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Olakunmi Ogunyemi, Author at SISIKUNMI https://www.sisikunmi.com/author/yemikunmio/ Live. Learn. Inspire Tue, 21 Apr 2020 19:32:39 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.sisikunmi.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/cropped-cropped-cropped-wp-1604087001228-1-32x32.png Olakunmi Ogunyemi, Author at SISIKUNMI https://www.sisikunmi.com/author/yemikunmio/ 32 32 One year a bloggerđŸ„łđŸ„ł https://www.sisikunmi.com/musings/one-year-a-blogger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=one-year-a-blogger https://www.sisikunmi.com/musings/one-year-a-blogger/#comments Wed, 26 Feb 2020 11:56:00 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=126 Wow! I’ve officially been a ‘blogger’ for a year now. The usual thing to say after that is ‘it’s just like yesterday when I started’ but to be very honest, it feels like eons ago since I published my first blog post. Also, the actual bloggiversary day was weeks ago but I somehow didn’t get around to publishing the post on time. No excuses really. The major part of this blog anniversary post was written in March 2019, a little under two months after I started. I was in a Lagos-bound bus in a park in Ikare-Akoko, Ondo State. I was already getting overwhelmed with the processes involved with blogging and the thought of abandoning it crossed my mind. I downloaded the WordPress app on my phone and decided to make drafts of future posts – a one year anniversary post being one of them. I had almost forgotten about it, but I’m glad I didn’t as it encapsulates everything I feel about my blog and the blogging experience so far. I only did a bit of editing to the draft to correct some mistakes. Enjoy! I remember how I’ve always wanted to start a blog, right from my third year in medical school (or thereabouts). Around that period I found CassieDave‘s blog and I really wished I could just start. But I felt like I wouldn’t be able to write anything interesting, or maybe there are too many blogs already. I somehow just kept and having it as a dream I wished could come true. Fast forward to about 2 years ago, I still had the longing to blog, and then I discovered Medium.com and started posting inconsistently there. I liked medium then, and I still do. But I somehow didn’t feel free. Medium felt very professional and serious and meant for business and stuff, this might not be true but it is how I feel about the site. I reconsidered blogging but I came across someone’s blog post where she complained about people not reading blogs anymore and how she felt discouraged from blogging. I was like that sums it up, I’ll just stick with medium. In keeping with my goal of writing more in 2019, I started out with this post on medium, but I somehow still felt out of place. Around that period, I decided to take some time offline to reduce the noise in my space. During my time off, I read articles and just basically lived. I started documenting my offline experience, just to have it somewhere and also to encourage others to try it out. As I thought about posting it on medium, it just didn’t feel right. And I thought why not just start this blog you’ve always wanted. It felt a bit scary and I wasn’t so sure how it will be received. I found this writeup by Ijeoma Kola which further encouraged me. I decided to take the plunge and open a wordpress account anyway. I honestly had no idea what I was doing and I even mistakenly posted something at first which Desire Uba liked and I deleted it immediately. After lots of googling and trial and error, I finally figured it out and published my first official post here. Over the past one year, it’s been more fun than I imagined. Blogging isn’t as easy as it looks from the outside. A lot of things go into it, but it was stress that I chose and I liked. In the subtle art of not giving a fuck, Mark Manson wrote that there’s no choice in life which offers zero problems, you just find the problem you love and stick with it. At this moment, this is one of my favorite problems and I plan to stick with it for as long as possible. I actually thought I’d do something more elaborate with this blog anniversary post/period and lowkey that’s one of the reasons why I stalled but I guess this works too. I hope to do more with this space in the months to come and I’d love for you to hang with me all through. Love, Sisikunmi

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/musings/one-year-a-blogger/feed/ 2 Cervical Cancer Prevention: What you need to know about getting screened and vaccinated. https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/cervical-cancer-prevention/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=cervical-cancer-prevention https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/cervical-cancer-prevention/#respond Tue, 07 Jan 2020 08:54:00 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=474 January has been tagged the month for promoting awareness on cervical cancer and its prevention. This is a good step towards fighting the disease, however, awareness without action gives similar results as a lack of awareness will. This is why, in addition to sharing information about the prevention of the disease, I have also pointed out things to do in order to take action. Please feel free to ask any questions as regards what I share here and I will answer to the best of my ability, or refer you to those who have the right answers.

