Hayma's World

Thoughts of 9 AM, Monday Morning ▪️Lately, I have found myself doing that a lot. Rendered speechless so I ignore the world and just smile. Surprising how much you can get out of by smiling. It is a lazy person's ultimate tool. Just keep smiling, Yes. keep smiling. Who knows? You smile at a stranger and it helps them breathe easier. ▪️One of the reasons I don't post here as often is my aversion to editing. I hate editing but I feel so honored when people ask me to edit their papers or proofread their words. I like how people associate me with words. A poet I once heard on a youtube podcast said, think of five words you want to be defined by and become those words. Writing is definitely a word I want to be associated with. ▪️I learned something the other day. That it's okay to miss out on things once in a while. You can't always be everywhere all the time and do all the things you want to do. One or two things you will have to let go of. And the world will not end. More will come. Because being a hungry dog never helped anyone. ▪️Some songs are made for winter. Ephrem Tamiru is made for winter. I'm made for winter. I'm a winter baby. Winter bones. And winter feet. ▪️In other news, I discovered Laeke last week, told a friend about it and he says he has been listening to him since a long time. Late bloomer me. ▪️I have also learned that it's good to keep your distance from people who bring out your uglier side. You know how Rumi says. 'Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.' That. Them. The fans. Those are the ones you want to be with. ▪️Dreams. My lovely dreams. I like you. Until again we meet. 💛💛

Did I ever mention how my mom loves journaling? She has been journaling since her 20s, documenting each of her milestones in her notebooks. She prefers to write on mini agendas and I love how she loves to document everything… the name of the person, date, time, stuffs stuck in between the pages, pressed flowers, old letters, postcards. These things can only be experienced rather than explained. And there is nothing better than reading your mom's word that are thoughts from the past. Everytime I read, I always try to put myself in her shoe and force myself to feel every single line she wrote about. The good days, the bad days, the letters she wrote for my dad, the days she had to get up even though she felt unwell, the days she felt proud of our accomplishments, how watching us growing up makes her happy, the challenges she faced, the days when she had to bear what society threw, the days she met new friends, how she loves reading Amharic fictions and listening to Teddy Tadesse, the days when one hundred and thirty-two birr could pay for more things, and three thousand birr did not even buy የወር አስቤዛ. I shed a few tears while reading some of the notes. I always feel like I was there with her and she told me many of the things but there are lots of things I couldn’t take notice of and certain struggles she had to pass through to make our life better. Reading her notes was a real testament that I only knew a quarter of her life and those were things she wanted me to know. I remebered there were days where I might have been a hard head, or days when I did the opposite of what she told me to. I wanted to apologize, needed to. And I did apologize but her response put me together. “Enate, I am a woman who loves to write. My diary is to know what I went through and not to equip you for battle.” Her motto both in life and in her writings has always been “ነገ የተሻለ ቀን ነው” She knew that by drilling that belief into us from a young age, that it would carry us through both good times and bad times for the rest of our lives keeping us humble and hopeful at the same time. Happy Mother's Day you precious being! Our world is a brighter place with you in it. ❤️❤️

