if it was easy, everyone would do it.

last day on "vacation"

2008-10-14T23:34:00.004+08:00

it's the last month of my surgical rotations. 2 days later, i'm about to move on to General surgery to spend the last 2 surgical weeks. i'm doing Trauma now though, very easy, very laidback. in fact i couldn't come up with any other surgery that's easier than trauma. i mean... yeah major traumatic cases would be exciting and adrenaline rushing, but how on earth were all the major traumatic cases? 90% of the time down in the pit, we're doing cases with something between minor trauma and superduper minor trauma. plus, i'm in charge of the trauma ward, which means i'm the one to take care of those admitted patients. these patients were relatively stable. ok maybe a little too stable. they were not serious enough to get admitted to neurosurgery(awesome!!), thoracic surgery or cardiovascular surgery. on the other hand they were not suitable for being discharged. that's why they ended up here.

being in charge of the floor, i usually started my rounding at 8 (jesus, if i was in neurosurgery i'd have finished the rounding and be in the OR at that time). the attending rounding was usually later. after finishing some got-on-the-way-to-the-hospital breakfast and some discharges, i'm done! i mean done! finished! i basically was able to leave the hospital usually by 10:30, and you know what, that was what i did sometimes too. i stayed in the dorm, sleeping, internet cruising, and went to the hospital only when the nurses called.

so as you can see, the past 2 weeks could be described as a lazy prick's vacation. WTF!! this is so not me!! well however on a second thought, it might not be a bad idea to enjoy the vacation, since i'll be, according to other PGY1s, totally fucked when i'm doing my general surgery rotation. i'll be drown in charts, surgeries and endless on call nights. gosh. and i still have 2 neurosurgical presentations (on a convention held by the Taiwan Neurosurgery Association) to prepare.... i'll be damned alright....

--

Role Model

2008-09-14T16:28:00.003+08:00

what's gonna happen to this institute? look at the mid. aged attendings. who and what could make us outstanding if the older pioneers who defined the current era of neurosurgery in this country retire in the foreseeable future? It's our responsibility!

Every weekend after our morning rounds, young attendings, or say, "senbais", like to take us trainees, or "juniors", to the ground floor Starbucks for a breakfast together. I like it very much, not because of the breakfast but the occasion per se.

As a youngest trainee in one of the most prestigious neurosurgical programs in the country, I have to admit that not every attending is as good as he seems from the outside, and serving these attendings can be the end of the world if you get lucky enough. For that matter, the young attendings, chief residents and younger residents usually are on the same side. There's a camaraderie among us, more like a fraternity. It's actually very true since there's never been a female trainee who survived this program.

One of a very respectful attending-to-be gave his thought to us today. He's very competitive, outstanding, straight forward and not afraid of confrontations. A genius. You can say he's a naturally born surgeon with an attitude(according to the information i got). man.. that just rocks..!! and I personally admire that profoundly.. (think of Peter Benton)...

just leaving a record of what he thought about this institute and the expectation that he held for himself and us, and hoping that someday i could be a surgeon who earns the respect from others.

Quote of the month

2008-09-13T20:02:00.003+08:00

"God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other." ~ Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

the saturday night out

2008-09-11T01:17:00.008+08:00

Brown Sugar is one of the nice places u go at night. one of the middle-to-high-ended jazz clubs in Taipei. i personally am not a big fan for clubbing, especially when i'm in Taiwan. i don't know. i went clubbing a lot in the States too, but i'm just not that into this stuff if a lot of people around you tend to pretend they're ABCs or a lot of chicks tend to reveal that they're sucking up ABCs asses.

that's why i seldom go clubbing in the city. as i mentioned before, a nice morning run preceding a saliva-stimulating breakfast is far more appealing to me than a groovy clubbing night out preceding a hot crazy sex with a fucking gorgeous chick. wait, i'll take the sex part back since that has never happened to me, and that, from a 28 year-old healthy/horny (but decent!!) straight male's point of view, might be as appealing as a nice breakfast in the morning.

