why leaving is that hard

So this is where my journey ends.. When i first arrived in kuwait for my vacation, i was home sick for toronto and i never expected myself to break down like this.
Ive been pretty emotional and tearful in the past few days prior to me leaving to toronto. Ive been having so many regrets regarding not spending enough time with my family and fears about losing them.

When i firat arrived to kuwait at the beginning of october, my dad told me that one of my aunt"s was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer but she was pretty stable and asymptomatic and within one month, ive been informed that her condition has deteriorated so badly and that she has less than 6 months to live. Being a doctor, i know what pancreatic cancer is and i knew that she wasnt going to be cured but just realizing that she wont be here next time i come for a visit has struck me with fear.. Within one month, she recieved a diagnosis of death and within 6 months, she will no longer be here.. Realizing how things can change so quickly !! I realized that it could be anyone else, it could be my dad, my mum, my grandmother, any of my siblings b3id elshar inshallah.

Being abroad, away from family and friends could you put you in that risk, the risk of losing anyone and being left with regrets for not spending enough time with them.

My friends keep telling me that therez nothing i could do and the reason i am abroad is to make my dreams come true, little they knew that  i dont see my subspeciality as a dream and it is definitely not worth it but its a choice i made ans i have to stick to it. Dont get me wrong, i do like psychiatry and i have no regrets choosing it as career but its not worth the pain im feeling right now.

My friends and family dont really know what i really feel. I only post my happy moments/pictures. They have no idea how lonely it is there, how tough it is to go through this on my own. Toronto is one of the busiest  and fast growing in the world. It is full of immigrants and people seeking a chance to live. Everyone is working hard here and they have no interest in socializing so its hard to make friends here and most people are found in groups, like all asians, all indians, all arabs! Most of kuwaiti students are doctors like me and they are either too busy trying to survive the residency and the on calls or have their own family and satisfied with that as a social life .. everyone thinks of being abroad as a '' COOL '' thing, actually, i used to think the same way .. maybe it is a cool fun way if you are off as a student, as a bachelor student but definitely it is one of the most stressful experiences as a doctor/resident ..the way medicine is taught and practiced here in kuwait differs a lot from the way things are done in canada. i don't think they train us and prepare us for such responsibility here in kuwait. In canada, you feel as if the medical students are waaay better than you and can handle critical situations better than us residents/doctors. with this, comes great amount of stress, depression and low self esteem. you feel as if you wasted your life away during these past 7 yrs . add to that the long working hours in canada .. the average working hours for any profession is 8am till 5pm but for doctors it can get as hectic as 7am till 7pm .. during my consultation liaison rotation, there were days when i left the hospital around 8:30.. it can get really crazy!

so we got stressful job , no social life and then lack of support. the time difference between kuwait and canada is like 7-8hrs .. even in the lucky days when i leave work as early as 5pm, it will still be too late to call home coz that would be around midnight and most of the people would be asleep by then. you can try staying up late till midnight canada time but then that would be as early as 7 am in kuwait and the majority are busy getting ready to work or still sleeping .. this leaves you with nothing but the weekends to try to keep in touch with people back home.

i have no regrets coming here or doing that .. it wasn't my 1st choice but i know this is happening for a reason and i have a feeling that amazing things will happen in canada .. I'm just saying, its not as easy as it seems .. and I'm not as happy as i pretend. in a matter of fact, i don't dare to show my family and friends how fragile i am here .. in the past few days, i broke down a couple of times and i told a couple of friends about it, a lot of em were shocked and didn't know why i was crying. they thought things were perfect here and that i was having a blast ..

i think I've ranted enough …

just wanted to get these thoughts off my chest . and I'm beginning to get really sleepy right now .. i still have 2hrs before my next flight, I'm so drugging myself out and sleeping the whole flight ! its 14hrs25min flight and there is no way on earth that I'm going to stay awake all flight long.
sadly, im reaching toronto around 5pm so i can't just jump in bed, i got one day to fix my sleep which is impossible but one can only hope right? so ill probably go for some grocery shopping then deal with the piles n piles of mail that i know that they r waiting for me and i bet most of them are bills!


cant keep my eyes open anymore

sick

so i have finally gotten sick..
wow such a relief ..
lol no i'm not mad, i have a pretty good explanation for this ..
you see, one of my biggest concerns about going abroad and being on my own was getting sick .. i rarely get sick but when i do, i get sick so bad and ive always needed a little bit of pampering and nursing :P
no seriously, i was dreading getting sick here ..
and unfortunately, i did get sick .. i think i have the flu or something ... the weather has changed dramatically in the past few days .. it became cold all of a sudden ..
so yesterday, i had that nagging headache with this bad lethargy .. as if a truck drove over me .. i slept the whole day .. and i had that scratchy throat ..
but things were not as bad as i anticipated EL7AMDALLAH !! i managed to make me chicken soup from scratch :D .. and i did have couple of friends calling me and offering to come over to nurse me lol ..
im so glad that i got sick .. coz now i know that getting sick when ur on ur own isn't as bad as i thought .. i mean el7amdallah it was only the flu and nothing serious but still, im glad that i found out that i could take care of myself ..

