of sleeping in chairs

So, long time no update. Which is really to be expected. For the most part I spend hours a day typing into a computer. Mostly clerking notes. So when I get home, I ain't doing no more typing.
Though maybe not.

Currently already finished my surgical posting and well into my second posting, which is O&G. It's usually pretty nice. Minus the screaming ladies and babies. Which pretty much constitutes the whole job. But you get my drift.
I'm on  holiday right now. I was on the night shift on Wednesday, so I have half of Thursday and Friday off. Then I have my allotted weekend off. So that gives me a shit load of off days. Of which I am enjoying by accompanying my mum all the way to Perlis so that we can visit my brother/her son. It's all pretty fine and dandy but a bus trip to Perlis takes around 10 hours.

Which brings me to my title: of sleeping in chairs.

Because that was the second night in a row that I did not get to sleep in a real bed.

So. As I have mentioned earlier, I had the night shift on Wednesday. What this usually constitutes is I go to work at 9 pm, and finish work at 12 noon the next day. What ever people say about you being at work and are not supposed to be sleeping, ignore those bastards because they probably have never worked a night before in their lives. While working nights, if there is nothing going on, all your patient's are sleeping and no one's in any need of anything right now, get some rest. Take a nap. Even if it's only for 10 minutes, grab some shut eye. Because whatever people say, it's night. Your body has basically been programmed to shut down when it's dark outside.

But here lies the conundrum; where to sleep?

The hospital of course does have rooms where on call officers are allowed to sleep. There's even a complex which no one uses because it's too out of the way. There are rooms in each ward, but those are usually conquered by medical officers with a higher pay grade than you. And besides, those rooms are also usually out of the way.

In these cases, I for one, always opt to sleep in chairs. Whether it be in the chair in the office next to the nurses' counter, or at the nurses' counter itself.

Because I have a need to be on hand if anything happens.

And so, I spend a lot of time sleeping in chairs.

I've slept in office chairs, plastic chairs, plastic-all-in-one-row waiting room chairs and one time, a bench in front of the nurses's counter where I lay down to sleep, much to the hilarity of the working staff nurses that night.

And I believe that all this experience has made me a connoisseur of sleeping in chairs. So here are some tips I'd like to share with you.

1. Always stretch out your legs.
If you can, always grab at least two chairs. Use the less comfortable one to put your feet on. Lean back as far as you can go without your ass hanging in air, and sleep.
Why? Because I have piss poor circulation and when I sleep with my legs hanging/mildly compressed at main vein points, my legs fall asleep too fast and when I wake up, I can't feel them, or I immediately get cramps.
If you can get three, line them up in a row and lie down and sleep.

2. If you can find a surface for your head, use it.
Your neck will love you for it. Because there's only so much a hand under your chin can do.

3. Find a comfortable position.
Or whatever's relatively comfortable. Because face it, you're sleeping on chair, not a spring mattress.
I slept princess-style on an office chair once. I woke up and couldn't walk for 5 minutes because my legs fell asleep and cramps. I also curled up in an office chair and woke up to a colleague yelling because he thought there wasn't anyone on the chair. I screamed too.

4. And the best advice for last
- if you can find a comfortable flat surface, sleep there. Because, a hard floor is a by far more comfortable than a chair will ever be. Unless it's one of those reclining, sleeping chairs, because those are the bomb.

On another note, I had to write this down somewhere because I sort of have to.

On the bus to Perlis, while sleeping in a chair for my second night in a row (though by far more comfortable), I had a dream. I dreamed that this one guy, that I loved so long ago, said he loved me. And it felt so beautiful, that I woke up and smiled. Even if it was just a dream.

I know it's dumb, but I can't help it.

I hope he's doing great. And that, where ever he is, he's loved.

ain'tsayingthatI'mpiningoranything,okay?

akunona

Alive, but Barely

I've been thinking of writing an entry for ages really. But seeing as that sleep right now is priority number one, cuts pretty much into any internet time that I may have previously had.

