Fourth year so far…

Quite frankly, it still seems unreal that I am actually in fourth year! Yes, I walk around in the shiny white coat, we’re actually in the hospital in the mornings, and the work load tells me that this is definitely fourth year, but still it doesn’t feel real. After all, it was just the other day that I started first year, wasn’t it?

You remember when I shared about my depression, right? I have to say that fourth year so far has forced me to cling to God. The workload is just so intense, and we’re dealing with patients every day. I simply don’t have the luxury of allowing myself to slip into depression. I have to keep going.

Already, I am learning to recognise the warning signs, and to pre-empt the depression before it gets bad.

I’m only realising now, how all the years I haven’t been trusting God and leaning on him the way I should have. He knew that I needed to lean on him, and so he sent fourth year, and depression, and I am thankful for that.

 

So anyway, fourth year! This is when we really first get the opportunity to work in the hospitals and start seeing patients. We have morning rotations (in groups of fourteen or fifteen students) during which we work in the hospitals, and afternoon classes for the entire fourth year group, during which we try not to fall asleep!

What this means, is that the morning rotation is not necessarily the same field of work as the afternoon classes. For instance, during January, I started with the gynae rotation and neurology afternoon classes and that combination was hell! (Especially on the final day, when we wrote tests for both gynae and neurology on the same day!)

Right now, we are doing internal medicine in the mornings, and paediatrics in the afternoons, and it is a breeze in comparison to gynae and neuro! And yet there is still so much to study and learn, so much to think about, so much to do and to practice. I am busy, I am intellectually stimulated, I am working with people, and I am happy.