back to Brown Sugar, a friend of mine asked me to join them to the Brown Sugar party, a party of 5 chicks and 3 men (me included). 5 chickes turned out to be 3 in the end, and they're terribly late, which was fine to me though. 2 of them are doing PR(major companies). 1 of them claimed that she grew up in Panama and had the degree in the States, and the other one looked very "trendy" in a "taiwanese way"... if u know what i mean....

they're not bad-looking, but not lookers either. that's not the point. i didn't have any "intention" in the first place after all, but what happened next was just lousy.... the Panama girl had just a glass of whiskey, and she started to get fucked up by the liquor. caressing my buddy (and later on she moved up to me too @@!), shouting, wobbling, and vomiting in the end, she was making a scene there, and a joke on herself. darn it. even i was embarrassed!!

The other PR was more normal, but u just can tell from the conversations that she's extremely brainless. no offending, ok probably a little bit, but it took her almost 10 times trying to recite my profession correctly. i used neurosurgery first, she thought it was neurology, or psychiatry. alright. i started to claim that i was in surgery, which was simple enough, and she still failed to understand.... gosh, was it my problem or hers? does it take a brain to know what brain surgery is? or fair enough, surgery from other professions? you're in the PR bizz for the chirst sake!!

i ended up making an excuse and left that place earlier than my buddies, way too early, i actually stayed there for less than 2 hours. it's probably a good place to go since that supposed-to-be-fun-and-relaxing night turned out to be a disaster so i didn't really have the chance to enjoy it. jeees... next time i'll definitely ask the right chick to go, or i'll just go by myself to prey one. both would be way better than going out with these nutheads who seemed to just come out from the coo coo's nest...

it's been smooth

2008-06-22T23:20:00.008+08:00

during the 2 months of rotation in NCU i really learned a lot, not only about dealing with neurosurgically critical patients, but also some dynamics and politics inside the department in terms of doctor-doctor, doctor-nurse, nurse-nurse relationships.

work wise, last month was easy. too easy. fewer patients, fewer paperwork, more time of my own. but as was pointed out in the Bible, there would be seven years of plenty and prosperty, followed by seven years of famine. for the past few weeks the patient number suddenly rose and i was again drawn in notes, clinical chores(which, u can almost say, belong to green hands like mine), overworking hours and unpredictable clinical situations that jumped out of nowhere when i was still busy pulling out drainage tubes or suturing or extubating or establishing central lines.

but it's been smooth. as time goes by my clinical skills get mature. good good. i still managed to go to the gym on a q3d basis while jogging and swimming occupying the another 2. next month i'm going back to vascular team. that's something i'm looking forward to, working under Dr. L. there's a price though: duty shifts and unfinished charts that only seem to pile.

the good thing is i get to scrub in craniotomies woohoo!!! gotta get ready for that.

goals for next month:

1. at least get to know what vessel they're doing under the microscope!!

2. to establish an efficient way of charts/notes management. can't really let the paperwork hinder my learning!

after setting up central lines for days i noticed some freaking delusional thoughts inside my mind. every time i look at people's neck, i swear to god, i can't stop wondering if that would be an easy access to have a neck CVC. jees....i spent half of the time when seeing "sex and the city" thinking what was wrong with me.... shoot~~!!

joy over nothing

2008-06-12T00:46:00.002+08:00

darn it i had my first intubation failure yesterday, on a poor LOL with cirrhosis and bleeding tendency.

the attending was there all the time. after 2 attemps the attending stood up and had a successful rescue (for both the LOL and me). after the event the attending gave me some advices on how i should'ave done it and what i might have been doing wrong.

it's just freaking depressing yet inspiring.

today there's another resident in NCU trying to establish a central line. i was off duty already but still called to see another patient presenting with chest pain. after the chest pain had been taken care of i returned to NCU, and realized that this resident was having some trouble, and was calling some senior residents for help. i wasn't any senior(actually 1 year junior) but i was there. how could i miss the chance of a potential "successful rescue?" putting on a gown and sterile gloves i threw myself into the battle field offering a hand, which resulted in a nicely performed rescue.