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/cervical-cancer-prevention/feed/ 0 Money talks || Cures for a lean purse – IV https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cure-for-a-lean-purse-iv/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=money-talks-cure-for-a-lean-purse-iv https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cure-for-a-lean-purse-iv/#respond Fri, 15 Nov 2019 12:50:39 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=293 Welcome back! We have now come to the last post in the ‘Cure for a lean purse’ series. It’s been a thrilling journey so far. In case you’re just joining in, you can catch-up on all the saving, investment and retirement tips we’ve discussed so far. Let’s get into the last, but definitely not the least important cure. #7 ‘Increase thy ability to earn’ ‘The more wisdom we know, the more we may earn.’ Arkad. There’s a saying which recently became popular which goes ‘Dangote still they find money’. Mr Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa still finding ways to increase and secure his net worth. This is true for most of the richest men in today’s world. Even when their net worth can be unbelievably massive. It doesn’t matter what you ear, you need to increase your ability to earn. Back to curing our lean purses, increasing your ability to earn is an important part of increasing one’s income. Sometimes saving and investing just isn’t enough. I had a discussion with a friend recently where she asked about platforms to invest which will give high ROIs. After listening to her, how she had a lot of responsibilities – personally and family-wise. After listening to her, I told her that what she really needs to do is to find a way to earn more than she does at the moment. So how exactly do we increase our ability to earn? I’ll outline various ways that I have come across. I acknowledge that it might not be so easy to earn more, it is always worth a shot. ‱ Improving your abilities and getting promoted/ asking for a pay raise at work ‱ Getting a side hustle: freelancing, starting a small trading business ‱ Turn a hobby you’re good at into something profitable There are definitely more ways to do these and if you have any, you can please drop them in the comment section below. Increasing your earnings and applying the principles we’ve learnt in this series to whatever income comes from it will significantly help to cure a lean purse. As we end this series on curing a lean purse, I’d like to say that while making and having money is something we all desire, we shouldn’t tie our happiness to it. Odd as it may sound, do your best to be happy at whatever stage you are. Happiness is determined by you, no matter what life throws at you. Also, it takes time to build wealth. As I learnt from the book ‘The millionaire next door’ by Thomas J. Stanley, millionaires are made not necessarily by how much they earn but by how they live. Applying the 7 cures we’ve discussed might not yield results overnight, but if we stay consistently at it, 5, 10, 20 years down the line, we’d be grateful we did. “Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and, most of all, self-discipline.” ― Thomas J. Stanley, The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy Thank you for staying with me throughout the 4 posts in the curing a lean purse series. It was a pleasure to write the posts, and knowing that people read and were inspired by them makes my heart full. If this is your first time on the series, you can go here to catch up on all the other posts. Also, subscribe to this blog to get instant personalized updates on new posts. Not all of my posts focus on money issues, but I’m certain that you’ll find the other categories of posts as inspiring. Till next time, Sisikunmi

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cure-for-a-lean-purse-iv/feed/ 0 Money talks || Cures for a lean purse – III https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talk-cures-for-a-lean-purse-iii/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=money-talk-cures-for-a-lean-purse-iii https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talk-cures-for-a-lean-purse-iii/#respond Fri, 08 Nov 2019 12:50:04 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=292 Hey people! If you’re just joining in, this is a series of posts on curing a lean purse – teachings on saving and investment in simple, relatable terms. The principles are taken from the book, The Richest Man in Babylon. Even if you have read the book before, I’m sure you’ll still be able to pick a thing or 2 from this post series as we discuss how to apply those principles to our modern life. We’ve discussed four cures already covering saving, budgeting as well as investing. Make sure you subscribe to this blog so as to get new posts delivered straight to your inbox! #5 ‘Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment.’ ‘Thus come many blessings to the man who owneth his own house. And greatly will it reduce his cost of living, making available more of his earnings for pleasures and the gratification of his desires.’ Arkad Owning your own home is an essential part of survival. On the scale of needs, shelter ranks high up there among some of the essentials needs of man. Owning a home is usually a long term plan though (except if you have rich folks who can afford to gift you one). It is easy to get carried away with other cares of life, forgetting to work towards achieving this goal since it is long term. As in the quote above, owning a home reduces the cost of living as you do not have to worry about paying rent or anything like that. Although other expenses come into play, like maintenance and all, it is usually minute when other things are considered. There was a discussion around this recently on Twitter and you can follow it here. #6 ‘Ensure a future income’ ‘The life of every man proceedeth from his childhood to his old age
