My Grocery List As A Junior Doctor – While I Was In My Vegetarian Phase

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Being a Junior Doctor or a House Officer, we are located the lowest in the hierarchy of medical personnels. That is because we have just started practicing which means there is still a lot for us to learn on top of learning how to be a safe doctor as well as the simple management of the patients’ condition down to their tailored management. Thus, this automatically translates into long hours at work, a mentally and physically tiring journey as well as a reduction in our total night’s sleep.

Are we married to our work? In a way yes and also no.

Not that we want to or that we are workaholics but being in this field, it is an unspoken expectation which seems to have befallen us.

Thus, our so-called “work-life balance” is almost always in disequilibrium and we try our best to destress in whatever way suits us best.

For me, it is cooking and recently, I have embarked on a vegetarian journey for the Lenten season (at the time of writing this article, it was during Lent), as well as a way of trying to be a pinch healthier to my already unhealthy lifestyle.

Since I enjoy making my own meals, I rarely eat outside. Thus, the idea that vegetarian food is a little bit difficult to be obtained or ordered online, does not really bother me.

A bright side to this is that, I’m lacto-ovo-vegetarian, meaning I consume egg amidst being vegetarian as well as dairy products and throughout my vegetarian season, I did not reduce my food portion (which may be bad). Rather, I simply changed my food choices from non-vegetarian to vegetarian and from ordering take-outs to consuming more home prepared meals.

Thus, what are the grocery items that I ensure I stock up on a regular basis?

1. Tofu

I absolutely CANNOT live without tofu. It is extremely versatile as I could make any kind of dish with it. Most of the time, I would simply dice it and marinade with some spices and air fry it.

At times, when I’m feeling fancy, I would use it as a burger patty as well.

2. Mushrooms

This is another versatile ingredient. From enoki mushrooms to crab mushrooms, oyster mushrooms or button mushrooms, you name it. I’m a big fan.

I try my best to stock up on fresh mushrooms. However, since I go through it pretty fast, I would usually fall back to dried mushrooms since it is readily available in the mart of my residential area.

3. Eggs

Luckily, I chose to be lacto-ovo-vegetarian, meaning if I ran out of ingredients, I could pretty much add egg, be it just cracking them into my broth or frying them.

4. Bird’s Eye Chilli

Bird’s eye chilli or “cili padi” as we call it in Malaysia.

I am a big fan of spicy food and since I go through chilli powder pretty fast, I started incorporating them into my dishes.

Be warned though, if you’re not a fan of spicy dishes, adding one too many may render the dish unconsumable.

5. Rolled Oats

This usually takes some time before it finishes.

Since I am a “heavy eater”, I started substituting my rice with rolled oats instead, which is something I started doing 2 years ago.

I’m not a big fan of having my oats with milk as I find it rather sweet or sometimes just bland for my palate. Instead, I prefer savoury dishes and the oats complements most of the dishes well.

6. Curry Leaves

This does not really serve any purpose except I merely enjoy the aroma emitting when I sizzle it with oil, adding a nice aroma to my dishes.

7. Random Vegetables – Cabbage, Leafy Vegetables, Potatoes, Cabbage

I started eating greens again.

I have always loved eating vegetables. However, it is not easily obtained since I do not have a car, I rarely go out and the nearby residential mart does not sell them.

Thus, I order online, I usually have a few fallback vegetables which I would add to my cart which are cabbages, any leafy vegetables, potatoes and aubergines.

Cabbage is another versatile vegetable as I could add it to my curry dishes and it does not wilt immediately, as an extra ingredient in my stir fried noodles as well as when I cook “okonomiyaki”.

These are my food grocery list by default. I’m not exactly a health conscious person despite being a doctor myself nor do I reduce my food portion. It is merely a step for me to try and be a little bit healthier which is sustainable for me and hopefully in time, it deems fruitful.

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The Worst Morning Shift In General Surgery | Housemanship Diaries

Related Posts:

• I Ordered A Chest X-Ray For The Wrong Patient | Housemanship Diaries
• My First Surgical ETD / ED Night Shift Experience
• My First Night Shift In Surgery | Housemanship Diaries
• The House Officer’s Dilemma | Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving A Month Of Tagging In My Fourth Posting – Surgery | Housemanship Diaries
• Appreciation Towards The Medical Officers (MOs) – Housemanship Diaries
• My Downfall In Surgery Which Led To My Extension – Housemanship Diaries
• 1 Year Of Housemanship Update – Housemanship Diaries
• Another Good Advice I Will Remember For The Longest Time – Housemanship Diaries
• Enjoying The Journey – Housemanship Diaries

I can’t really remember when as at the time of writing this article, I am about to cross into the second week of 2025.