So what's new?

I am currently working as a house officer aka Houseman aka kuli aka oi budak bodoh, at Hospital Temerloh. Yes, I am currently working at the same place as my dad. There are a lot of pros and cons in working at the same hospital, but I'm not going there today. That maybe some topic for a future post after I've gone through more of this.

How is it?

Pretty hectic. Thank god for flexi hours. If not, then hey, I'd be at work right now, hips aching, knees knocking and feet contemplating suicide.

Do I like it?

It's a constant push and pull between loving it to death and driving me to death. I love working. When I get to work, I work. I work and I work and I work. I maybe still incompetent and a damned slow worker that my other colleagues are constantly scoffing at me for being so goddamned slow you damn bitch (course they never say it to my face, but years of social interaction has at least taught me to be paranoid). But I work. At least, I try my best at it. I do my best, and if I know that I'm not able to do it, then I know when to ask for help.

But at the same time, I dread going to work every day. The feeling multiplies ten fold after I have received an off day. Like after being post call and having a day off where I sleep and watch tv and surf the net and when I know that tomorrow I have work again, I feel, depressed. I don't want to go. (But I do anyway) . Like right now. I'm having my allocated weekend off for the month. Which means I have had two days of rest. I should be calm, composed, rested, prepared to face a new day of work tomorrow. But still, deep in the reserves of my heart, I dread tomorrow. A feeling of trepidation. I don't want to go. But what the hell can I do about it? I still have to. My sense of responsibility, my integrity, and the simple fact that I would feel bad if I didn't go to work no matter how much I don't want to. It's disconcerting.

So, a day's contemplation. I like it, I hate it. I'm still going back because I'd hate myself if I didn't.

I don't mean to scare anybody off. Everybody's entitled to make their own opinions about it. You need to actually be here before you can say anything. So, to any future housemen reading this. This is just my experience. Maybe you'll be a gung ho, all for it, good worker. You'll see when you get there.

Like I am right now.

I was scared that I won't be able to handle getting yelled at.

But after being yelled at almost every day for the last three weeks or so, I'm pretty fine with it. Yes, sometimes I get depressed. But I'm just glad that I can let it go.

So in the end?

It's complicated. The road is still long. I'm still a first poster barely into my first month of being a houseman. I have so many things to learn. So many things to try. So many things. Period. I'll keep trying my best. I guess. I'll keep trying. Even if I have to pry my ass off my bed every morning and pep talk myself in the mirror every damned day just so I will go to work and do my lot. I will. I'll try. Not for anyone else but for me. Because I hope I can do this. I want to do this.

Insya Allah. God willing. Help me to be a good doctor, help me to heal. If it's not for me to heal, then for me to alleviate the pain. To help my patients. To be a good doctor. For my religion, for my race, for my country. For my patients.

Insya Allah.

Bismillah, semangat nona!!!

akunona

I feel very accomplished now. Pretty good for a non-native speaker. At least according to them. But still, when I saw some of the words I thought "My god, how are these actual words?" *horrorface*

You can try the test out here. 

It's pretty fun. 

In other news, I have my SPA interview booked for the 27th of February and I have yet to study for beans. Yay me! Also, yay holiday mindset.

In all honesty, I was pretty scared to take the test

akunona

Tough love, maybe

So, I was thinking, (pretty revolutionary, judging by the past few weeks I've been wasting doing nothing) about love, yeah? In the previous post and all that? So, in conjunction with my ability to over think and go off in tangents all at the same time, I was thinking about sick kids. Really, all the sick kids that I have had the chance to meet during clinicals. And also all the times, I myself have been sick during my studies. And how all my friends have been sick. And really, just about sickness in general.

What I was thinking was that, really, my mom did a pretty good job raising me.