seriously i'm practically living on each blown pupils that came into my service, on each clinical techniques that save patients better or worse, and on the joy over these events which might seem nothing to most people.

it's just so freaking depressing yet inspiring.

alcohol

2008-06-09T00:26:00.005+08:00

alcohol is a substance acting as a central nerve inhibitor. after ingesting a certain dose of alcohol people present with associated symptoms of sedation, such as drowsiness, muscle weakness, a.k.a. being knocked-out.

however during the process some people develope symptoms of derranged behaviors, eg. wide-based gait, loud-talking, failure to maintain balance, by mechanism of disinhibition of the frontal lobe, which, of course, includes disinhibition of emotions.

that means, some poor dudes may behave embarrassingly wierd after some consumption of alcohol. these embarrassingly wierd behaviors could be:

1. calling ur ex.
2. crying
3. the worse case scenario, calling ur ex and crying.

i guess that's why guys like to get wasted with buddies instead of families, esp. not girlfriends and/or wives.

21

2008-05-18T02:28:00.006+08:00

a fabulous movie. really great! awesome!!! it's been a long while since i get so thrilled and content like this solely from seeing a movie.

the plot was outstanding itself, and the way of filming and story line just made it even better. what's more, a large part of the scenes were taken in BOSTON woohoo!!!!! from the 1st shot i knew it right away! seeing all the landmarks in boston suddenly conjured me up with the old memories of that summer which never seemed to faint. i know it seems ridiculous, but i just can't help falling for the city and all the preppy/snobby stuff around it.

the leading actress was astonishing btw, looking intelligent, elegant, sexy but not in a cheesy way. if i was right she also starred as louis lane in "superman, the return." very eye-catching yummy~~~~ jesus... if only i could meet a girl with such extreme yet matter-of-factly combination.....

in a nutshell, it's a great movie with a great story starred by great actors and actresses. definitely worth seeing. definitely worth both of my thumbs!

Singles

2008-05-12T00:26:00.005+08:00

it's a movie by Cameron Crowe, one of my favs. it's a term describing those who're not taken. it's a state, an attitude and a way of living(quoted from the above movie: HAVE FUN, STAY SINGLE~).

it's actually very convenient staying single, in terms of living or working as a surgical trainee in such specialty. i'm able to spend a random night in my office without "reporting for status". no time needed for communication, aka argument. i can arrange my own time at will without considering the significant other's itinerary (of course dating isn't included on this occasion). i could try to live my hospital life as hardcore as it can be. i could take a look at the sea and there are plenty of fishes in it and every fish is a potential one and it feels good even without any substantial chemistry going on.

it gets lonely, pathetic even, when u're lying in the oncall room with AC blowing in ur ear, and u're extremely worn out, physically and mentally, and u really really want someone to talk to and there's none. that's one for the downside of being single. no sex. that's another. the bottom line is both of the above are still bearable.

people have doubts about my sexual orientation. well screw them. peopla ask me about my opinions about girls and introduce them to me. well... i love these arranged dates, but my intention is to stay single for a couple of years and try to enjoy my freaking NS crazy life, and keep it going for the rest of my life and see if anyone can take it. and i tend to think that one can fall in love only once in lifetime, and that one-time for me was probably gone.

so it's been good, if not terrific, staying single. ain't got nothing to complain about. at least for now. :D

--

why do i keep blogging in English? no one's reading this anyway
i'm supposed to abandon wretch 100 years ago and this blog is supposed to the sub...
what am i writing? even i don't get what i'm thinking... :S

Another Day On Call

2008-04-08T00:27:00.006+08:00

it's my 4th night shift this month. i'm such a bad-assed hardcore punk that i'm capable of taking the calls on a QOD basis(and keep going. in fact i'll be on call for almost half of the month~). still learning though, there came times that i freaked out and had nothing in mind what to do, but hey, generally i'm totally cool with my current way of living: staying in the hospital for consecutive 40 hours, sleeping/movieing/working-out in the remaining 8. the unit of time is not "day" but "2-day". my body is a caffiene pool. my personal motos are "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and "pain is good. extreme pain is extremely good."

