WORK WORK WORK....

WORK WORK WORK....

Tuesday, 5 December 2006, 1032 hours.

I talked to Bren on MSN yersterday, and she says I should start working and making something of myself :) Makes me sound like I enjoy being a bum. Trust me, ain't no fun being a bum with absolutely nothing to do. I can't cook, there isn't gas. I can't watch TV, there's none. I can't surf for porn :P I haven't the Internet. (Okay, I was kidding about the porn, but you catch my drift)

I wanna work, dammit!! But I doubt I'd be getting interviews soon. It IS the end of the year. Big bosses a.k.a decision-makers are probably holiday-ing overseas with their wife and kids (or mistresses the age of their kids :P), or shopping overseas (if they are women). It IS the school holidays and the Christmas season. I gather I'm gonna be jobless at least till January, when it's the start of the new fiscal and financial year. When the audits are all done, and they can estimate how much they can spend to hire new goons.

I know I need to work soon before I lose touch of scan techniques. How much pressure to apply, where to apply it, etc. I do love what I do.

I love the fact that ultrasound scanning allows me the freedom of isolation and yet I'm working in a team. I love being in a darkened room all alone with someone else, behind a million-dollar baby.

I love staring and making sense out of pixels and shades of changing gray dots on a monitor.

I love the adrenaline rush I feel when I hold a probe, wondering if I'd see anything fascinating or unusual, and the apprehension of making a mistake I cannot afford.

Lives depend on it.

I love meeting new people, seeing new faces. Something new everyday. I get bored fast :P

I love the knowledge that when a person lies supine on the bed, (s)he'd have to listen to me (MUAHAHA!) whether the person be male or female, king or beggar, father or son, saint or sinner. Medicine or disease does not discriminate. Muslim, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, Scientologist (:P). All that talk on equality. At the end of the day, we're all gonna die anyway. Just a matter of how and when. And I love the fact that I'm part of that.

I love the fact that doing what I do, I can help assuage fears, or I can be part of the solution to a problem. And yet...

I love the fact that I get to ponder my own humanity. We may plan, but ultimately, it's God who decides. Nothing like the field of medicine to remind one of that fact.

It is in medicine that one needs Faith the most.

When you're 25 and single and at the threshold/ crossroads of life, you don't look too far ahead. The thought of death? It baffles your mind. You take each day as it comes, and hope it's better than the last. You wonder when you'd save enough to buy that dream house/ apartment you've always wanted, so you can decorate it the way you want, and fark lousy housemates. You dream of getting that car (so you can have a ride, regardless of whether or not you wanna pimp it, dammit!! One can only bear putting up with Malaysian public transportation for so long) and have enough to get you an Alsatian, and keep it. You don't even think of marriage, 'cos heck, mum!! I need me a boy first, and no, please don't matchmake me with a teacher in your school. I've had enough with teachers :P And I don't look like a horse's ass, so have a little faith, yeah? Kids? Perhaps, someday, but better make it fast, 'cos now that you have that scary Embryology book, you know, to a certain extent, how to calculate your risks. And dammit, you've got geneticist friends who'd be more than happy to tell you your eggs are wasting (nice way to put it) or rotting (SUPER NICE way to put it)... Fark 'em :P Death? Not really. Kinda hazy...

Until you come face-to-face with the reality of death. 27/28-year old comes in for a routine medical check-up, and gets diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer. You remember the face of the patient when he was informed of the diagnosis. You remember the shock. You remember how his yellow (jaundiced) face turned white at the idea of having only a few years at most to live. A thrombus (clot) in the portal vein? Clots are for fat, old uncles! Not for a relatively fit young man below 30! You think of all the chemo he has to go through to get through the next few years, how he'd need Palliative care, 'cos there ain't much anyone could do at that stage, how there's very little chances for survival, considering that there might be metastases elsewhere, and you think: SHIT... 25 and 27/28 isn't that far away... And then there's the 19-year-old girl with breast cancer.... And no, she hasn't got really large boobies, either. Another myth down the drain.... You freak out and go home and do BSE everyday for 2 months...

You go home, and stare in the mirror for awhile. Which is a feat in itself, considering you're one of those nuts who never combs her hair (you do digital perm for precisely that reason :P), never checks to see what kind of clothes you've thrown on on a normal day (jeans and tees and sneakers/ flats (have to walk mar...) is your informal uniform), and hardly ever, if not never, looks in the mirror before she walks out the door. That itty-bitty mirror is for applying make-up when the need arises (work (Customer Service, what... you get paid to look good and make assholes feel good)/ interviews/ clubbing/ hot date (rare :P)) But here you are, staring in the mirror, thinking: If I get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow and I die within a year (touch wood!) who'd remember me? Who'd remember my face? Who'd remember my laughter, who'd remember my tears, who'd remember my faves and my fears? Who'd remember what I've done? If I've done anything much in the first place?

You hardly check your breasts.. heck! You're too lazy. Your attitude towards them? Those things just happen to be there. Thank goodness they're small and don't get in the way much. Could be bigger... but... Oh well... You don't bother using push-ups, 'cos they're hot la, dammit... All that fake padding.... You don't like heat much... You'd rather sleep nude on sultry nights, except you have housemates :P Unless you have air-conditioning, different story. You like 'em bras strapless, 'cos you hate fiddling with the stupid straps. WHAT DECORATIVE STRAPS? NO STRAPS BETTER!! Yeah, you're one lazy lazy girl :P And those sunny-side-ups of yours are good enough for lactating when the time and need arises. If a man complains, you'd tell him to get a penis enhancer before you get a breast enhancer :D Big is good, no? Same same both ways :P You're so lazy, checking your breasts slips your mind the way taking those little OC pills do. Until something like that happens. And you're forced to think about it, and deal with the possibility.

I'm frightened of that. And yet I love it. The reminder of our mortality. That we may try to build/ reach for the proverbial Tower of Babel, but there's a Higher Power that we cannot avoid/ ignore.

Death doesn't discriminate. It'd come to us sooner or later. Whether by senescence (if we're lucky) or by some other means.

So yes, I wanna work. If anyone knows where a hospital is wanting to hire an ultrasonographer, let me know :P My email is just there.