Nov 22, 2016

The Hours before eHouseman Opens


Here I am in the dead hour of early morning, all alone in the living room. In another 11 hours, I would be here again, in front of the computer, filling up the ehouseman form as fast as I could and hoping that my hospital that I wanted to go to is available for me.


Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea why I wanted to go to that hospital. I have never set foot in there, let alone know where it is located exactly. All I know is that I have to pick out one hospital that is not in Selangor/KL but is quite close to my family here because supposedly I may want to get transferred to Selangor/KL when I became the MO later on. So when everyone asks me where I want to go, I would blurt out that hospital's name. Is it a survival mechanism? I don't think so. But apart for being outside the hot zone yet near enough to go running back to my family whenever I got slumped, I don't really have a strong motive to go there.


Just go to show that I am actually quite okay if I got to go to any hospital. Except those in East Malaysia. And those up in the North. And the Pantai Timurs. And Johor. Nope. After 5 freakin' long years in Johor I don't think I want to see the specialists there when I work as a houseman. 

Wait a minute. 
Then that leaves me with hospitals in Perak, Negeri Sembilan, and Melaka.

So it's either:

Raja Permaisuri Bainun (Ipoh)
Taiping
Teluk Intan
Seri Manjung

Tuanku Jaafar (Seremban)
Tengku Ampuan Najihah (Kuala Pilah)

Hospital Melaka



Crap. My list is so short. I am feeling so nervous and so jittery about it. I only have ONE hospital in my mind! Okay, I just made up my mind for the second hospital in the list. Oh man oh man oh man. Uncertainty kills, man. 


I have waited years to become a doctor. But now I am dreading it. I know I will never ever choose to go back to my studying years at medical school - I'm over it. It is definitely not a phase in my life that I'm willing to experience it twice. But the anticipation and the fear are too overwhelming. I know I am going to die when I start working as a houseman. I am never a brilliant student - I doubt I will fare better at work, and honestly this feeling is akin to the time I had a motorcycle accident years back. The feeling when you stumbled your bike over a pothole and you see it in your mind's eye the path of the accident that will happen next as you lost control of the bike. So you braced yourself with that sunken feeling and the pain comes almost instantaneously afterwards.


That is how I am feeling at the moment. This is my bracing moment. The bike has fallen. I am skidding over. And sometime next month the excruciating pain will come and wound me deeply sooner than the time of impact I had expected. 


5 comments:

  1. tomorrow is the day for me to fill up the housemen form...i'm a mess right now, but your post managed to make me laugh.. so thanks a lot.

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  2. had a good laugh with ur post man! still, im in a deep mess!

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  3. hello dr, tq for your effort documenting all your experience applying housemanship, i want to ask, do houseman who live in kl /selangor cannot be transferred back to KL/selangor for MO ship if they choose houseman near their house? i really do prefer of choosing hospital near my house, as my mother is not well
    thank you for your reply in advance btw i'm gonna be filling e-houseman nextweek (22/5/2018) and i'm thinking about choosing htj (seremban) as my first choice

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  4. I’m lost. That’s how I end up reading yours. The same situation, feeling, concerns and options left behind, make me cry reading this. 2 days before eho, I think I had mental breakdown even before start working.

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    Replies
    1. I know this may all sound very scary and panic-inducing but you need to calm yourself down. Take things slowly, step by step. Don't think too much about it.

      Also, if you keep reading my blog I don't think my posts here are all progressively getting depressive hahah, so that's quite a testament that life as a houseman does not need to be that bad. We only fear what we don't know for sure.

      Also, PTM is a great place to meet new people and share your concerns with each other. It has helped me a lot and I hope it will do the same to you. Good luck!

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