oh~did i mention that i just love the OR...?? after 3 craniotomies in a row, now i dont' feel like i'm having an operation if it's less than 5 or 6 hours...

and man~ i'm a person of no life outside the hospital?!!

the thing is.... under this kinda circumstance, there are always times during the shifts, 2 or 3 AM maybe, that u just have this deep deep feeling of....how should i put it... loss? even though u're content with the working hour and the lifestyle, u still feel something's missing. u started to miss the undergraduate life when there was still someone who said prayers for u, who wrote u christmas cards, who got pissed at u becoz u liked to watch hot girls on the street, who was willing to be ur emotional bin regardless that there was a exam for her on the next morning...

oh... that's just a "sweet child'o mine" before i stepped into the real warfield of clinical medicine. here i am, turning into 30 in less than 3 years. all alone. nothing attached. attached to none.

someone said it's a lone road. it is.

and i'm such a bad-ass fucking dude i still dare not to share this piece of shit with anyone, or to try to let anyone get assess to my mind.

A Lesson

2008-03-23T14:59:00.009+08:00

as a resident, i learn from people's illness. so it's my job to remind myself to stay alert at ALL TIME, and if i failed to do that i should probably just go fuck myself instead of letting my boss fire me.

that's why i was so disappointed at myself(god!! whatalusa!!!!) 2 days ago when i realized i failed to notice one of my patient's having hemorrhagic transformation after recieving tPA at an outside hospital 1 week before he came to my service.......!!

the story was... this poor dude had his tPA shot after he arrived this outside hospital within 3 hours after he had this stroke. we called it "gold period". he was in hemiparesis with severe aphasia, whihc was predictable from his infarcted location. he had 2 cat scans and stayed static clnically, and after 1 week he was transferred to our hospital out of his daughter's request.

he seemed pretty stable to me upon admission, and i routinely arranged MR study for him. i was gonna DC his mannitol coz i thought since he had come this far, there's no much point using it to lower his intracranial pressure, and there was no sign of intracranial hypertension after all. but then on a second thought, he'd been using it for a week, i might as well just continue with it and wait for the result of MR study and see how bad it'd get.

3 days later the study was done, i "routinely" glanced over T2WI, ADC, DWI serieses and saw a miserably screwed up left hemisphere with subacute infarction and edema. the poor ventricle of the left side was squeezed to a size so small like my retarded intelligence.

the poor dude's brain seemed pretty swollen to me and i let mannitol stay on the meds list. it was a correct call on a hindsight. i just failed to pay too much attention to T1 weighted images.

that's pretty much the story itself. everything was fine. the patient was getting better in terms of his clinical/neurological performance per se. all good all good, and i was happy that everybody's happy until 3 days ago, the head of stroke team, a nice old fella, asked me about the patient (who had some sort of connection, probably). i said, oh he's getting better and more lucid these 2 days. then we reviewed his MR images together, and that's when i noticed i failed to noticed his hemorrhage just outside of the thalamus.

wut the fuck!!!!

we raised the dosage of glycerol from Q12H to a Q6H basis. the head of stroke team was nice to me though, but i didn't need others to remind myself how stupid i was.... dammit..!!

this was an unforgivable mistake, even if it didn't compromise my patient in any way, even though this poor dude in bed was getting better clinically. i still couldn't forgive myself to make this rediculous mistake. i know i got lucky, seriously, learning my lesson without paying any price.

may the lesson never be forgotten. it cannot be happening again!! never!! GOSH!!!