OHH OHHH and i learnt other stuff too .. so ive always been a workaholic and a productive freak . i cant just sit still without doing anything .. i cant just have a lazy day .. even when i was sick before, i had to do something like read a book or watch some documentaries .. i cant just waste time in bed . this was very unacceptable and yesterday, i had the urge to grab a book or something .. and believe me, if i was doing this for fun, i would have let myself but i know that that urge to read or do something is out of my obsession of being productive rather than having fun .. so i stopped myself .. i was getting restless and the urge was getting stronger to do something but i kept stopping myself and did nothing but sleeping the day away ... and this is considered a big achievement for me lol .. yep .. doing nothing is not easy for me at all ..

and the other good thing that i learnt is, to give myself a break .. Canadians are workaholics and they never take days off .. coz that means less money .. thats why you rarely see people taking sick leaves and stuff and ive always had that feeling that if i take day off, ill give em the impression that im a weak person or something and since this is my first year, i cant afford giving my supervisors any bad impressions. there were days when i wasn't feeling well enough but i had to push myself because i thought, i should't ask for breaks .. but then a friend of mine told me '' YOUR HEALTH COMES FIRST, YOU COME FIRST, IF YOU ARE HUNGRY, YOU LEAVE YOUR PATIENTS AND GO EAT. IF YOU FEEL SICK, YOU EXCUSE YOURSELF '' .. ive always been hesitant to do such stuff .. there were days when i didnt have lunch coz i was busy with my patients , there were days when i missed my doctors appointments because i couldnt tell my supervisors that i need to leave for my appointment .. you cant blame me, doctors in kuwait have traumatized me lol .. they were so mean and rude and would never let us leave for lunch/appointments so im not used to asking for these .. but it seems people are more considerate in canada and i guess i gotta learn how to ask for my rights .. i mean, here you can just call and tell them you cant come coz you are sick and no one will ask you what kind of sickness you have because privacy is a big issue here !! but in kuwait, they demand you to bring a sick leave or tell them what u have and if they are not convinced, they will force you to come and work :s ...

the thing that im trying to say here that ive started to learn how to loosen up a bit .. and thats something that i really need ...

ramadan in north america

ive meant to update this long time ago .. and i know ive said that a thousand time but i really wanna update it more often, for my own sake :s it has been 3 months since ive arrived to canada and those 3 months passed by too quickly :S .. i still get home sick sometimes and i believe the reason is that i still dont have many friends .. the weekends are the toughest coz im either home all day long or out on my own and its really not fun being on your own .. ive always wanted to do this .. travel and live on my own .. but you know, its not as fun as you think it is .. especially if you are working and here in north america, people work ALOT !! things can get really stressful at a times and miserable if you lack support ... now ramadan was quite a challenge .. so in toronto, emsak is around 4:30 am and breaking fast is at 8:45 pm nowdays .. you go to work from 8-9 am till 5-7pm .. and people around you are eating and drinking .. thats not the worse part .. the worst part is, when you come home around 6-7, you're already exhausted and tired, you try to cook some fotor and then you break your fast at 9 and by 10pm, you cant keep your eyes open .. so its like the whole day is wasted because you're at work and even if you're home, you'll be too tired to do anything and at night, you're sleepy and actually you cant even stay up late because you got work the next day and there will be no coffee to help you stay awake .. do you get what im trying to say here?? ramadan in north america SUCKS est'3afer allah .. not only its draining me physically since ive been living on one meal .. but MENTALLY TOO .. i swear to god, everyday id be debating with myself if i should break my fast or not!! in my whole entire life, ive never wanted my period to come as bad as i want it to come right now .. i just cant take it anymore :( and what ye7er too is that there has been alot of holidays here and you'd want to use those holidays to go out, do stuff or even travel but you cant because you're fasting .. dont tell me to go out despite my fasting, its really hot and sunny + people are eating everywhere + alot of walking involved + im already as diadventage because i only eat one meal a day .. i tried waking up for so7or a couple of times, i either missed it coz im so exhausted and couldnt hear the alarm or id wake up only to realize that fotor is still ga3d 3ala chabdi :S i just cant wait till ramadan is over :( and thats so sad because i was lookng forward for ramadan :( the good thing about ramadan that it has forced me to cook everyday and be creative with it lol .. yeah that clashed with my dieting plans .. but who cares!! i only eat one meal a day .. i should eventually lose the weight .. i hope :S so yeah, ive been experimenting with different cuisines ..

we got some italian futor, some middle eastern futor .. tiramisu which i need to PERFECT because all tiramisu here has alcohol in it so the only tiramisu i'll be having is the home made ones :( ive actually eaten a few ones here without knowing that they had alcohol and gotta say, it does taste different ... NOT IN A GOOD WAY LOL .. wallah, chena fe dowa ka7a :S today, im steping up the game a bit and im having asian futor, the plan is to do some suhsi, baked spring rolls and dumplings .. now thats gonna be a challenge :S ill keep you updated :D