Perhaps it was somewhere in October last year or early November.

It happened to be the day shift on a weekday and we were lack of manpower. 3 House Officers in the Male Surgical Ward, 2 House Officers in the Female Surgical Ward. Out of the 5 of us, I am the senior and the rest are first posters, three of which are only Day 3 into their housemanship life.

Oh dear…

We all know how busy Surgical can get and being the only senior that day surrounded by newbies, it was as good as being alone as they were not familiar with the system or the work or the procedures.

Learning does take time.

The day started with me taking care of the acute beds. The acute beds in the ward is considered the most unstable, hence it only made sense to allocate the senior, which is myself there, followed by the subacute cubicles.

The front cubicles and back cubicles are relatively stable patients. Hence, I allocated my juniors there. Usually for first posters in their first week of life, I would not allocate them independently to take care of a cubicle. However, we were desperately short staffed that day and taking care of the front or back cubicles are not easy either especially if you’ve just entered.

The day was busy enough. Started with me following rounds at acute and subacute with my medical officers and again with the ward surgeon, only to leave midway as the Hepatobiliary Team (HPB) had their own separate rounds and I was the HPB house officer for that day.

After rounds, it is the completion of the joblists. Amidst trying to complete the joblists, we had to transfer in new patients, take and send off the bloods of patients who have just entered as well as attending to any acute issues.

On that day, I had to assist with the front and back cubicles as well and in the afternoon, the juniors left for their Operating Theatre (OT) orientation.

My phone literally rang non-stop that day and the nurses kept haunting me down for everything. If only, I had the ability to clone myself…

Suddenly my phone rang and I had to assist a registrar to help tend to a visiting outpatient, attend the female surgical ward acute issues because the medical officer on-call called me as well as attend a virtual meeting.

Time flew by rather quickly, one minute I was escorting a patient, next was being called upon by this and that medical officer or registrar or nurses. To the point, my post-call registrar stayed back to assist me.

As the evening progressed, most of my patients desaturated. The annoying thing about Surgery, we had to update the whole story properly in the oncall WhatsApp Group for the day.

If only it were as easy as that.

We couldn’t just take a picture of our entry and update. Instead, we had to properly type the whole summary or stay.

I finally completed my task for the day at 10pm. It was an extremely exhausting and tiring day. One which I have no interest in relieving again.

That was probably the worst morning shift I’ve ever experienced.

However, looking back at what I’ve written, it doesn’t do justice to what I actually felt that day.

Related Posts:

• I Ordered A Chest X-Ray For The Wrong Patient | Housemanship Diaries
• My First Surgical ETD / ED Night Shift Experience
• My First Night Shift In Surgery | Housemanship Diaries
• The House Officer’s Dilemma | Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving A Month Of Tagging In My Fourth Posting – Surgery | Housemanship Diaries
• Appreciation Towards The Medical Officers (MOs) – Housemanship Diaries
• My Downfall In Surgery Which Led To My Extension – Housemanship Diaries
• 1 Year Of Housemanship Update – Housemanship Diaries
• Another Good Advice I Will Remember For The Longest Time – Housemanship Diaries
• Enjoying The Journey – Housemanship Diaries

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Being the EPAU (Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit) House Officer – Housemanship Diaries

Related Posts:

• Reflection of The Obstetric and Gynaecology Posting
• My First Ever Explanation Letter
• My Last Day In The Department of Obstetrics And Gynaecology
• Surviving On-Night In The Gynaecology Ward As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving On-Night In The Postnatal Ward (Maternity 1 & 3) As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving On-Night In The Antenatal Ward (Maternity 2) As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Being An O&G Operating Theatre House Officer – Housemanship Diaries
• My Second Posting During Housemanship – Obstetrics & Gynaecology
• I Survived 26 Days Of Tagging In O&G – Housemanship Diaries

EPAU of the Early Pregnancy Assessment Unit is like working in a clinic. Before I begin, allow me to express how much I absolutely love it when I am allocated as the “EPAU House Officer” for the day.

