adelaidemedblog

Yes a mnemonic for the symptoms of mania.
I’m not doing psych right now, nor am I manic, but I was trying to remember the word to explain all the thoughts that run through your head faster than you can get them out. Flight of Ideas.

It’s what the F stands for. I’m going somewhere with this, just bear with me.

As per my other large post this one is a story of self reflection, growth and gaining a new sense of direction. An annual (sometimes twice a year) event.

We’ve all seen those comic strips or read the jokes about the different types of med students; the academic, the post grad, the junior etc, but realistically there are some different classifications you can put people into.
There are those who are dead set keen on a specialty and will go all out, study all the time and learn everything about that system to get there.
Then there are those who don’t know what they want to do, but will still study hard because they want to make good doctors no matter what happens.
Some want to truly help underpriveledged people and will go overseas to developing and war torn nations to do so.
Others want a great lifestyle mixed with a sense of satisfaction that regardless of their motives they still will be helping people.
There are countless other types and you can have fun in lectures trying to place people in different categories, and then find out later.

The point is that I’ve personally been thinking a lot about what made me want to study this course (the cliched why I want to be a Dr blog) and what I want to acheive now after a relatively short time in the field. And this is where the flight of idea’s comes into it.

As I wrote in my previous post, the surgical rotation is wearing me thin. The only way I get through it sometimes is by imagining whats beyond that golden door. It used to be a Porsche, lots of money and good times. And hey, who wouldn’t like that stuff? Of course I enjoyed studying and its accompanying challenges, but in yr 12 and Med I that was what motivated me to study, because that was the goal. But of course as we grow and experience, we learn that there’s a lot to life that we might not have thought about.

Surprisingly (well it was surprising for me) there are more than a handful of people in my year level who are engaged or married. Now when you think about it, it does make sense as 4th year is equivalent to having graduated in other degrees and the age range is about 21-23 years, so people aren’t exactly children anymore. It just pointed out to me that people are really starting to plan their entire lives about now while I still feel like I’m fifteen years old. So what do I want to do with myself? How can I get through this funk?

Those fortunate enough to have read Li CunXin’s autobiography and subsequently heard him speak at AMSA convention would have been moved by his story and compelling words. A dirt poor boy from a poverty stricken life, given small opportunities made the most of everything he could get and followed his dreams to become one of the worlds most successful dancers. Since then he has gone on to become a senior manager at one of Australia’s largest stockbroking firms, and helped his family to come out of the poverty they once lived in, not only by financial means, but by showing them what one can do with determination and will.
And this got me to begin thinking. What are my dreams? If I were to have something that I would work so hard for, what would that one thing be?
Because Li was at convention when he delivered his speech, he drew analogies comparing his struggle for success to us studying medicine. That was a moment of sudden truth. I don’t have that kind of passion he did for dancing. To me right now this is going to be a job like any other, just hopefully easier to bear than say accounting or engineering. So I kind of felt empty at that point, like there was no meaning in what I’m doing right now with my life. Sure it means something to someone, but it doesn’t mean everything to me you know?

I haven’t been particularly good at anything in my life. I dabbled at guitar, tried my hand at a few languages, played a bit of soccer and cooked a few good meals. There’s nothing I can say that I’m really good at, or truly want to be excellent in doing. That was until I picked up my dad’s old camera.

Photography is something that has really grabbed me, composing a shot, capturing a moment, storing it away so people can reminisce about memories. It’s also a way for me to try and show how I view the world that I see, the one that we live in, and try to take a viewer to where I’ve been and experience that same moment through my eyes.
So now I love photography more than I love medicine. All I can think about these days is how I can adjust my life so I can fit more photography in. Do I have enough time on weekends to go shooting? At night how much time can I spare scanning in film and fixing up my shots. How can I save the money to travel the world and see what there is on offer, capture it and keep going? All I want to do is travel!

Wait didn’t I say all I want to do is take photos? Well yes, but whilst travelling. Ok now how do I combine those two with medicine? Ahh more to think about. How do I fit in the hours at hospital, get my grades, work at night to earn my money, to pay for airfares and film, and where do I find this time to enjoy all these things? This is again where my flight of ideas has been taking me. A constant battle in my own head trying to map out the next few years of my life, and hopefully further on from that.

I have come to realise one thing though, and that is my enthusiasm for studying and learning has been weaning off the past few years, which is a real shame. I love to learn. I love medicine. I love to learn medicine. But I think I need a break to kickstart that enthusiasm back up.
The current plan for me now, is to battle on through 4th year of course and get that behind me. Then kick on through 5th year giving it all I feasably can and pass that year too.
Then starts the beginning of my dreams. I take a year off, and travel. Travel to Canada, where I might do an elective as well as work part time, live the culture and photograph to my hearts content. Then travel to Japan where it is an urban photographers paradise. I want to try live a totally different life working jobs that I’ll never again get to experience once I’ve graduated. Teach some English, be a bartender, work at a ski resort, maybe even do some photojournalism. Following that I want to come back to Australia and live in Melbourne for the remainder of the year. Hopefully get to participate in some research over there so at least the year is not wasted (medically). But here also try my hand at different jobs and continue to pursue my photography. Then I beleive that I can come back to Adelaide and give 6th year all I’ve got (not that it matters marks wise) and hopefully have enough enthusiasm to really learn and condense all that I have learnt and kick on as I graduate for another long slog of suffering.

So in the end, this blog really didn’t make sense, or flow nicely. It was a jumble of thoughts, that came fast and I had to get them down very quickly, but the process of doing so has cleared my mind and made things easier for me. Thanks for reading and I hope it provides some insight as to what kind of things you may come across as you progress through your studies (assuming people reading this are younger than me - which is a bad presumption).

If you don’t take anything else away from it then just remember
D - Distractibility
I - Indiscretion
G - Grandioisity
F - Flight of Ideas
A - Activity (increased)
S - Sleep disturbance (decreased need for sleep)
T - Talktativeness (pressured speech)

That is a mnemonic for mania, which I have portrayed some symptoms of in this blog.