Start of a life as housemanship

I started my housemanship one month ago in HUKM, placed under surgical department, vascular team. First two weeks, I suffered. But IMU prepaid me well through the o&g and stress, so it's still bearable for me. Long standing hours, running here and there ended up with numbed toes (nope, I'm not joking), stress of workload, not used to the system and how things worked, skipped meals until late at night, irritating boss, demanding patients, difficult procedures, the lists never ended. Everyday, there is a challenge, and I feel relieved at the end of the day when I walked out of the hospital, happy that I passed my test.

Here is a comparison of patients we encountered.

A. Difficult patients.
I'm sure every housemen encountered this. Because we are dealing with humans, not machine, they have feelings, demands and .. life.
They can make things difficult for us.
For example, when I was on call last night, I have a new admission that I needed to clerk.
When I sat dwn to talk with her, she refused to be clerked.
Everything that I asked, it's a 'I don't know, I really don't know. You ask the doctor la. They admitted me, I really don't know anything. Go and look at the file la." I IRRITATED me so much. I keep telling her, her records are not here yet, I have to get something from her so I can present it to my boss tomorrow, so that they will know what they are dealing with because we have to assume that they might not know what is your case. Yet. she continued to give me the 'I don't know'.
When I go read a bit more on her basic details, I realized what might have depressed her.
Her husband passed away.
She probably has anorectal cancer (anterior resection was done) and TAHBSO (can be gynecological or advanced cancer spreaded to gynecology structure).
She has stoma bag.

Yupe, that summed up all. Life sucks for her.

I was reminded of another patient who has similar attitude as her.
That 'I don't know. Go check yourself.' attitude. (she's post aka patient, bed sore, and adl dependent, no husband.), I understand they might be depressed, angry so I tried to be nice with them. But they still have a hell lots of attitude to get to you.

Of course, not every patient is like this.

B. Grateful Patients

I feel great when I'm thanked by my patients. I remembered, I always remembered a patient, who has bg scleroderma, c/o bilateral malleoulus chronic ulcer, who stayed in ward for almost two weeks, and I have to dress the wound every day. I was new at that time, got scolded, no meals etc, she sees me suffered, understood me.
At the end of her stay, she thanked me, kissed me on the cheek, and keep telling me, "Sabar, sabar, Dr Ivy..." She's inspired me the most. I sincerely thanked her for her support.
And it's a true happy feeling, when I heard my patient pointed to me and said "saya nak Dr buat untuk saya. Tak mau orang lain." Yes, it really gives me the joy.

I guessed this is what it meant to be a doctor.
I guessed this is where, during the moments of stress and depress, we find ourselves the meaning of being in this profession.

It's the joy we gained from treating patients.