Starting Out My Journey As a Doctor to Be

Monday, August 09, 2010

3rd week 1st day of clinical school in a nutshell

I went to the Colorectal Outpatient Clinic today. And I sat in with a fellow.

Surgeon said “So Phey, what do you want to do when you grow up?”
And I said “… a doctor.”
Because I thought it was a trick question, and in my opinion, I have kinda grown up.
Then he said “I know. What kind of doctor?” so i realized it wasn’t a trick question.
And that’s when I went on and on about how I thought I wanted to do surgery very badly then I realized just recently that I am not that interested in surgery yada yada. I went on to 'educate' him about AMS, BMedSci and MBBS. Sometimes I probably should just shut up.

Doctor said “What are the causes for Colon Cancer?”
Then I said “75% of them are sporadic, 20% are due to familial predisposition, 5% are due to inheritance or genetic.”
And then I realized quoting percentages is a bad idea. It made me look like a nerd. Not like I deny I am one.
And then he asked me to write it down while he dictated a letter. I think he foresee that I was going to keep on talking for a while.
And then he went on to quiz me about different types of colon cancer caused by genetic mutation.
APC for FAP. MLH1, MSH2, 3, 6, PMS1 and 2 for HNPCC. Again I went on and on LIKE i know a lot of stuff.
Doctor said “So what do they do?”
And I said “I really don’t know” I didn’t expect surgeons to know things at the molecular levels you see. Obviously, I was wrong.
Doctor said “Don’t worry, you will pass as a student but if you were a surgical registrar, you will probably fail but as a student, you pass very nicely.” The surgeon is nice.
Thank god I did my revision. Even though I missed out a fair bit.

I said “the patient had cancer in his splenic flexure but he had his transverse colon, part of his descending colon and all his ascending colon removed. Why is that?”
Doctor said “That’s exactly right. I had the same question. It’s a very good question.”
And then he went on telling me the reason why. I never knew that I am capable of asking good question.

One 3 different occasions:
Surgeon said “T2N0, what stage is that?”
I said “Stage 1” *very tentatively*
Surgeon said “Good guess”

Surgeon said “T3N0”
I said “Stage 2” *immediately before he turned his head around so that if I got that wrong, i would feel LESS embarassed*
Surgeon said “good on you”

Surgeon said “T3N2, what stage is that?”
I said “stage 3”
Surgeon noded

and so my day ended well :)

Labels: medicine and me