Phileosophie

I have spent the past 3 months working with a particular resident at my hospital. Some times when you walk around the hospital it is like walking in a Marcs/Country Road/CUE showroom. Many of our doctors come from affluent backgrounds - whose fathers, and sometimes mothers are doctors, university chancellors, business-people, lawyers, politicians. I often wonder if they have ever had difficulties in life. If they know what it means to earn your keep, and to actually have to work for their 'achievements'. Many of them live at home, or in homes paid for by their wealthy and protective parents. Their biggest problems is probably divorce between those parents. They travel extensively, with numerous photos of their exotic exploits posted onto Facebook. They are athletic, intelligent and beautiful. They will often go on to marry other wealthy individuals, usually surgeons, cardiologists, lawyers. They have massive impractical heirlooms on their ring fingers. They are entitled. They w...

I once had a patient - he was young, by inpatient standards, but had lived a life of sex, booze and drugs, resulting in viral hepatitis and hepatocellular (liver) cancer. He came to our hospital because of abdominal pain and his doctors found that the cancer had spread to his lungs. He came to my attention one evening when I was asked to review him for severe pain. By the end of the evening, he had bled into his liver and this leaked (via the cancer) into his abdominal cavity. The surgical registrar came to see him that night. "Sir, you have bled into your abdominal cavity and there is nothing we can do about that okay?" the surgical registrar said gently. The patient looked up at the registrar. "Not even a transplant?" "No, that's not going to work." "Am I going to die?" "If you continue bleeding into the cavity. But we will ensure that you are not in pain." We asked if there was anyone he would like us to call. There was no...

Being at the airport always gives me pause to reflect on the life that goes on around me, on my trajectory and on the things I have gained or lost. This year, flying has taken on a further nuance - the loss of three Malaysian planes in 2014, the wars of the Middle East which have spread west - while I cannot put my life on hold, I am reminded of the frailty of life which makes reflection all the more pertinent. When I was a child I would sit in front of the telly, eyes glued to the screen, impatient for the day my 'adventures' would begin. On my daily bike rides, it was almost as though if I cycled fast enough I could propel myself into the future where all the fun stuff would begin. I am now well into that future. In the beginning, it all seemed so exciting; there were so many possibilities. I have often wondered why my day-to-day is not as thrilling now as I expected it to be. As it is, my life is so close to what I wanted as a child. To my mind that should make me happie...

There are moments when I wonder if I have gotten it all wrong. There is music in my mind that cannot be expressed through medicine. Today I broke out in dance because the day to day in medicine bores me. Naturally, my boss was not too impressed. Is this really what I want to spend the rest of my life doing? But what else really, could I do? While I do not have an answer, sometimes I feel like I've really gotten it wrong. Yet, I doubt I would have enjoyed anything else. It leaves me hopeless. There is a music trapped inside that cannot be expressed. So it is tearing down the walls. There is a battle inside of me. Eating me inside. And that gnawing thought that I have really gotten it all wrong.

I always feel like life needs to be packed with amazing and exciting things... so it never feels right when my weekends are empty. I get bored, and boredom doesn't sit well with me! It will be A.W.E.S.O.M.E. when I am back in my own apartment with pretty furniture and the amazing Apple iMac that I will finally buy and UNLIMITEDDDDD internet. It will certainly be really really awesome.

I am soon to complete my resident year and in a little over a week will begin my position as a medical registrar. I am excited to finally be here and remember being a student and thinking about how my registrars seemed to know so much. I am going back to the hospital where I was once a medical student and that is also exciting. Sort of a homecoming for me. I hope it will all go well. It is Saturday today, but I am working as today is my last overtime shift as a junior doctor (yay me!). I felt a little frustrated at the registrar on today because I felt that he wasn't doing his job very well but then a pang of guilt hit me as I realised how I was judging someone without really understanding the circumstances he was going through, both in and out of the work environment. I have had the opportunity to work with many doctors who graduated from medical schools abroad. Often times, you feel like they are not quite as good as the locally trained doctors. Or at least, that their medica...

I went for a walk at Centennial Park today to clear my mind after hearing about the things I talked about in my previous entry. As I strolled along the perimeter pathway I thought about how lovely the park was and how lucky we were to live in a place like Sydney. I have often felt that although relationships were what made life quite meaningful, ironically it was often people that sullied my experience in beautiful cities like Sydney. A harsh word, rejection, bad news or sometimes just loneliness has the capacity to dull our happiness. It occured to me however, that this is a fact of life that will never change. People will always let us down, and perhaps 28 years has started to soften the blow. I thought about the various things that people have said about each other within my extended family - you are either too dirty, or too strict, or too extravagant or too cheap. But we are still family. And amongst friends, we are all still friends. If not friends and family then what else do we ...