Moo.

every step i take deeper into medicine, i am afraid of discovering an aspect of medicine that i find unbearable. after all, the next 7.5 years (omg it used to be 10!) of my life have been signed away to its cause. but i'm glad to say that i haven't been disappointed, and that the postings thus far have been thrilling and exciting.

funny that i should post this now, because my Thursday was a COFM-ish filled day. after attending the clinics in the morning, KQ and I hopped over to lunch and then to visit Mr A whom i had gotten to know back in TTSH. it was rather surreal, the way he treated us in his house, how we asked him about his life dealing with diabetes, hypertension and gout - all extremely poorly controlled and complicated. for the sake of my CMPS report, i had to go through and series of questions which Mr A kindly obliged. but it was when i put down my clipboard and starting eating the waffle that he specially got for us that i truly felt a burden for him. i looked at the bottles of medicines that he had packed for himself, lined up in boxes just by the bedside. 17 pills in the morning, no less that 10 at night. plus insulin injections at various times of the day. going through his CBG record booklet, he had readings as low as 2.3 to 21.7, all in a day. the moments before we left his house were precious, and i will remember the look in his eyes. as i wrote a summary of the session back home at night, it caused me to reflect on the power, and failure, of medicine, of the human race and the emptiness and fear that we wake up to every day.

in the evening, we had to go back to school for a Community Health Project (CHP) meeting. this was the first meeting that i attended, since i was away overseas when they had the first one. as such, it was the first time i heard the project topic and the background/controvery behind it. it was really exciting, the way the group discussed, criticised and joked through the discussion. the nature of the discussion was so different from any of those i have ever been in in the past 2.5 years of medical school. we were not discussion possible pathophysiologies, patient management or the side effects of drugs. rather, we were looking at things from a much larger perspective - the overall impact on primary healthcare in singapore, not just the single patient but the entire polyclinic population. we talked very generally, of cause and effect, of statistical significance. everyone had something valuable to add to the discussion, simply because quite a large part of it was purely a systematic logical analysis of the situation. by the end of the meeting i was quite thrilled about it, though the many difficulties lie ahead. it gave us a glimpse into the big picture, the grand scheme in which we as doctors-to-be function and how a small change at a high level can make a world of a difference. PACIC ftw! :)

as ortho draws to a close, i'm looking forward to the break! then CHP, and then the small postings that everyone has been talking so much about with nothing less than good things to say :D