lunar.soliloquy

Life's been good recently. Probably hanging out more than I should be but that's okay, I keep convincing myself I'll catch up on things during the Easter weekend but I'm not exactly sure if that's going to happen. Hopefully catch up on sleep. It's not like GP is assessed too formally anyway, but there is an annoying assignment I should probably make a start on. I'm aiming to do that at the very least, as well as try to revise some of the NZ guidelines for asthma, diabetes and stuff. Still wishing I had a holiday but 4 days off for the Easter is at least something.

Been cruising around town quite a bit with Pochama and friends after work which has been really fun. Having flexible hours means it's real tempting to take a half-day off to go hang in town but since I've been learning so much in GP its reduced the temptation somewhat, although its still there. Next week I won't have the TI around to teach me and whisper answers in my ear so the temptation to gaps will probably be even greater, but I really have to work on seeing patients alone so I'll have to make sure I don't find myself walking out the door at 1pm.

Internal conflicts aside, I've really enjoyed the time just hanging with Pochama. I don't often get the chance to talk about things so openly with others since many of my peers have different views on life from me. I dislike the egotistic side of human nature. Nobody's perfect, and I don't understand why some people try so goddamn hard to be. I admit my mistakes. I learn from them. I try not to make the same mistake again. I try hard to appreciate others' points of view because I know you can't see the world through a mirror. I don't criticize other people because I know people do what's good for them at that time and in that circumstance. I feel that some people find it hard to understand the way I see things and that's why I feel awkward in some social situations. Perhaps I should be more opinionated about things, but I hate getting into conflicts of interest. I think Pochama understands some of these things. Even though we're different in our own ways there seems to be a baseline that's common to us both.

I got called by mum in between writing the last paragraph and this one so I kinda lost my train of thought. Maybe things will come back to me later. It's getting late so I'll just leave things hanging here for now; time to shower and sleep.

So I've been working at my General Practice attachment in Manurewa over the past three days, and its made me realise just how much I'd forgotten since 2nd and 3rd year. Essentially I feel I know absolutely nothing and I'm finding I have to look stuff up for every case and everything just seems so foreign even though I know at one stage I studied and learnt everything I had to. I guess the way you look at things in GP is which diseases fit this symptom, whereas in uni you learned disease processes which lead to symptoms, and it puts a whole new perspective on the way I learn things. Also the history taking is quite different from what we were learnt in uni and GPOPS and you won't get many points for empathising with the patient (although its still a good thing to do, but really it's a waste of time in my opinion to go over the top with it like we're taught) or doing a complete history since most of the background stuff is already in the patient's file. It seems that there's more of a focus on asking relevant questions to do with why the patient has come in today and formulating a differential from which you hone in on key questions you should be asking to exclude diagnoses and identify risks. I like that style better; going straight to the point. The whole "That must be very hard for you. Can I get you a tissue?" bullshit felt just too fake. Unfortunately those years of training to use a cushy-pillow-to-cry-on type of interview style seems to have dulled my ability to actually get the information I really need from the patient since there was very little focus on actually diagnosing patients who had real illnesses. I feel I just don't know the questions I should be asking and it just pisses me off since I feel like I should know these things. I duno, I guess I didn't study hard enough in those 2 years to actually remember anything. Guess it's back to square one for me, relearning 2 years worth of rote-learned material is gonna be annoying.

Apologies for the lack of structure and positivity in this post. I haven't been getting great sleep over the past few days for some reason. Probably going to bed too late, just feel real tired after clinic.

Its been a month since my last post here and I'm not sure where I'm supposed to start since I can't even remember what sort of things I wanted to say, if anything, about my life. That's the problem with stopping the posts for a month or so; I forget where I left off and I find it really hard to start them up again. Should really keep this thing going more often.

