Chapter 102

It was the last week of November and I was now back in Toronto. I had developed a routine of emailing the Waterloo Coordinators almost every day to ask them if they could find a place for me. Very unsurprisingly, they responded that they’ve been working on it but that they haven’t had any leads. Well…I guess this will play out exactly like how I imagined it would. So what happens now? Well… More limbo. I couldn’t do anything. It was all out of my hands. I was just left on my butt waiting for news.

For the next 3 weeks, I would suggest over a thousand various ways to get into the clinic again but all to no avail. The supervisors weren’t budging. The frustrating part was that I felt like I had some good questions too.

“Can’t I just go back to Waterloo? Our school clinic has more than enough space to take in an extra student or two without affecting anyone else.” 

“No, there is too much coordination.”

“Can I go to a clinic I am familiar with? They have all the necessary criteria to be a clinical site.”

“No, registering a site takes an audit which takes a lot of time.”

“Can I double up on my previous clinical site? I’m sure if we alternate days between the two interns we can make it work”

“No, that would be too messy.”

“Can I work at a clinic on the days the other intern isn’t so that I could at least chip away at the amount of missing clinical days I have to make up?”

“No, just no.”

All of these answers were met with rejection and a simple explanation of “we can’t do that” though in truth, it felt more like “we won’t do that.” Excuse after excuse. More times than not, I felt like I was talking to a broken robot who can only run the program one way. Any deviation was met with hostility even when it was a perfectly logical compromise. Needless to say, my relationship with the supervisors soured more during this time. 

Worse still, because there was the hope of news, I couldn’t really relax. I kept all my tools ready to go on the off chance something comes up. I was always ready to move and on edge. I kind of hoped that some kind of update would happen but eventually, after around 3 weeks of waiting, my hopefulness faded. This was because at that point, we had hit December 2019 and the Winter term was officially over. 

Now, there was a bit of time between one term ending and the next one beginning and as it turns out, this was the only thing I would be able to salvage from the term. This period, originally intended as a turnover period meant for interns to find lodging at the next clerkship site, was my only chance at starting to chip away at my missing clinical days. The Waterloo coordinators really only allowed me that much. 

Thinking back, allowing me to work through Christmas 2019 in the clinic was as close to a Christmas miracle as I was ever going to get. It was truly a compromise for the ages. So that’s how it came to be that during the Xmas season of 2019, I was in a clinic working. 

I didn’t mind working during Xmas. Though I’m not christian I really did enjoy most Xmas things. It was cheerful and optimistic and often would crack my cynicism at least for a few days. But the thing that prevented me from really enjoying it was that at the back of my head I was thinking about how I realized that I was not set up for graduating on time anymore. 

The half term in Hong Kong was intended for 2 months. Out of the 8 weeks I was supposed to work, I had worked only around 1 in Hong Kong, for which the Waterloo coordinators told me I can’t claim since it was all just getting used to being around the area. No really. They actually said that. During Christmas too! This meant when I did my holiday clinical hours in the Toronto clinic, I would only shave off a bit of time and be left with essentially 7 weeks of clinical days left. 

While 7 weeks may not seem like much to some. Keep in mind that this number was too much to be done in a term even if you worked every single extra day available. Believe me. I tried. I asked to work weekends and also to even do 7 days a week but the Coordinators wouldn’t budge. There had to be a specific amount of days you worked each week. No more and no less. Pretty much no one followed this rule in my class and there was always back and forth with regards to holidays and time off as well but now that the Coordinators were forced to pay attention to me, they had to be strict about it. Oh well…

At this point, I was kind of finding it hard to be in the Xmas spirit. I mean, personally, had I been more confident in the fact that I wouldn’t get a placement after HK, I probably should have just stayed in Asia for a bit longer. I could have easily lived in Phu Quoc for another 3 weeks on just a budget of a few hundred dollars CAD. 

At that time, I tried to remind myself of the blessings I had and how it was nice that I left HK without any harm done to me. I also chose to focus on the company of my girlfriend because at the very least, we got to hang out on Xmas. Count-your-blessings was the name of the game and I did try my best at it. 

Thinking back on this from the future. It was all kind of … cute … and not in a romantic kind of way. More like a childish type of way. The whole situation itself is what I meant. I was, at the time, just so fixated on not being optimal about escaping a protesting Hong Kong and a delay in graduation. I mean, sure, that was not ideal but it was far from world-ending. Had I known at the time what was going to happen in the future, I would have laughed at the predicament I was in. It was nothing. Not compared to the big event of my lifetime and not even a huge event considering what was about to happen in the next few months. 

This was all just a bit of scuffle and it was over. I was done with it and had left the dangers relatively unscathed. Hong Kong in 2019 was an international incident of sorts that derailed me a bit but now that I was out of it, I was free. 

What are the chances that another world changing event is going to occur in 2020?