Hello again

Hello past Joyce, can you believe that I found our old blog by searching for us on the internet? It's amazing what we were 6 years ago.

A few things happened since you last posted on this blog...

You turned 21...
You actually finished uni
You got married (your last name is different now :P)
Bad news, that fish tanks ends up getting broken :(
You started working and managed to keep on doing it for almost 4 years now
You turned 25...
You found your first white hair :O
Anaesthetics happened.
Guild Wars stopped (can you believe it?). Minecraft happened. DOTA happened.
You discovered sleepless nights and finding your old stuff again on the internet

I'm thanking God for bringing us through, His goodness is amazing!
There have been so many blessings in the last 6 years, and so many dreams and disasters.

I'm sure we'll find this blog again in a few years time on another sleepless Christmas Eve and reminisce again. Until then, keep smiling, keep shining :) Merry Christmas!

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good - His love endures forever!

Raaaaaaagh tired!!!!

One last before-bed post: Life to the Full @ Jeram's for the first time tonight! Soo tired but also so good. my legs hurt lol. :D

Learning..

That I am not in control

To cast all anxieties on him who cares for me

To be content, whatever the circumstances

To be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer

To be strong and courageous, and to hold on to the promise: Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.

--

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.

Reflections on 4th year

Ok, so I've posted in my blog.. 4 times this year...

Where have I been?

It's been a good year I think. There's a lot to praise God for.

I've been in Newcastle all year, and so has Jeram

I've passed everything so far, with minimal effort (really)

I've scored really good tutors and rotations for everything

I've had Miche to bother and keep me company for the last semester

FOCUS has grown, particularly in the last semester, with a really diverse spread of culture and people.

I've learned more about myself, more about people and more about God.

It's funny, this year I actually feel older.

I think it hit me, when I was church the other night and people were talking about a girl in first year. She's short, asian, wears glasses and lives on campus, and she's a little "pocket rocket" - full of energy and bubbly, even when everyone else is tired, almost irritatingly so.

And I thought - hang on, that was me in first year!! where did all the energy go? Somewhere in the last 4 years, I think I lost my smile.

It's funny, the last 4 years, I've been trying so hard to be "older", to break the image of the little girl and make myself known as a friend on an equals level, not on a "put up with the younger kid" level. And now that I think I'm there, I feel like I want to go back to when I was 16, full of energy and naive about everything.

(then again, I had a moment yesterday when I was turning up for urology theatre and the nurse at the desk was calling the reg saying "I have a YOUNG medical student here to join you in theatre" and it felt like she was doing the "are you even old enough to be out of school?" thing - these things are more amusing than irritating these days, as I think - in about a year, I'm going to be a doctor :P)

But for all the energy and bubbly, I've lost, I think I've picked up a better appreciation of life, and what I'm doing and where I'm going. In terms of med, I think I've come to understand the system a lot better. I've lost the wide-eyed first year sense of "hero worship" and come to understand the doctors better as not just doctors, but also as people. In terms of FOCUS, I'm now better at standing back and looking at the big picture. And in terms of life I'm more certain of who I am as a child of God. And having been around so many old, sick and dying people, I'm more thankful than ever for the hope that I have in heaven.

It's weird, getting old is more "real" for me now than it ever was before - even a year ago, I couldn't imagine myself even at 30! Now as I look at friends who have graduated, it all seems to speed up. Of course, right now is the oldest I have ever been ;)

The speed at which life moves is exponentially proportional to the age of the life moving.

Tamworth feels less and less like home, every time I go there. It feels like the city in which my family is living, and a city that I'm familiar with, but not so much "home" any more.

There's a couple of words that I think could sum up fourth year medicine at the John Hunter, but above all, I think my word for it would be "lonely".

Picture being in an office full of midwives, waiting for handover on the delivery suite. They all know each other and laugh and joke about the weekend, about kids, about knitting. You try not to look too awkward, and hope that one of them will be happy to supervise you this shift.

Picture being in an operating theatre - the surgeon and anaesthetist are talking about mountain biking, the nurses are talking about motorbiking and the reg is busy writing notes or operating. I'm by myself, and it's the timeless feel of the operating theatre - is it still daylight outside? is it rainy? is it cloudy? is it sunny? - it doesn't matter because the time always feels the same..