አንዳንድ ነገሮች ▪️The intern feels inspired to write today, It was a casual Thursday, a research meeting in the morning and lunch at an Italian restaurant with her friends. Is it because she had a great lunch with her friends that she wanted to make a post? That’s one thing for sure lol. But what else sparks her creativity after a long time? A cute chef. Yes she saw a cute chef. A tall handsome guy with broad shoulders dropping down into a trim waist. Watching him expertly cooking the dishes from the open kitchen of the restaurant, for a moment she thinks if she ever imagined cooking as an Art. Had she ever imagined herself captivated by the sight of someone slicing sheets of pasta for tagliatelle? There's definitely an intimacy she never realised before existed in watching someone cook. With each progress, you get familiar with how his face and pace changes. And then he smiles in the middle of it all, taking orders from the waiters. She also noticed he has a cute smile. Another reason to like him more now. As he moved gracefully over the kitchen, she couldn't help but wonder why he kept returning to the middle, 'Why do you keep doing that, cutie? You already have her heart.'" Does she want to finish the story? NO. But She definitely want to get back to that place and enjoy the sight of watching someone doing his favorite thing. ▪️What my one month attachment in psychiatry thought me is that there are lots of wounds that are neglected. Many of the psychiatric problems are due to this unresolved pain and trauma. It is important not to just bandage them up and keep it away, we need to apply ointments, sometimes debride it, give it a rest and make the environment conducive to allow the healing to take place. Talking to someone in need always helps. Just asking if there is anything bothering them and if they would like to talk about it is enough sometimes to make the person feel wanted and give them hope. ▪️Idk man. Roller coaster kinda life it is. But if we are talking about "Right now”. Life really is beautiful and there is still time and there is love and so much casual magic in little moments that we take for granted. ▪️As I age, holidays are really about family and friends. Or taking a break and recovering. So grateful for the love, laughter, families and what this combination does for everything we are and for those conversations that feel like a really beautiful and necessary exhale. Until again we meet! 💛💛

Book #2 of 2024 complete! ✅ "If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.” This book was on my reading list for so long and I just finished reading it yesterday. It's truly a thought provoking journey about life's endless possibilities. It tells the story of Nora who’s struggling with depression and when she attempts suicide, ends up at the Midnight Library. This is a place where she’ll experience all kinds of lives she could have lived had she made some different decisions. This is a 288 pages of therapy, It’s a story that gives you hope and helps you to see life as something that has worth instead of being stuck thinking of the “what ifs”.  If you are looking for your next great read, I highly recommend this one!

Things I learnt in my 5 months of internship The intern has been so busy with everything, she hardly has time for doing something that's out of her normal everyday routine. But she had some awesome time today that prompted her to write this post. The past 5 months have taught her a lot about life. And in view of public interest (and out of an intense urge to keep this channel alive 😊), the intern is presenting you this post with freshly acquired wounds from her very rich experience. 1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Especially when you’re doing good. Because you’re going to screw up eventually. Make sure you don’t let the good days to your head because the bad days are just around the corner waiting to pounce on you as you unsuspectingly walk on. 2. No matter how well you prepared for rounds, there is always one tracing that will still be left. Her attachment in the cardiac ward has been her favorite stay so far, you are never going to be smart enough in that ward. Everyday is a day that made you realize that medicine will never be in your reach, and your differentials will sometimes be so offtrack. Every time you try to read on your cases, you realize how much more you have to learn and then you spend 2 hours just trying to figure out where to start. And when you do go prepared for rounds, predicting each question and reading up thoroughly on that, the senior will bring up some questions from embryology… “Doc, your patient echo finding says that it’s more likely an ebstein anomaly, can you mention the most common type of arrhythmia you will expect in these group of patients?” ምን አልኩ There is really no line as to where medicine starts or ends and what can be asked or not. 3. Not everything is fixable. If anything, working in a hospital setup humbles you, it makes you realize that not everything is fixable and that you can not save everyone even with all your prestigious annals of medicine. And that’s when she realizes that while internship is a thief that has taken away her connection with the outside world, it does give her a lot too. It has given her the assurance that no matter how badly the day pans out, the next one could be worse. And that’s okay. Because that’s how weeks pass and months fly until you are 5 months through and you learn to accept both sides of the coin. 4 Residents will never be your friends. She doesn’t need to go into much detail on this one lol 5. Try your best to always learn and call people by their names. It’s important to know the people around you and make it feel like a personal relationship, so repeat their names as often as you can. Let them remember you. 6. Life goes on. You don’t need to pass through internship to learn this simple fact but the intern now realizes no matter the losses and successes life goes on. It does go on and it doesn’t have to be murky and morbid. Hospitals aren’t just murky and morbid, they’re bright and sunny and alive too, sometimes even at 6 am midnight ladies gossip even as they lay febrile and coughing while the men boast even as they stay teetering. If life goes on, even for the sick and the sad, what makes her any special? She learns it slowly, to live life little by little, in between lunch breaks and afternoon rounds, where she marvels at the oceans and oceans of knowledge she still has to venture into. And in all of this, it gives her solace that her ship is not alone. Other sleep deprived roam around the hospital too, in white coats and scrubs alike. 7. Use humor Always, always, always. And the intern should submit her research title for her advisor in two days but look what she's doing. 😩