You see, while we were living in Indonesia, back when there were only four of us in one house, my original housemates and I, every time any of us would fall sick, the others would go out of their way in taking care of them. Like say, Qilah was sick. Wan and Fiqi would make her bubur, bring her cool towels and maybe rub her head with this vile concoction made from Asam Jawa that would supposedly help with the headache and keep the fever down. Except for me. All I would do was maybe stick my head in the room and ask her how she's doing, I have some more paracetamol (if I had any) and if she wanted it, I was upstairs.

Some people would call me a callous and heartless bitch, but really, that's how I show I cared. If I didn't I probably wouldn't even bother to knock.

Now, what I mean to say is, I have never understood the need for over pampering while sick. I don't get why you need to make special food, have cool towels, and make vial concoctions from Asam Jawa. Thankfully, they never did any of that to me. And I'm generally fine with that. Sometimes they wouldn't even know that I was sick, and suddenly one day, I'd come down to the living room with no voice. And that's fine.

I once asked Aqilah about it. Was she bothered by the fact that I had never done any of those things that the others would do for her. Because I have never understood the need for all of it. And she said that she understood. My home life and theirs are vastly different. Mostly she just figured because my dad was a doctor, we never really had to care if we were sick or anything, but she wasn't exactly far of the mark.

As I remember anyway, when I was a kid, whenever I was sick with fever, my mum would tell me to get the green syrup from the fridge and drink it (somehow, paracatemol came in green syrup, don't ask me why). Sometimes, if we were really clogged up and couldn't breath, she'd make this special thing with Vicks and hot water, make us put our faces over it, and cover our heads with a towel so that we would breath in the fumes. She never really pampered us over much.

I don't know. That's just how I remember it. I always just went on with it whatever I was supposed to do, and eat my medicine so I'd get better.

You see all the television mums sitting at their kid's bedsides and taking temperatures every half hour and wiping down sweat or whatever, it is they do. And in my family, it was always, go take that medicine, and go to sleep.

It wasn't that she didn't care, no. It's just that she didn't pamper. If we were sick, sometimes we'd still go to school. Just because.

So when I listened to all my friend's stories on how, when they were sick, they would cry and cry and want to eat porridge or soup or have their mum lie down with them or something, I couldn't really understand why. And when that carried on into the now, when they were sick and would have all their housemates be worried, and go out of their ways to bring her stuff, I still don't get it. At all.

As you may have figured out, I never understood why some people would not go to work over a stomachache. Because I still would have. And I have. Of course if I was sick, I'd take other precautions like wear face masks all the time. If I had a headache, or a stomachache, or really anything, I'd still pretty much go to work. One time, I had a tummy virus and ran a fever that was 39oC and still went to work and stayed my on call shift. The rational at that time was, having to take over a friend's shift if they had covered mine would have been so bothersome.

So, yeah. I'm kinda glad I am the way I am. Though the bad side of it is that I tend to expect the same from other people. I'm pretty glad my mum raised me to be this person who I am now.

Once, when I was a kid and had a fever, I was sleeping in my room and my brothers had barged in and were making a lot of noise and I had woken up, but I hadn't opened my eyes yet and was generally cursing them to hell as sister's are wont to do. Then, my mum came in and made them all go out because I was sick. She then put her hand to my brow, to feel for a temperature and followed my brothers out. And I went back to sleep. When I woke up, she made me go get the medicine from the fridge for myself.

And that's how sick kids get treated in my home.

Thanks mum.

akunona

Of life, love, marriage and epic run on sentences which make less sense than I intended them to

So today, I am sitting here, on the floor of the living room in my childhood home, with my laptop on my knees, listening to Beethoven’s Allegreto Symphony no.7 in A major, OP.92 which I only know of because I searched the King’s Speech OST (it’s the music playing when his Majesty gives that speech through the radio at the end of the movie, wait, that might be spoiler-ish? Ah well.) Contemplating love.

Didn’t see that curveball coming didja?

Not really.

So last year, I made a post on Valentine’s day  (which you can read here, if you so ever wish) and I think that I came across as being rather cynical. I can’t help it, I am cynical. My default setting is sarcasm. Which sometimes people don’t get and they think I’m just being mean, though maybe they’re not that far of the mark. But would it really surprise you, if I said, really, truthfully, I do have a romantic side.