Thinking back on my favourite memories of medicine, they'd include PBL groups in first and second year, singing to Sufjan Stevens with Dr Hungerford in 3rd year, singing to Jimmy Buffett with Dr McCallum in 4th year, getting lost in the ID department or Lake Macquarie private with Miche - I think for me, what I value most is feeling like I'm part of a team, or at least being included. Of course this isn't always going to happen (in fact, as a med student it won't happen that often), but it's special when it does.

Does it get better when we start working? I hope so. But even if it doesn't, I think 4th year has trained me to get over the loneliness of working by myself, and just getting the job done and getting out of there. Guess it's a useful thing, for reminding myself that medicine is just a job, not a career.

wow that turned into a soliloquy :P lol time to go back to napping! woohoo 7am starts...

I suck at blogging

I really do. Oh well I think I'm going to start again for the sake of my sanity.

So far: I've finished 8 weeks in general medicine with 4 weeks in infectious disease and 4 weeks in geriatrics.

I picked up some form of cold in the weekend between ID and gerries @ wintercon 2, and still haven't completely shaken the cough.

Had focus weekend away in the holidays, picked up ?tonsillitis, was sick for a few days.

Started surgery last week, getting used to 7am starts - i felt strangely normal the past couple of days. my body told me how tired i was today tho, slept from 11am to 4pm!

yay for afternoons off.

I am lazy at blogging.

Here a short update:

Finished paeds

nearly finished o&g

fish tank

fish tank

fish tank

weekend yay.

Tired... and silly

I am tired but currently too silly to sleep! You can tell when there are 2 tired 4th years who have just gone back to uni when there is manic laughter happening at midnight :) neonatal ICU is fun. Paeds ED was a bit slow. So much to learn... augh. zz.

Back again!

Wow it's been a long time since I posted. Let's see... in the last couple of months, I've been to Japan, Thailand, Tamworth and moved back into college - starting uni again tomorrow!

It's kinda overwhelming how much stuff can get done in a few months... or how little stuff :P

Psalm 131

Short case day!!! Here we gooooooo.....

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul
within me

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time fort and forevermore.

Pascal's Wager

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager

read this it's interesting. :)

Joyce's adventures at the beach

Yes, this is a retrospective post... hehe - this is from Wednesday when I went to the beach after hospital!

So on wednesday, I went to hospital and saw my followthrough patient and went to ED and practiced some shortcase skills, then thought "it's a perfect day i'm going to the beach"

so i set the GPS to send me to near random beach...

first i ended up at Belmont Bay - a nice marina and picnic spot but no sand! having no food on me, i decided to keep going.

next, i was sent along a tiny random road to a road that said "private road" - the GPS told me to keep going, so i thought "sure i'll check it out" - there were some beautiful dunes there and I thought "oooh this could be good" and followed the road to the end to find.... the Belmont Waste Water Works. :(

So i set the GPS to "Pelican Island Beach" and a little while later I was driving down a beautiful dirt road surrounded by thick shore forest wondering where I was going to end up....
1km later down this road, this beautiful beach popped into view!!

The sand was perfect and warm, the water was crystal clear and cold, the water was running pretty fast and there were boats going by - so I chucked a towel down down on the sand and pulled out a textbook! I'm such a nerd! hehe. I have short cases next wednesday, please excuse the study... After I got sick of studying and had a bit of a nap, I decided to go for a walk down the beach, so I chucked everything in the car, put the car keys in my pocket and went for a walk.


There were little hermit crabs trundling around between the rocks and little shoals of tiny shorefish (yes I was thinking "ooh ikan bilis!") and i went for a bit of wade (but i hadn't brought my swimmers! *sighs*)

After a little wander I went back to my car, when to my shock and horror the keys weren't in my pocket any more! Figuring that I must have dropped them on my walk, I went back along where I'd walked looking for them in that state of semi-panic you get when you lose your car keys on a mostly deserted beach and your mobile phone is locked in the car along with everything else, praying desperately that God would help me find them...

