Gifts and Times on Santa's Porch

Sometimes, the best gifts are those not placed under the living room Christmas tree.

When we were kids, Santa would leave gifts on our back porch -- something for my brother, sister and me -- be it a much-awaited GI Joe, a Matchbox car set, a Barbie, the newest Hardy Boys mystery. It was always something we always looked forward to come Christmas morning, as we threw up our bedcovers and ran to the back porch, finding our new gifts, unwrapping them and playing with them until lunch time.

As years went by, the gifts weren't left on the porch anymore but Santa must have been in a wee hurry as he left them with our parents and they gave it to us in the morning. Still, we'd be playing in that back porch/storage area (as it was converted to store most of the junk in our house) for a while. My brother and I would be setting up GI Joe camps all over while sometimes my sister would play with her coffee/dining set and dolls.

The house got renovated and the back porch made way to a bathroom for my parents bedroom, we grew busy with school and eventually moving to different career paths. The gifts of Christmas still come but in a more traditional way under the Christmas tree in the new downstairs living room. Santa must be mailing in presents now as he would be too old to be riding his sleigh and Rudolph's hooves might need retreading.

But still, I remember that crowded back porch and spending time with my brother and sister. The laughs and the fights, I realize now, were the true gifts and not the toys we played with or the books we got to read. It was the time spent with each other that we received and that is what matters most.

Santa, indeed, knows best.

My grown-up Christmas list has not been written yet but as a postscript, it will be sure to include:

1. Tonett and me surviving our first years of residency
2. Success and contentment to all of our friends and siblings
3. Good health to all our families
4. Guidance in the work we do
(I reserve the uhm right to add more once the need arises)

Truly these won't fit on any porch, but I'll take it.

Headache? Bang your head against the wall...

I am dead tired.

I went through my first day of pre-residency -- pretty much just shadowing my senior residents at the ER and in the wards, getting the hang of doing rounds again, getting a feel for new consultants i don't recognize, and of course the sleepless nights.

And I'm really tired.

And maybe I could stay up long enough to cry and make this another post for Doc Ness' MUSH TBR edition.

I've been awake for almost 40 hrs now with only an hour or two of staggered naps.

I know this is still pre-residency so I sit there at the ER counter doing what I can to help, and shudder as I get a glimpse of what I will be doing for the next three years. And it's BUSY as HECK!!!!!

No interns to help you. Histories. Progress Notes. ER duties. Admissions. Ward IV insertions and other procedures. Updating consultants. Getting scolded by consultants. Learning. Studying. No sleep. Paperwork. Seniors. Rounds. Presentations. Research. Finding time for a bath or a decent meal.

Why do we medical creatures have to go through all the trouble?

If we want a headache to get better, we take away the pain, not add to it, right?

Well, maybe it is to make it all worth it.

As I type this, my eyelids are all droopy, a bit bloodshot, and tomorrow, I'll get up, hopefully on time, and do it all over again.

The workload is scary. The stress immeasurable. The demands near unbearable. But many have come before me and made it through, and so will I forge on with this life called residency training.

Though I've never really come to it in my life and never plan to, at least blogging will have made me a better resignation-letter writer. Hahahaha!

At The Beginning

All the roads that I've taken have come to a beginning, not an end, but yet another beginning. Another road that I'll soon be embarking on will be the way of the Internal Medicine Residency avenue. I don't know what it holds or whether I'll stay the course but I've never wavered and well, here we go again.

I've never really had a plan and admittedly, I've been winging it since high school, taking the courses I knew would pose reasonable challenges for me and keep me interested. The road took me through college, PT internship and boards, medical school and the medical boards -- with no regrets. I remember Michael J. Fox's movie, The Secret Of My Success, and I realized I've never had a secret, let alone a blueprint for whatever success I, we aspire for.

It's not that I'm questioning whether I love IM enough to make it a living, and I love the profession, but the uncertainty of what the future holds for everyone throws everything up in the air. But seeing most of my consultants (especially one monument of a gastroenterologist at SUMC) gladly peering over charts, taking joy in ordering TBDBIB, teaching interns like me on parenteral nutrition, and seeing the full trust in a patient's eyes when you explain a diagnosis, it all seems so worth it.

It has never been about the money for me. Yes, the naive idealism comes into play again, but truthfully, it never has been.

A couple of people think I should be in surgery because that's where the money's at, and I just politely smiled. Some have tried to convince me that money in the States is where it's at as well.

I can't say I've never dreamt of having a big house with a lawn and a pool, 5 cars, jetsetting all over the world, and living in a country where labor is more rewarded and a government that actually works. I have, but maybe I'll just take a vacation every now and then. It's about leaving something for the world to remember me by. Gaya calls it an impact in others lives for her. I don't know if it would be too much to ask for me to discover the cure for cancer or the common cold, would it? Haha, I'll just take making people remember me for the work I did as a human being, whether it be with a stethoscope draped around my neck or not.

I'm starting in exactly a day from now, and I'll be on duty on the first day. It's scary and exciting at the same time.

Here goes nothing.

:)