Gasp and call the Night Watch. Or something (incidentally, I do have all the Night Watch books, I just have never read them. Maybe One Day).

It’s not really news if I said I have not, ever, been in a relationship. I do moan and groan and complain about it a lot and in several past posts. It’s nothing new. But what if I said, that forever, I have wished for a love story so sweet, it will give me eternal cavities.

In all clichéd stories of life and love, my parents have known each other since form 1 in secondary school. And I have wanted something as awesome as that. Though, as you can probably deduce, that boat has sailed, been scuttled, and sunk into the depths of the Forever Alone ocean of unrequited love tears. But dramatics and run on sentences aside, yes, I do want to be loved. I do want an epic love story.

Surprise. I am, apparently, a little girl at heart.

But then, I think, what is love? Why do people equate it with a heart, which, really doesn’t even really look like a heart? Where do feelings come from? Why do people always say, follow your heart, when last I knew the heart, which is made out of special heart muscles, with special nerves, and special structures like fibers, chords, and flaps, that all, somehow, work together in synchronicity to make sure that we get the required amount of blood flowing through our vascular system so that we don’t get tired while at rest (stage 4 cardiac failure according to NYHA), does not, in any way, have any cognitive abilities. Making it unable to make an informed decision. Unable, to even make a decision. And yet.

I have a thing for run on sentences. It’s the common bane of all my English teachers. They obviously have not succeeded in culling my penchant for writing long, wordy nonsense. I have only deteriorated after my last English teacher in Matriculation.

But back to love. So? What is love. The scientist would say a mish-mash of various hormones induced by specific conditions to make your pupils dilate, your heart palpitate and a general feeling of warmness, maybe. Also, what happens when you get into a fight or flight situation, except different hormones. I dunno. I’m digressing.

I don’t know why, but somehow, I have worked into cultivating a very hard exterior in which, I am perceived as being, not romantic. I don’t read romance novels, I think watching romantic movies is boring, and while my friends are all, this is so sweet, that man is so romantic, I tell them that I have barfed a little in my mouth while observing their exploits.

Once a bunch of friends and I went book shopping. And among the books that ended up being purchased by my friends was a book, written in a vaguely religious manner, by a religiously educated person, on love. And marriage. And what we should do in this beautiful, wonderful, sparkly institution known as marriage. And I do not understand why she bought this particular book.  So, in the ever ongoing quest to obtain more knowledge, I asked her, why.

She said that when you come to a certain age, you’ll start thinking about these things. About growing up. I replied, but I’m the same age as you. We’re even born in the same month. Maybe you’re just a late bloomer, she said. Have you got a boyfriend Nona? She asked me. I said, no, unfortunately not. A look of comprehension dawned on her face and she said, that’s why. You don’t have a boyfriend Nona, so you don’t know how it feels. You haven’t felt the feeling of being in love and being loved. You wouldn’t understand. I think the conversation then went into tangents of how after I have fallen in love, I would probably change. I don’t know what I’ll be, but apparently, one of them would be a person who voluntarily reads self-help/motivation books on love and marriage and the lovely, beautiful and sparkly institution that is marriage.

And I abhor that answer so much so, because it makes me less human than her. And it is just really me, but it also implies that after having fallen in love, I may turn into a sycophantic human being who breaths and lives love and sentiment. Love pushes through my veins, kinda shindig.  And I hate that.

I may have never had a relationship but that does not mean that I have never been in love. And yet, I still don’t see the draw of reading the self-help, sappy long winded books of love, happiness and marriage genre.

The easy and oft used argument is of course, to each his own. And the more complex argument might include debates on child development, Sigmund Freud vs Erik Ericsson’s modules, nature vs nurture and maybe a long winded and completely illogical argument on why raspberry ripple will always top vanilla on the most awesome flavor for ice-cream in existence. But whichever way you say it, I think that in the end, love is so much more, marriage is so much more, and reading it from a cookie cutter, sugar glazed book is just so dumb.