I eventually asked one of the bikini-clad locals if I could borrow her phone to make a NRMA call - turns out she was out of credit but she very nicely offered to help me look for my keys. After a while, she decided to walk back to her house and call NRMA from there and just as we were walking past my car again, i found my keys! in the sand, about 10m from my car - PHEW! thank God!!!

So I decided that it was time to leave that beach, but not having enough of rambling, I decided to head for another random beach nearby and check out redhead beach!




There was a beautiful 10 minute boardwalk down, and some awesome cliff faces and dunes to scramble up. The beach was pretty choppy tho, and the sand was really white and soft. After walking in the sand got painful, I decided it was time to do some more study so I headed off to Estabar on Newcastle Beach for some yummy scrambed eggs and some more study! Then off the 3 monkeys cafe for a raspberry orange frappe and some more study and then back home again after a big day!

Water, sertraline, pill, nurofen!

I've been in sydney for 12 hours! saaaave meeeee :P

Nov ... 16?

Yes, it's 4am. I've just finished my patient followthrough report and i'm in that state of utter past-sleep exhaustion - so tired that i'm awake! and acutely aware that i have to be awake in 3 hours >< . but i thought i'd share this beautiful spurgeon nov16th evening first.

“Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty.” Isaiah 33:17

The more you know about Christ the less will you be satisfied with superficial views of him; and the more deeply you study his transactions in the eternal covenant, his engagements on your behalf as the eternal Surety, and the fulness of his grace which shines in all his offices, the more truly will you see the King in his beauty. Be much in such outlooks. Long more and more to see Jesus. Meditation and contemplation are often like windows of agate, and gates of carbuncle, through which we behold the Redeemer. Meditation puts the telescope to the eye, and enables us to see Jesus after a better sort than we could have seen him if we had lived in the days of his flesh. Would that our conversation were more in heaven, and that we were more taken up with the person, the work, the beauty of our incarnate Lord. More meditation, and the beauty of the King would flash upon us with more resplendence. Beloved, it is very probable that we shall have such a sight of our glorious King as we never had before, when we come to die. Many saints in dying have looked up from amidst the stormy waters, and have seen Jesus walking on the waves of the sea, and heard him say, “It is I, be not afraid.” Ah, yes! when the tenement begins to shake, and the clay falls away, we see Christ through the rifts, and between the rafters the sunlight of heaven comes streaming in. But if we want to see face to face the “King in his beauty” we must go to heaven for the sight, or the King must come here in person. O that he would come on the wings of the wind! He is our Husband, and we are widowed by his absence; he is our Brother dear and fair, and we are lonely without him. Thick veils and clouds hang between our souls and their true life: when shall the day break and the shadows flee away? Oh, long-expected day, begin!

if we all had such a view of death, noone would be afraid to die. wish that God would grant me such a view of heaven and Jesus that nothing in this world can make me afraid.

yup. definitely time to sleep. zzzz. thank God for getting assignments done - 4000 words in 7 hours! :P

My shopping verse

1 Cor 7:30b-31

...those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.

funnies

muchos gracias to www.nataliedee.com for my new profile pic :P

incidentally, if anyone wants to give me syphillis, herpes or the flu for christmas, here is a good place to get it: http://www.latestbuy.com.au/giant-microbes-soft-toys.html

:)

Almost holidays!

11 days to go!!! Almost there... so close... in holiday mode already - so bad! :P

Still Alive

I am still alive :) Updates:

I was in Tamworth for the last 3 months. Prac in Tamworth Hospital ICU - really good!

I am back in Newcastle now! Prac in Belmont Hospital for the next 3 months until the end of the year - really tiring! but also good.

That's a basic summary of me for the last 4 months! :D

Welcome home

On the GW front, I'm very excited because I have a new guild! And even more than that, I've got the guild hall I always wanted :D It has a beach... and a waterfall!



I feel like this is me posting my "holiday" pics! except I get to live here now! YAY!!

The name reminds me of something Paul would name it - "Tiny Rambutans" hehe.

one down!

one more today, one more tomorrow :)

praise God for his mercies that are new every morning :) and for a great exam yesterday! here goes today....