugly and I quickly closed the case files and proceeded to the next patent, and it got easier as I moved along with each patient.

To answer Bren's question: What's the difference between married and very married?
Very married means happily married and still in love. But married or very married, married men are off limits. Period. I'm better than that.

Ok, have a productive week ahead! I'm on call again tomorrow. I hope nobody dies on me.