It’s not like I don’t want to fall in love. Not that I don’t want to get married. Not that I don’t want to have a family of my own. It’s just that I think reading from those books, gives you very high ideals on how everything should be perfect. When in reality, it’s really not that clear cut. Sure you have ideals and motivations and some of them planted in you when you read so and so book or something but in the end, life is never what the books say. I mean, even all the things that have been written in medical texts have been researched and really the most general and common presentation of some such situation or disease, will almost never present the same. And that’s like, damn.

So, in essence, I think that reading those books is dumb and I’m just gonna wing it.

In the end, what made me contemplate love and all the convoluted reasons behind it, and marriage, and so many things that I cannot for the life of me articulate into a comprehensible sentence, is that today, is my parent’s wedding anniversary. And we know how that went off to.

I told my mother this morning, Happy-however-happy-you-want-it-to-be Anniversary. She asked me how to be happy. I told her to have a cookie.

Have fun contemplating life, love and the (apparently, to some books and people) lovely, beautiful and sparkly institution that is marriage.

akunona

Of conviction (or the lack there of)

I just realized that I have been operating under the idea that today was Wednesday. Apparently not. Ah the wonders of holiday in which I do not have to even pay enough attention to remember what the hell day it is. Except for maybe remembering Monday. Because every Monday at 10 pm National Geographic airs Inside War. And yeah. Reasons enough. Even if I have to fight my dad because he wants to watch NCIS on Fox. Oh yeah. Life now has degenerated to channel priorities.

Not that I regret any of it, of course. After years of blood, sweat and tears (and more to come) I feel like I deserve a couple month's worth of gluttony and sloth. Incidentally, one month anniversary of coming home.

Hmm, any news? Not really.

I changed my background as you can obviously see. Not really the best, but it's simple enough to not cause a murder to any innocent irises and the like.

Ah well. Till another day. Maybe. 

there is no reason to this post

akunona

I have a good reason to believe that the lack of mental stimulation has caused me to suffer a mild case of aphasia. I have no words. Quite literally. Oh dear ;)

Because I don't know either

there are some issues with resizing and my laptop keeps freezing at inopportune moments. So yeah, I gave up and have at it with the posting. Though the obsessive/possessive part of me cries in pain. 

Because I don't know either.

On another note, lungs yeah. They're kinda cool. Take care of them. And smoking leaves a bad aftertaste. 

slides away~

akunona

AKUNONA: THE GREAT 2012 BOOK CONSUMPTION REVIEW part 2

Have I ever told you that I really, really, really hate bureaucracy? Well, consider yourselves told.
It's all crap really. I hate it. It's needlessly complicated.

In other news, I am getting fatter. Which some people would say a good thing, but I have body image issues as well, so goddamnit.

And on with our scheduled program:

AKUNONA: THE GREAT 2012 BOOK CONSUMPTION REVIEW part 2

AKUNONA: THE GREAT 2012 BOOK CONSUMPTION REVIEW part 1

The End of The Beginning

Not that, that really means anything. A quote from Winston Churchill. Happy New Year, I guess. It is 2013. My brothers have gone off to school. And I am at home, lounging about doing nothing really. There is a reason, and a dilemma behind that, but maybe, at a later date, I will get back to that. I might do a bullet points post on reflections and the like. But I don't really promise anything.

I wanted to watch Arashi on Kouhaku this year. What with being home and all, it seemed like the perfect condition. But my parents won't let me get the channels on our cable. So I watched Arafes. Which, really? Maybe was even better than Kouhaku by thousands.

So, anyway. In the event of this New Year and everything, I thought I'd write an informational post. Well, slightly more informational than the usual fare anyway. I thought I'd write some thoughts/reviews on books that I have read during 2012. At least, the ones I remember reading. And so, without further ado:

AKUNONA: 2012 BOOK CONSUMPTION REVIEW part 1