Beautiful Life!

Ridiculous amount of work! Did they suppose we were robots?

 

“Aku teringin nak belajar balik sejarah. Tak pun Tasawwur. Even Geografi! Anything else but medical stuff!” I told Balqis when I was in the library.

 

Bila cakap mcm tu, terasa curang dengan medicine.

 

I know I have used this anology way too much…but being a medical student is like being married. There’s no way out other than a divorce which in itself would bring a whole lot of other dramas and problems.  Imagine if I stop my medical studies halfway….there’s the MARA loan that I have to pay. And there’s the question of ‘then what am I going to be?’.  So really, for the past 3 years (no matter how much nurtured love I might have had for medicine) the main reason that makes me hang around in medicine is because I am a sponsored student who will go broke if I have to pay back the loan!

 

Again, like marriage! Sometimes the only reason you stay with your partner is because of the children. Love alone is not gonna sustain a relationship. Something has to bind you so that you will stick to it through all the good and bad times. Because after you have passed through one bad time after the other, there will always be other good times in the future. But if you get a divorce, all the ‘future good times’ you could have had, would not be possible anymore.

 

So, that’s the second reason I am still in medicine. I am hoping for the future ‘good times’.

 

Sometimes all you need to stay ‘istiqamah’ is hope.

 

Again, tu pasal org yg nak bercerai fikir berjuta2 kali. Maybe, this problem is just a one-off thing…maybe suami aku takkan main kayu tiga lagi in the future. Maybe, benda ni takkan jadi lagi and kami akan happy forever and ever. Maybe dia takkan buat lagi mcm ni walaupun dah lima kali benda ni berlaku.

 

Kita sentiasa nak cari excuse untuk benda yg kita sayang. It’s perfectly understandable. The questions I would ask kepada isteri2 (or suami too, I guess) yang terseksa adalah…how do we know there will be a future good times? When do you stop hoping? How do you know when to give up (and get a divorce)?

 

The answer is we will never know!

 

Time2 exam ni lah ada satu lagu yg sering berkumandang di telinga aku.

Que Sara, Sara. Whatever will be, will be.

 

See? Betapa sesuainya analogi marriage with regards to medicine. Sometimes, we need to be reminded why we love someone/something, especially when things get too tough for too long. In the case of marriage, you go and take a second honeymoon. In the case of a medical student with chronic fatigue syndrome…you need a blog to vent all your frustration! You need a blog to write about your good times so that when things get really stormy, you could go back and read it again and you then get to remind yourself that this is why I have to stick around! This is why it’s worth it! That things have not always been bad! In fact, some things are so marvelous good!

 

We can’t all be 100% in love 100% of the time! The feelings fluctuate….it has its highs and lows.

 

It just so happens that the last semester of third year is one of the lows that I have mentioned.

 

I have had more than ten body systems to learn and so many diseases for each system. And for each of those disease, the faculty seemed to expect the student to know not just all the clinical stuff but the pathogenesis as well! Ridiculous! I don’t think anyone could finish covering all the syllabus during the one week (only!) stuvac.

 

And no one would remember most of them post-exam!

 

I have just finished my third year exam (people have been quoted to say that third year is the hell of medicine) and I found it tough! There are some anatomy questions that I found reaally difficult. Anatomy to medicine, is like Maths to IB. In case it was not clear what I meant by that, let me just put this in plain language. Anatomy is a pain in the neck (rather than say ‘neck’, I would love to put in place another different anatomical part. But I am trying to clean my language, here).  

 

Right now, if I were asked how much tender, loving feelings I have for medicine…the answer would be almost zero!

 

I have spent most of my time in the library. And sometimes at two in the morning, I walked back to my room (alone!) passing through the bushes at night and coming across Possums and security guards. There are days when I would cross path with some cleaners who started their work at three in the morning, cleaning up the math building and the drama theater.

 

And my head went, how does it feel to be a cleaner? As I nodded my head at them, minding my manners to them by saying “Good morning, ladies,” I could not help but wonder what do people do in their lives?

 

You know, cleaning is a very important job! They too, are doing something worthwhile! Kalau semua orang tak nak jadi cleaner, siapa nak buat? Kalau diorang start kerja pukul 3 pagi (sebab orang masuk pejabat pukul 9 and things have to be clean before then), they have most of the mornings and afternoons and nights to themselves. What other lives do they lead when they are not cleaning? Mesti diorang ada masa nak berjalan-jalan, nak membaca, nak ada bersosial. Diorang punya payment pun not bad, bolehlah hidup. Not a bad deal, kan. Kalau aku duduk kat Aussie, I don’t think I would mind being a cleaner. Tapi kat Mesia….hmm.

 

Macam pekerja majlis bandaran yang angkut sampah kt rumah aku tu. Aku selalu wonder, what do they feel? Buka tong sampah depan rumah orang, and pick up the garbage bag (kadang2 dah berulat dan berair!) and then lempar kat lori sampah tu. 

 

Their jobs are important too! But how could they bear it?

 

Sambil berjalan pagi2 buta tu…mcm2 dalam kpala otak aku nih. But I never stopped thinking about the cleaners.

 

I don’t know why I am obsessed with cleaners. Maybe because they make my journey from the library back to my room at 2 a.m much more bearable.

 

Otherwise, my obsessive thoughts about them can only be a sign that I might have gone just a little bid mad.

 

I find it very interesting that med rhymes with mad.

 

I think, it must mean somehing, don’t you?

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