 it behoves a man to make preparations for a suitable income in the days to come, when he is no longer young.’ Arkad As we all know, no one can work forever. Even if you own your own business/company, there will come a time when we have to retire. In our environment, we see a lot of retired folks who are really not thriving. To make it worse, the government sometimes holds on to their pension funds, owing as much as a year or more worth of pension. It would be tragic for anyone who has enjoyed the good things of life in their youth to now have to beg and feed from hand to mouth. This is why it is important to money saved up for these times. Some companies open pension accounts for their employees where a certain amount of their salary is paid monthly. Also, pension accounts can be opened by the individual on his or her own. Another instance where insuring a future income is important is when one loses a job. No one wishes for it but sometimes, people are let go from their jobs. It is usually advised that emergency funds are kept which is estimated to at least 6-9 months worth of the person’s current salary so as to enable him or her stay afloat while in search of new opportunities. Such funds most times take a while to accumulate but starting early helps as you will still have some cash to spare in the event of such occurrences. Savings and investments which were talked about here is also a way to secure an income for the future. For a lean purse to a man no longer able to earn or to a family without its head is a sore tragedy. Arkad That’s all we have for today folks. How are you finding this series? Is it something you’ll like to see more of? Have you been inspired by any of the posts to make some changes to your finances? Let me know in the comment section below. We’ll be having the last post next Friday. If you are yet to subscribe to this blog, kindly do so before leaving. I don’t want you to miss out on any of this awesomeness!

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talk-cures-for-a-lean-purse-iii/feed/ 0 Money talks || Cures for a lean purse – II https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-ii/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-ii https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-ii/#comments Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:48:32 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=291 Hi money-minded peeps! Happy new month!!! Hope you’ve made some personal finance assessments and adjustments since we discussed the first two cures for a lean purse? If you have, awesome! If you are yet to, you’re still on track because now that you have the knowledge, all you need now is the ginger to implement. Here’s something Arkad has to say to you on that note – ‘Wealth, like a tree, grows from a seed. The first copper you save is the seed from which your tree of wealth shall grow. The sooner you plant that seed the sooner the tree grows. And the more faithfully you nourish and water that tree with consistent savings, the sooner may you bask in contentment beneath its shade’. This is the ginger you needed. Oya gbera and get to it ASAP! We’re continuing the discussion on the cures for a lean purse. In case you missed when it was first discussed here, I’ll reintroduce you to what the cures for a lean purse mean. They are a set of rules concerning personal finance outlined in the richest man in Babylon. These rules were narrated by Arkad, the richest man in Babylon who started from nothing in the rich city of Babylon. The rules are said to have guided men in those days towards acquiring and retaining riches. If you are yet to, kindly subscribe to this blog so you can get each new post delivered directly to you. You wouldn’t want to miss any of it. #3 ‘Make thy gold multiply.’ ‘Gold in a purse is gratifying to own and satisfieth a miserly soul but earns nothing. The gold we may retain from our earnings is but the start. The earnings it will make shall build our fortunes.’ Arkad. Saving is not enough. The Yorubas’ say ‘owo la fi n wowo’ meaning ‘it is money we use to look for money.’ This is investment summarized. You can’t be working while your money is chilling in one corner of your cupboard. You have to put it to work! Putting your money means putting your money into investments which will add value to your money. There are various ways to go about this and you don’t have to be earning a whole lot before you start. Building the habit now is a good way to sustain it and be more knowledgeable when the big bucks come. Investing can be low-, medium- or high- risk, depending on how much you are willing to part with and how secure your capital is. Some investment types I’ve come across are money market funds, treasury bills, agricultural investments, legal bonds… Also investing in a start-up or a business. Always remember to sign an agreement with the other part, even they are family/friends. You can check out Subomi Plumptre’s site, where she has a column on investments. #4 ‘Guide your treasure from loss.’ ‘Every owner of gold is tempted by opportunities whereby it would seem that he could make large sums by its investments.’ Arkad. We’ve spoken about how money saved needs to be invested in order to yield more increase. However, it would be an oversight if we do not expound on securing said investments against loss. It is very easy to be swayed by the high returns of investment (ROIs) and get carried away. Investments can be really tricky sometimes. Arkad advises against taking on investments where the capital is not insured however, most investments with high ROIs come with the risk of losing the capital. This is where knowing your level of investment risk comes in. It is determined by your level of income, and personality among other things and it can change over a period. Here’s a calculator I found online to calculate your personal level of risk-taking. It is also recommended that you seek sound investment advice before embarking on any investment. Money business is serious business. ‘A man’s wealth is not in the coins he carries in his purse; it is the income he buildeth, the golden stream that continually floweth into his purse.’ Arkad. I’ll include the 5 laws of gold, from the same book, here as I believe it talks majorly about savings and investments. Five Laws of gold: I. Gold cometh gladly and in increasing quantity to any man who will put by not less than one-tenth of his earnings to create an estate for his future and that of his family. II. Gold laboureth diligently and contentedly for the wise owner who finds for it profitable employment, multiplying even as flocks of the field. III. Gold clingeth to the protection of the cautious owner who invests it under the advice of men wise in its handling. IV. Gold slippeth away from the man who invests it in business or purposes with which he is not familiar or which are not approved by those skilled in its keep. V. Gold flees the man who would force it to impossible earnings or who followeth the alluring advice of tricksters and schemers who trusts it to his own inexperience and romantic desires in investments. That’s the end of today’s lessons. We have 3 cures to go and I hope we’ve started applying these lessons to our finances? See you next Friday as we continue the series!

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-ii/feed/ 4 Money talks || Cures for a lean purse I https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-i/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-i https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-i/#comments Fri, 25 Oct 2019 12:40:17 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=239 Hey people! Hope you’ve been well since our last post? In the debut money talks post, I promised to share some tips on savings and investment over the next few weeks. Most of the principles I’ll be sharing are gotten from the time-trusted book, The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. Babylon is said to have been the wealthiest nation in its time, with lots of wealthy persons inhabiting it. It is also home to one of the seven wonders of the world, the hanging gardens of Babylon. Although I’ve been guided by most of these principles way before I read the book, everything was really broken down here, explaining financial concepts using storytelling. If you want to go deeper than I’ll do in this series of posts, then I’d recommend that you read this book (you can finish it in hours – it’s that short and interesting). In today’s post, we’ll be talking about the cures for a lean purse. The cures for a lean purse are a set of rules concerning personal finance outlined in The Richest Man in Babylon. These rules were narrated by Arkad, the richest man in Babylon who started from nothing in the rich city of Babylon. The rules are said to have guided men in those days towards acquiring and retaining riches. I’ll be sharing some of these rules, expounding a bit on them and how they can be applied to us in this modern day. According to Arkad, there are 7 cures for a lean purse and these will be discussed in bits over the next few posts. If you’re yet to subscribe, kindly do so you wouldn’t miss out on anything. #1 Cure for a lean purse: ‘Start thy purse to fatten.’ How do you fatten your purse? By putting money in it, simple. The idea is to set aside some money at intervals, essentially for savings. As explained in the book, you can see this as paying yourself just like you pay the tailor, restaurant and all others. The way to make this work well is to ensure that you pay yourself first, before any other person. As Arkad tells us in the book, a part of all you earn is yours to keep. Also, rather than setting a particular amount, it’s always better to set a percentage. This helps you adjust the actual amount to suit your income level. For instance, if you’ve been saving 5,000 naira monthly from a 50,000 naira salary when the salary jumps to 100,000 naira, you might find it difficult to adjust your mindset to increase your savings amount and stay at 5,000 naira. However, if you are using a percentage system, it becomes easier to increase your savings. A minimum savings of 10% of your income is usually advised but this can go higher depending on your personal preference. Saving has gotten easier in this age as there are now various platforms which one can use to automate savings. Here is one of such you can check out. You can automate your savings so that you don’t have to worry about forgetting. You also get interests on your savings. I already talked a bit here about the benefits of saving on this kind of platform as opposed to a wooden piggybank or the likes. #2 Cure for a lean purse: ‘Control thy expenditure.