Aloha

2008-01-30T16:59:00.000+08:00

booked myself a ticket, got a visa, made a few calls to make some reservations and now i'm taking off to hawaii.

the thing is... it's all by myself. a lone road. it's not a totally a cut-loose on some fancy beach resort or something. i got only one backpack, gonna stay in hostel for most of the stays.... guess i just want some backpacker's life to lift up the tone of being young... yeah.. while we're "young?"...

it's got a lousy beginning though.. CI delayed the flight for up to almost 6 hours due to some fucking "operation?" what.. do u think consumers are idiots?? jeees.. let's just hope this won't affect my scheduled itinerary too ridiculously much!

wish me luck, i wanna get tanned before i get bleached in the operation room. i wanna taste a little sea and dance with sea turtles before i pick up the scalples. i wanna embrace the sunlight before i dive into the endless nights in the oncall rooms and ED and ORs... i wanna revive myself with a little bit of alohas and luau!

here i am hawaii. it's gonna be a short stay but make it worth remembering:D

Being Anxious

2008-01-03T11:17:00.000+08:00

among the vast american TV shows, ER is literally my all-time favorite. i used to be fond of Grey's Anatomy, which turned out to be a soap. Grey's Anatomy was great in it first season, but the third season(maybe the late second season) was just a fake medical drama which was essentially a soapy medical edition of beverly hills 90210.

what i'm trying to say is, as i've spent several days indulging myself in seasons of ER, earlier ER, which was still flooded with those oldies like john carter, kerry weaver, mark greene and doug ross, i cannot help but wondering if i could be as competent a doctor as those hunky surgical(or medical) studs in the show. u know like Benton or Greene or Carter. can i run the codes with confidence? can i practically be one know-it-all-and-do-it-all?

i know it's just the anxiety before my residency kicking off, and since i've decided to spend the rest of my "vacation" in here instead of traveling to Australia, i should really start studying. there are several books at hand that i really need to finish(and memorize) before the job begins, the ICU book, the handbook of neurosurgery, to name a few. let alone those journals that i should update myself with. thinking about the comment on Dr. Benton: "he never eats, he never sleeps, and he reads every medical journal no matter how obscure.", i think i'd better pull myself together and start equipping myself with what it takes to be a decent surgical resident.

ok i'll start doing that after i finish this season of ER. :P

How Did You Decide On Neurosurgery?

2007-12-23T22:55:00.001+08:00

there was a question in the test before my job interview for the neurosurgical residency in VGH, Taipei. as put in the title here, the question was "how did you decide on neurosurgery?"

i have to admit that someone on the inside gave me this piece of "intelligence" before the test. so i actually thought about how to make up a decent answer for that one. however it's still been hovering in my mind for days until even now.

what i wrote as the answer was true. no kidding. i yearn for that sacred healing process, that fulfilling sense of achievement, also crave for this grueling, ridiculously torching training. what i didn't wrote down on the answer sheet was, probably one of the major reasons, that neurosurgery is the coolest job in the world. it's what a jock does. neurosurgeons are the most bad-ass-est people in medicine field.

when i was browsing uncleharvey.com forum i found one thread talking about the same issue. hilariously i read this entry which was resemble to my thoughts:

1) Wicked cool operations. What’s cooler than opening up somebody’s skull and looking at their brain? Who on earth gets to do that kind of stuff? It’s a priviledge beyond compare. I’m on my second Sub-I right now, and I can’t believe some of the awesome stuff I’ve had the opportunity to do.

2) Sweet toys. The technology is advancing every day, perhaps faster than in any other field. I anticipate that the tools we use will be substantially more advanced when I finish my residency than they will be when I start it. Diagnostic toys, drugs and imaging toys will all advance faster in neuroscience (being in its infancy and all) than in any other field. How much more are we going to learn about the gallbladder in the next 50 years, and even if we do, who cares? You can just take the damn thing out and hardly anybody notices.

3) Intellectual stimulation for the rest of my life. See #2. This field will never get boring. I’ll never feel like I know it all, or even come close. There will always be some fascinating new thing on the horizon. I don’t see anything fascinating and new about hernias on the horizon.

