Stand Up !

I have a lousy weekend ahead. In fact, I’ve been having many lousy weekends. Thanks to being on call. Yup… the usual drag of working in a hospital for 36 hours. Why does it produce a lousy weekend? Well, if u’ve worked for a solid 5 days a week (with 1 – 2 on calls in between), u don’t have the weekend to look forward to especially if ur on call on Saturday. And nope, usually u don’t get the next day off as u would need to do the weekend morning rounds the next day which usually ends by 2-3pm (on a Sunday). And then ur off to work again on Monday. So it actually feels like uve worked for 2 weeks straight. And to top it off, u might get another Saturday which then makes it feel like 3 weeks straight. No wonder doctors are a bunch of grumpy a$%holes. Even I know that I’m grumpy at times.

But to make matters worse, married to another doctor whose on call schedule is as crappy as mine, we end up not seeing each other as often as a stewardess and a pilot. As of this weekend, I’m on call on Saturday (cant see my wife), she’s on call on Sunday (cant see my wife), and then I’m on call again on Monday (EOD). So technically, I wont see my wife from Saturday till Tuesday afternoon. And the one I pity the most is my son, who will only get to spend time with one of us during the weekend. I guess its tough to be a Malaysian govt doctor, and worse of all would be the children of Malaysian Govt doctors whose parents are so busy with work, patients, on calls and so on. So much for family outings and family quality time.

Once a paediatrics consultant confided in me when her daughter was prepped to go overseas for studies in engineering. She claims that her daughter refuses to do medicine as both parents are doctors and are barely around for anything much. All of a sudden, my fierce consultant looked at me with tears in her eyes a said “I was a bad mother, a very bad mother”. But hey, her kid turned out ok, just not close to the parents. I guess that’s not important for doctors. Well, as I said before in my posts. Being a doctor is a noble job. Being a doctor in Malaysia is the dumbest job in the world. If u had a lifestyle (or life even) before medicine, u can kiss it goodbye once u start serving this country.

PS: All this for a solid cool RM 3500 a month. I love this job!!!! Should get Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel) to come and do a stint of doctoring work in a Malaysian Govt Hospital. I’m sure it would be a highlight in his documentary. And I’m still doing it……

Oh, by the ways… HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!!