Hall

Relearning the bad habits that were once unlearned.

Unlearning the knowledge that was once learnt.

Learning the essentials that are yet unlearnt.

Obstetrics

Obstetrics, the happiest of all specialties in medicine! The time when babies are born and the family rejoices after a 40 week ordeal. The specialty that always anticipates a good outcome in the end. The place where patients are willing to be clerked and be talked to. Just like the patients I see in the ward, my mother was very happy when she was pregnant and was even so when she finally gave birth to me....

While all I witnessed were "healthy mothers and babies after a vaginal delivery", I was quite sad about the few babies I saw in the nursery. Dysmorphic babies with multiple defects all around the body. Just guess what the parents feel after being pregnant for so long a time and going through the great pains of labor and ending up with something strange! Great time, money and effort were paid to repair the defects, and yet newer problems emerge. As if a curse was on the parents! Pray that the day never happens......

Studying about the 10 eye signs of Down's syndrome is interesting. Treating the patient is a real headache. Hope some new intervention besides OSCA and TOP can come up soon.

Swiftly flies the holidays,

ah.....why can't I have moreeeeeee?????

Today, I am very very tired after moving my stuff between the student flats. Of course, you probably guessed it - I had to follow Prof Lai's round.

I think I am very very fortunate to be working as assistant interns under Profs Wong and Lai. Such a magic combination is very rare indeed - they are great teachers and really deserve their titles! (unlike some....haha)

Tonight, I just can't resist myself from switching on the television. It's the HK Men contest and I am very impressed by the contestants. They have this bulging muscles and some are even younger than me! I mean I have been training with machines and barbells like 4 times a week and I still don't get the bulk that they have. Actually I know that I can't put on so much muscles anyway; after all, my body weight have not increased and actually decreased! But every time, at the back of my mind, I imagine my muscles can hypertrophy infinitely from all this training.

While I wish to have a bodybuilder-like figure, in real life, carrying on so much bulk is actually inconvenient - particularly when doing stairs, running uphills or mountain-bike.

Yesterday, our sub-group had dinner with Prof WS Wong at CWB. He is really one of the nicest doctors and professors in Internal Medicine. And believe me - he told us he was from St. Paul's Co-ed! And it seems that many others including Prof TM Chan are also from our secondary school.

Actually, people care little about who is from where these days. After 5 years of medical school, every medical student just comes out more or less the same as the other medical student. At the system is supposed to work that way (except for some extremely fortunate or extremely unfortunate few....) Probably the secondary school alumni association is going to say," hey, NO! You should be more active in school affairs." But I am just too tired to do anything.

For the past few weeks, I have this really strong feeling that medicine is an everchanging science, and that medical education is really improving fast. Some older generations of doctors probably were not as lucky to receive so broad a training of psychiatry, OG, orthopedics as us. Or probably, some drugs like SSRI were not invented or used during their days of learning and training. All seems fine until someone with psychotropic medications comes into a medical/surgical ward and present with a difficult clinical problem, and then doctors have a great delimma - "If I had learn more psychiatry!"