4) Philosophical interest. You can hack off almost any part of your body, and you’re still fundamentally you. You could conceivably do a heart-lung-kidney-liver-intestine-cornea-bone marrow-skin transplant and still basically be the same person, but you take a little chunk out of your brain, and suddenly your whole universe changes (a la Phineas Gage). Neurosurgeons are the only people on earth who work directly with the seat of the human soul. Now THAT’s a priviledge worth making sacrifices for.

funny huh? :D

Just Keep These In Mind

2007-12-19T09:08:00.001+08:00

~Only people interested in Neurosurgery would start a thread like this. Everyday the people I meet in this field demonstrate to me that they are born with this type of ego they don’t gain it during training. I guess I have my own problems or I would have never become associated with a field like this. Truth is people in this field are far more likely to discuss how “long they stayed post-call” i.e. “I am such a bad ass, I can take anything”. When this really boils down to some poor bastard with greasy hair fuckin falling asleep while he fills out discharge paper work. Take this you badasses I have been so sleepy I fell asleep on the toilet one time. Wow I am great I am so tough. I am sure all of us are massively improving patient care when we have been awake for 36 hours continuously. Give me a break. A Nurse practioner from Boston and a social worker could probably do 10x more for society with eight hours of sleep than the sorry bunch of louts we are. Jesus how did I get myself involved with this field. Neurosurgeons particularly the young trainees are real quick to talk about how they are tough. I tell you what we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about how shitty neurosurgery outcomes are. How are your patients doing? No body talks about that. Because it makes them to damn sad and deflates that badass Neurosurg Ego. It is only an elite patient on my service that can even speak a complete fucking phrase. But If you listen to the sonofabitches around here you would think that we are the best doctors in the world. Bull shit. We are fighting a losing battle in most cases, and while that isn’t really the fault of neurosurgeons, we need to at least have some humility. If people just want to show how tough they are they should become marines or go into radiology and run triathalons. I am warning anyone who will listen, which unfortunately wasn’t me, this field is about trying to fix things that can’t be fixed. It is about helping people that are in the worst situations imaginable. What if no one could understand you and you couldn’t understand anyone else and you also couldn’t move the right side of your body, have you even thought about what it is like to be in that situation? The last thing a person in such misery needs is someone who thinks only about himself all the time. Just walk away from this field unless you are ready to go down with the ship again and again. This field isn’t beautiful or dramatic it is work work tragedy tragedy repeat. It isn’t about how long you stay in the hospital. Because no one gives a shit when their loved one is still paralyzed after an accident or still dies of a brain tumor or stroke three months later in a nursing home. No one really remembers that you were working real hard. What they remember is that unkempt bastard was real mean and he snapped at us when we asked what we could expect for mom/dad/brother. Real mean real unprofessional, Real tired. I tell you who cares how much you are at the hospital and how tired you are, your family. And they are pissed they are alienated because they think you don’t really care about them, and they might be right. Oh well lets go get em, we’re a tough bunch. I am not on call tonight but maybe I will stay up anyway how do like that?

~I am also from the “old days” and find this whole thread a bit funny. We never really looked at life in terms of how much time we got to spend in or out of the hospital. At one point one of the residents in our program actually did not have an apartment and just lived in the call room for about 3 months. Several residents just plain preferred to stay at the hospital for weeks/days/months because there wasn’t much point leaving after 11 pm when you had to be back at 4 or 5.

We also did the “power weekends” you described.

I just have a vague memory of being continuously thoroughly depleted and exhausted. I had nothing left to give emotionally or physically and literally lived off the epinephrine rush that came with every blown pupil… I basically couldn’t even tell if I was asleep or awake because it all felt the same.

Aaah - now those were the days…

(Strangely, i find it exciting and thrilling!!)

~The operation is not the beginning and end of surgery, but a therapeutic measure alone. - H.W.Cushing.

~Pain is good. Extreme pain is extremely good.