Anyway, if I remember correctly one of my last posts was about being unfamiliar with Hamilton and finding it difficult to adjust to the hospital environment and life at Hilda Ross. I can't say things had improved much since then during my time at Hamilton, unfortunately. To be honest, I found it goddamn depressing being away from Auckland and it was even worse than being stuck in Murupara since at least there I wasn't under the pressure of uni work. Especially since I hadn't had much of a chance to spend much time with friends during those very busy 2 weeks of campus teaching after being stuck in Murupara/Rotorua all summer. Guess I felt things had just gotten back to the way things should be when suddenly it was all taken away from me again. Even looking back at the photos I took of my room back at Hilda makes me depressed. 6 weeks was far too long. 2 weeks or shorter would have been fine, it was just after that 3rd week that things started to get real dreary and damn depressing. Spent lots of time watching anime, playing DS and wondering if I'd end up in the psychiatric ward myself. The kitchen situation didn't help either. I don't want to know how much money I spent on takeaway food over those 6 weeks but I simply refuse to cook with inadequate cooking facilities and in a questionable hygiene environment. Hell, eating out and stuff was one of the few things that kept me sane, along with my weekend trips to town to the net cafe, arcade and momotea by myself. Despite the whole depressing side of things the 6 weeks did go by surprisingly fast. I guess having the regular 8:30 to 3:30 clinics and 3:30-4:30pm tutorials was good in that I didn't have too much time to myself to dwell on things. I realise this was a lot more work than perhaps an Auckland outpatient student may have had but it wasn't like I had anything better to do in Hamilton anyway. Being in outpatient sucked when everyone else was having a blast in on the wards but you just gotta play with the cards you're dealt with since such things are often beyond your control. Part of this whole experience has, in a way motivated me to be a little more engaged in my studies and perhaps I should take this on board as a lesson that needs to be learned if I'm to be successful in my career.

It's been really good to be back in the big city again. I really didn't realise how much I missed Auckland til I had to spend those six weeks down in Hamilton. Makes me appreciate the things I have here a lot more, at least. Feels good to finally be able to cook a meal properly and not worry about people stealing my ingredients from the fridge or not washing the utensils and dishes properly. I really really love having a nice clean kitchen to work in, too. Good to finally be able to play Starcraft in the comfort of my home too, heh. I guess I'm just used to having everything being comfortable at home and I've become somewhat dependent on these things without me knowing. Guess you could say I'm a bit addicted to SC2 >.> been playing that a lot over the past week, probably more than I should be...

I've recently started hanging with the anime club gang at AUT and met some really awesome people. Sometimes I wish I had more time to just chill and hang but when you're stuck in uni for 8 hours a day at Tamaki campus (of all places =.=) it isn't so easy. I'm going to make a conscious effort to make time for myself to do those things this run so I can make the most of my time in Auckland. Apparently GP is fairly cruisy according to a few classmates I've spoken with but I was told the same things about psychiatry (and that wasn't really). The first week was fairly intensive although the teaching was really quite good. I feel that I'm going to enjoy GP a lot more than psychiatry if things are anything like the time I've spent at my dad's work in Murupara. One thing they made us do in the first week was a thing called GPOPS (General Practice Office Patient Simulations) where you're forced into the role of a GP where you're expected to take a history, examine the patient and develop a management plan for a number of different patient scenarios. Sounds straightforward enough til you realise you don't remember a thing from 2nd or 3rd year and you're struggling to reassure the patient you know your stuff, cos in reality you're just a humble 4th year forced into a role s/he's not ready for. I initially sucked and got lots of 2's (5 being the best) for my first patients although by the end of it I was consistently getting 4/5 which wasn't too bad. I guess pretending to know your shit is a skill in itself and you just gotta fake it til you make it. Not my style at all but if that's what's expected it's not like I can do much about it except go with what's expected, as you often have to do with things like that (med interviews spring to mind).

I recently was given my mum's old car to use to get around to my attachments and stuff this year and it's about goddamn time I've made use of my full driver's licence and parking spot downstairs. Mum was so reluctant to let me have a car and it took a lot of explaining to convince her to let me have one. Initially I wanted to split the cost with my sister and get one to share but mum wanted to give us her old car so she could get a new one. Mum's car is in pretty good shape considering how old it is, and it's clocked about 130,000km already so it's been fairly well-used but not too much. It's a Toyota Corona sedan (I think 2001 model or something), engine size 2.0L, auto. Might post up some pics later. It's good to finally be able to have a bit more mobility rather than being restricted to public transport which isn't terribly great (but better than Hamilton's by all means) so we can go cruising during the weekends and stuff. Gotta get used to the Auckland roads first, though.

Well I'm going to wrap things up here for now and I'll try and keep this updated. Thx for reading =)