The Intern It’s been around 10 weeks since the new intern started her job 69 days to be exact. Her first attachment was in the adult emergency OPD as a surgical intern. She walks into the room and waits for someone to notice her. They don’t. Pushed to the side, she is always the one taking too much space. The residents and nurses push past her, without even wondering where that new pair of eyes had come from. The Residents scamper in and out, prepping a patient to take to the OR and then someone wants something done, so they finally notice the unnerved new girl. The Resident was a friendly and cheerful guy from South Sudan. He introduced himself with a warm smile and she sputters hers too. Completely butchering her name, he asks her if she could clerk the patient in the triage room then looks at her with concern, “The patient is presented with clot retention so please tell him to buy materials and start irrigation". She stares at him dumbly. It is her first day of internship but seems like he doesn’t care. And just like that, began the journey of the intern into the marvelous world of medicine. Not. Clinical year students came at night and they asked her if there are any surgical cases to be clerked. “We have one hernia case at the front so you can clerk that” she responded. ‘Can you comment on our history before we present it to the resident? በዛው ስለ Hernia ትነግሪናለሽ?’ She laughed and envies their enthusiasm and smiled at their question. Little did they know that she is still trying to understand the anatomy of the inguinal canal. Internal Oblique—was it part of the anterior wall medially or laterally? Meh, she left that decision to them. The intern has more important things to do now. Internship comes with its perks. No exam in the coming weeks. So she thinks she can carry this off, her optimism dodging the facts, her interest blurring the doubts, her love for hospitals overcoming the dreadful smell of the hallways and she smiles. She smiles at the sight of familiar faces, she smiles when she sutures wrong, she smiles when the work is too much, she smiles at the questions by the seniors, she smiles at the residents and the patients and the nurses (who don’t smile back, for some reason) and the ward helpers. Because she believes in the beauty of smiling through tragedy. How grueling it must be to fight against all odds and how satisfying to know that they have survived and will be around for one more day and come morning, the cycle will probably start again but the body never tires. She marvels at the clues– at the induration, the edema, the pus, and blood like the body tells the story of what happens beneath the surface. Until she realizes that there is no coming back from some tragedies, smiling or otherwise. She did not blink an eye when her favorite patient almost died and went home against medical advice or the time she heard the dead silence of a patient’s lungs as life left her eyes. The light from her torch fell on dilated irises, windows so wide, welcoming so much light, but nobody to receive its warmth. The intern had thought that doctors could brandish their knowledge and sprinkle it with a little optimism and make everything okay. She doesn’t know which part of her used to believe that the wannabe writer half, or the doctor half both of which were dying slow deaths as she does more menial work than clinical and writes repeats more than a decent passage. She gets the hang of it in a month though, or more like, the hand of it, the sutures and their loops made more sense now and so did the loopholes of life. And I think The trick is to smile and hold on to it. The journey will always be meaningful no matter the storms.

ይኼን ውብና ምርጥ ነገር አይታችዃል?? ለአመታት በሸገር FM የሄኖክ Timeless classics ላይ የለመድነው ረጋ ያለ ቫይብ ነው። በአባትና ልጅ ሲዘፈን?! ዳዊት ሰንበታ የሚወደድ ድምፅ ያለው Classy አርቲስት ነው። ውድ ሆቴሎች ውስጥ ማታ ማታ ላይቭ ይጫወታል። ከኤክስፕረስ ባንድ ጋር የሰራው ጥሩ አልበም አለ .. ወደ በኋላ የተወሰኑትን እንገባበዛለን። Cheers. 🙌 P.s ኸረ ሰብስክራይብ ለሄኖክ ... https://youtu.be/mtmlLAN-Pzo?si=8l3vyYRnf_MXOmeX

Yes, I don't usually share songs here but everything about this performance is so ethereal. ❤️