By Alan Ho Chok Chan
The second period of my self-imposed social withdrawal was my Pre-medical and undergraduate/ postgraduate period. It was tough -going in any medical education, anywhere around the world. Especially for Chinese stream students. Against all odds you need to master English and Latin, and you need to work through Anatomy ( study of the Human body), Physiology ( study of how the body organs and systems function, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level), biochemistry and pharmacology both closely related ( biochemistry explains the chemical reactions that keep the human body alive and working, and pharmacology studies the way medicines alter or restores faulty biochemistry in disease states, add to this Pathology, Bacteriology and Parasitology, and we finish up with the final 3 subjects before they gave you a license to kill : Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynaecology….It is said that the conscientious medical student would have written his own textbook by the end of his undergraduate days.
All these are to be mastered in 5 years, you must do it with a singleness of purpose in order to excel in order to be earmarked as having the potential to be groomed into a good, hardworking junior doctor under the wing of a prominent consultant. The top students all have fairy godmothers or godfathers who guide them along their fledgling careers.
Then you realised you are only on the threshold of entering housemanship, which is an incessant slog of ward work, attending teaching rounds, presenting the cases you are handed down to your consultants, justifying everything you do, or do not do.
As a houseman you are on the lowest rung of the staff hierarchy, you are the worker bee in the hive,you are the grunts or the footsoldiers, you take the blame or face the music if anything is out of order. Your patient’s life is far, far more important than yours. You are only a lowly insect.
When your whole focus and centre of being is to make your patients well, and your sole objective in life is seeing them get discharged less ill than when they came in, there is no chance for social life, girlfriends, entertainment, even tuning in to world affairs. Your only pastime during your free time is sleep, sleep and sleep. And you sleep the sleep of the dead.
This was how I squandered my golden years between 1966 (Pre Med 1) and 1977 ( finished my Masters in Paediatrics.)
So, when my friend Dada asked me how could I have missed LKY’s clampdown on the local media in 1971, I have to apologise that this happened during my ‘ lost years’.
But thanks to the ubiquitous social media and search engines, I must tell him ‘ Wait ! I am now making up for lost time ! ‘
Dr Alan Ho Chok Chan is a Paediatrician in private Family Practice. He also spends time golfing, swimming, playing tennis, wine tasting, playing guitar and singing. He is also a bibliophile and a voracious reader.