Those old war stories..

This evening found me wandering aimlessly among my old blog posts when I was drawn to the stories from my Clerkship year, starting off with this one.

After reading all the way to the start of Internship, I was awestruck with the realization of what I had already been through in such a short span of time, and what I willingly put myself through to earn my MD..

Some of the stuff I wrote made me chuckle, especially those that said "I hope one day I'll just look back at this and laugh" when describing a particularly toxic rotation. :P

I remember the sleepless nights, staying up to monitor a critical patient closely; those days when you'd be so busy that you're only able to eat lunch at 11pm that evening; the nights when you're just going to bed when your groupmate bursts into the room shouting "Code! Code!" and you get up and rush out to try and resuscitate a patient whose heart had stopped beating...

Clerkship is really a mixed bag. You're supposed to learn and work at the same time, and it's not just simple on-the-job training for routine tasks.You monitor patients and scrub in for ORs one moment, you're attending a major lecture or conference the next.

It still boggles the mind how we were able to survive all that. Considering the workload thrust upon us with very little shut-eye during the duties (which were every other or every 3 days, depending om the rotation), it was a miracle that we were able to stay sharp and healthy enough to do the things that were expected of us..

To cope with the stress and fatigue, people come up with all sorts of creative ways to make oneself "happy" or maximize downtime. During clerkship, a lot of people were drawn to the casual games like Bejeweled and Diner Dash (casual gaming was just gaining a foothold back then).

We had to put up a brave front especially when we were seeing the patients. A lot of the things going on behind closed doors at the hospital is unknown to the public. Al the sacrifices, heartaches, and sob stories remain untold, often by choice.

But there were a lot of good things as well. Fascinating cases, incredible ORs, not to mention all the knowledge one would gain just by interacting with a patient as compared to just reading about cases in a book. 

In the end, it would still be all about the patients. People who came in hoping for relief from whatever malady they are afflicted with. I guess we took on that great responsibility as well, sometimes unknowingly, since we were just medical clerks at the time after all. I guess we could say that we gave it our best(in our own limited way) to make sure that our patients got the care that they deserved.

We were lucky to have our seniors (interns, residents) who have been there and done that, to help us in our goal of learning to treat the sick and give comfort to the afflicted.

We also learned a lot from each other, especially when different people would be lucky enough to handle different cases. Those little informal learning sessions with your groupmates/classmates served not only to increase our collective knowledge, but to tighten the bonds of camaraderie that only a common experience of hardship could forge.

After a year's worth of learning and hard work, it was time to move on. Groups split up as people went their separate ways after graduation. Most proceeded to their post-graduate internships at the different hospitals. Others, particularly those who came from the states, opted to forgo internship (and thus the local boards) and went straight home to take the US boards and eventually train there. 

Clerkship is a very memorable and life-changing experience, but certainly not one which I would ever want to go through again.. :P