The ability to come up with better blog titles is definitely one of them, as you can see.
It’s taken me longer than the average person, but after slightly more than 3 years, I’m done with being a house officer.
In the past three years, I feel like I’ve pretty much lost everything that makes me who I am, but there are a few things I’ve lost that make me go, ” why did I have to go and like medicine so much?”
Here’s the few:
1.Proper sleep
Since I began working, I can count the number of times I’ve slept without dreaming about work, or without waking up in the middle of the night, thinking that I’ve forgotten to do something at work or that I’m late for work.
The only times I have proper (i.e. dreamless) sleep is when I’m exhausted or have recruited the assistance of alcohol or Tramadol.
2. The ability to wear high heels
I love shoes, because no matter how many tubs of ice cream I gobble up or slices of pizza I inhale, feet don’t get fat. And legs look pretty damn nice in heels.
Along comes housemanship, where your tasks include being every single staff member of the ward and my 3 inch yellow espadrille heels with the cute bow on top will NOT cut it as sensible footwear. As a result, most of my days are spent in flats or even worse, black Bata school shoes. This bad habit of wearing shitty looking shoes has encroached into my life and now I’m never fully dressed. Fuck you, Sia, the smile doesn’t help when you’re wearing a gorgeous floral dress and brown flats.
3. A sense of style
It starts with shoes. Then it moves up. I start my morning by thinking about all the work that I potentially have to do in a day. That by itself usually eliminates skirts (no one wants to commence CPR in a skirt, trust me.) So, trousers it is. Everything else doesn’t matter because we have our white coats on anyway. By the end of my final rotation, my wardrobe consisted of stretchable trousers (no need to iron) and anything that fit.
I’m not saying that I used to be some super stylish chick who was at the helm of the fashion train, but at least I didn’t feel embarrassed about my clothes when taking pictures. These days, I look so bad that friends choose not to tag me in pictures out of the kindness of their hearts.
4. Hair
So. Much. Hair. Gone.
I’m sorry. This one’s too painful to talk about.
5. Life outside work.
My phone is flooded with pictures of x-rays, wounds and patient details. All my conversations are about cases, jobs to carry out and the like. My messages to my mum only consist of, “I reached work already” and ” leaving work now.”
The occasional invitations to go out just to chill and relax are met with, “Nah la, it’s ok. I work double shift tomorrow.” or ” No, I don’t have a full off day this weekend.”
I don’t expect these things to all return to me once I start life as a medical officer, but I hope whatever force that’s keeping them away from me allows visits.