1st step to be a neurosurgeon

2007-12-14T12:11:00.001+08:00

after a jumpy Tuesday and an anxious Wednesday evening, i finally got the notification from neurosurgery department at VGH(veteran general hospital), taipei. very luckily i got in. very exhilarated i jumped with joy when i was still on the phone with the chief. i couldn't stop thinking about that cranial base dissecting lab which is similar to Ether Dome in MGH(very, similar). it's just great, and that's totally beyond description! being qualified as a neurosurgical resident HERE has been one of my short-term goals, and it's overwhelmingly fantastic i could really get this offer. really.

i'm glad that i aced all 3 of the interviews. being accepted by NTU hospital was actually predictable. when i looked around at my competitions before that interview i just knew it. getting the job offer at KMU hospital was also easy. the difficult part was to get the plastic surgery niche, which, with His blessings, i got too.

i have to admit, before the day of my VGH interview when i was informed that i was on the 2-men list of plastic surgery resident back in KMUH, i really hesitated if i should just take that offer. the life there is definitely a lot easier, to name a few, less physically demanding with more money, nicer weather, closer to Kenting, lower living expenses..... gosh it's just tempting. when i was on the bus way home, i was thinking.... fuck it, if VGH doesn't pick me as one of the trainees, the worse case scenario would just be going back to kaohsiung to take that easy and profitable job!!

the job offer in kaohsiung was so tempting that i still thought about it after the interview in VGH. still it's hard to choose one. being able to get trained in VGH has been a dream(well at least a goal) for me, but the kaohsiung job is totally great if "being practical." later on Thursday, just after the phone notification, i thought of the conversation between Ben Afflect and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting:

you're sitting on a winning lottery ticket. you're too much of a pussy to cash it in, and that's bullshit.

that line just stroke me. thinking about that ether-dome-like studio, i called my parents to tell them i decided to cash my lottery ticket in.

that's my first step becoming a neurosurgeon.

the McDonald's papercup

2007-12-07T16:05:00.000+08:00

having McDonald's breakfast in the morning has sort of become part of my routine now. after officially finished with my army service i literally go there EVERY SINGLE DAY.

just like old times~ when i was an intern i had my McBreakfast so often that the desk clerks knew my VIP status just by my face. there's this old lady who seemed to be fond of me, keeping asking if i had a girlfriend LOL...... that's actually great coz i WAS in need of girls, well actually i'm always in need of girls, and i thought we had some connections there that she might just introduce her daughter or someone to me. too bad that never happened.

alright.... so.... after having these breakfast for so many days, i just realized something funny on the paper cups they used to serve the coffee, and that's just... put it right to the spot in terms of describing my situation:

for those weird girls who might be "interested" in me. i'm just like the slogans printed on the cups. one is "ENJOY IT", and the other side says "CAUTION/ HANDLE WITH CARE/ I'M HOT".

hahahaha....

this morning

2007-12-07T06:02:00.000+08:00

awakened by the alarm, i got up from my sweet cozy bed at 5 this morning. sitting on the chair at my desk, lucid yet totally blank in mind, i just didn't wanna start my reading that soon.

to be honest i've been slacking off for days. there's the interview in kaoshiung next monday, another one, the major one with the top top neurosurgical residency program in taiwan, on wednesday, and i've been goofing around a lot, i mean A LOT.... having lunches with friends, having dinners with dates(yeah right it's a plural!!), going to the movies, internet surfing like there's no tomorrow... jesus christ.... the truth is i really don't know what to do in terms of preparing for those fucking interviews. i've read most of the major issues in neurosurgery, but the test before that interview isn't gonna be in the form of MCQ like the way we're all used to. dammit what am i supposed to read for that.......

why can't they just look at my CV and shake the hands and say "welcome to hell baby?" i'm competent, both physically and mentally. i love the OR and never wanna leave the hospital. i wanna be tortured and grilled by the hectic surgical life. i don't even care if i can find a date to mate under that kind of living!!!

seriously i don't know who else they'd choose if they don't pick me as one of the 2 neurosurgical residents of this year.