The hospital that I am practicing in is Hospital Umum Sarawak otherwise known as Sarawak General Hospital.

The working hours as an EPAU HO is from 8am till 5pm, with a lunch break from 12pm till 2pm. This is then followed by the continuation of work from 2pm till about 5pm.

Most of the cases seen here are patients who go for follow up most likely due to foetal growth restriction (FGR) or cases referred from Klinik Kesihatan. There are some cases whereby the gestation is yet to be seen in utero likely because it is too early but the pregnancy test appears positive, hence they are on follow up for scan of gestational viability after a week or two. In terms of gynae cases, most of the patients that come in are impending miscarriages or patients who have miscarriage but are on follow up to check on their B-hCG.

As an EPAU house officer, our duty is to first screen through the cases that comes in. As I mentioned before, some cases are referred while some are on follow-up.

Thus, we will screen through by writing their age followed by their gestation and parity and finally, any relevant antenatal history.

After we are done screening, we help out with writing the scan findings, calling the patients or helping to take bloods.

There’s not much that needs to be done actually but on certain days whereby the patient load is tremendous, it can get extremely busy.

However, being an EPAU house officer is a good experience and a good change of scene especially if you’ve been allocated to the ward always.

Related Posts:

• Reflection of The Obstetric and Gynaecology Posting
• My First Ever Explanation Letter
• My Last Day In The Department of Obstetrics And Gynaecology
• Surviving On-Night In The Gynaecology Ward As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving On-Night In The Postnatal Ward (Maternity 1 & 3) As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Surviving On-Night In The Antenatal Ward (Maternity 2) As A House Officer In Sarawak General Hospital – Housemanship Diaries
• Being An O&G Operating Theatre House Officer – Housemanship Diaries
• My Second Posting During Housemanship – Obstetrics & Gynaecology
• I Survived 26 Days Of Tagging In O&G – Housemanship Diaries

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Translating today’s prompt from Jetpack to Robert-speak it is asking me to write about what I like to write about in my personal blog/journal/brain dropping target. I thought I had an About Me page around here somewhere that served that purpose for me. Whatever, I feel a bullet list coming on…

What topics do I like to discuss?

• My wife, Jen
• My step kids, Bellana and Harry
• All things family
• Music
  • Playing music
  • Writing music
  • All things related to playing in a band
  • Listening to music
  • Arguing about music (I am a grade A music snob and I am always right)
  • Recording music
  • All things related to musical instruments and gear
  • Leaving the house to go and listen to live music (which doesn’t happen often anymore because I am old and go to bed early)
• Sports
  • Hockey, both NHL and minor leagues and sometimes even NCAA
  • Baseball, both major and minor leagues
• Travel
• Stressing about money and how we don’t have enough for what we want to do with our lives but still try to find a way if we can
• Weight loss surgery recovery and all the gross stomach issues that go along with it that are 100% worth the struggle
• Working as a programmer for a software company that develops systems for hospitals
• Photography
  • Digital photography
  • Film photography
  • Cell phone photography
• Bad haiku that are likely viscously insulting to the actual artists who write real haiku
• Technology
• Being a total Apple fanboy
• Social media and how it is both an obsession and infuriatingly awful
• Politics
  • How the maga cult is the new nazi party and how that fascist pile of orange goo is literally evil
• Cats

Yeah, that seems like a good, short list of topics I like to talk about on this cute little bloggie page. Hopefully you, dear readers, are into reading weird, middle aged people from New England who like to write insipid crap about some of these topics, and hopefully I don’t make you wait too long before hitting something you are particularly interested in.

https://robertjames1971.blog/2024/04/26/topics-2/

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どんなテーマについて話し合うのが好きですか ?

やはり趣味の音楽話、特に80〜90年代の洋楽の話は盛り上がりますね。個人的に。

あとは、スマートフォンやタブレットのガジェット話も、好きですね。

その道の詳しい人、好きな人と話すのは本当に楽しい。時間を忘れてしまいます。

https://yamamidori.wordpress.com/2024/04/26/%e6%b4%8b%e6%a5%bd%e3%81%a8%e3%82%ac%e3%82%b8%e3%82%a7%e3%83%83%e3%83%88/

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