‘ The next thing after saving is to ensure that you do all you can to avoid dipping into the savings. This is where budgeting comes in. Some might even argue that budgeting comes before saving. Budgeting is basically controlling your money, telling it where to go and how much can go there. If you don’t control your money, it can go haywire. Once again, the easier way to budget is to set certain percentages of your income rather than having fixed amounts. The 50/30/20 rule of allocating funds is usually advised. I’d rearrange this to 20/50/30 in order of importance. This means 20% of your income goes to savings and investment, 50% goes to your needs (housing feeding, clothing, etc) and the remaining 30% goes to your wants (eating out, games and the likes). You can always determine what your wants and needs are as what can be a need for me might just be a want for you and vice versa. Also, you can adjust the percentages to suit what you want to achieve. There are other ways of budgeting such as spending what is left after saving and putting different amounts in different envelopes. I think all stem from the percentage rule which is still the best in my opinion. Keep this in mind when budgeting – Expenses expand to meet income, so if you’re not careful you’ll lose control over your money. ‘What each of us calls our ‘necessary expenses’ will always grow to equal our incomes unless we protest to the contrary… All men are burdened with more desires than can be gratified.’ Arkad, The Richest Man in Babylon. To make your budgeting easier, you have to know what you spend on which can be done by tracking your expenses. You can decide to track your expenses for a week or more before committing to a fixed budget. Tracking your expenses also helps you plug any leakage in your finances, readjusting your spending to suit your income. There are several applications out there which help with tracking expenses. Some people also use excel spreadsheets to track theirs. Those are the 2 cures for today. I hope this has inspired you to take your personal finances more seriously. Check back next Friday for the next 2 cures, or subscribe to get notified instantly when the post goes up. Just before we sign out for today, here’s something Arkad has for us: ‘Enjoy life while you are here. Do not overstrain or try to save too much. If one-tenth of all you earn is as much as you can comfortably keep, be content to keep this portion. Live otherwise according to your income and let not yourself get niggardly and afraid to spend. Life is good and life is rich with things worthwhile and things to enjoy.’ Arkad, The Richest Man in Babylon. So while we should save and plan for the future, let’s remember to live now, enjoy life. As my friend would say – Chop life, no let life chop you! Do you already follow some of these principles? How has it been? Do you have some tips to share? Let me know in the comments section below. (Your comments add a spark to my day so I’d really like to hear from you!)

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-cures-for-a-lean-purse-i/feed/ 3 Lessons from housejob https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/lessons-from-housejob/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=lessons-from-housejob https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/lessons-from-housejob/#respond Sun, 13 Oct 2019 17:30:33 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=128 I’ve finally completed my housejob year. đŸ„łđŸ„ł When I left Lagos to Ondo last year, it seemed like a journey so far away but as with everything in life, it all comes to an end at some point. At the start of 2018, I never would have thought that I’d find myself living outside of Lagos for a year. But that’s exactly what happened! And in retrospect, I’m glad that I didn’t accept the offer to move back to LUTH when I got the employment text then. This is not to say I never nursed the idea of staying back, or even wished I could be in Lagos even when it was clear that it wasn’t possible. These feelings became stronger in the last half of the year but there was really nothing I could do about it. All in all, I’m grateful for the experience that was this year. I had a fun time doing my housemanship in Ondo State. I know for a lot of people, it’s abnormal for fun and housemanship to be in the same sentence. But that’s how it was for me; also, fun is relative. I got the opportunity to work in 2 hospitals over the period of one year, spending 6 months in each place. The first hospital was in a rural area. The hospital (State Specialist Hospital, Ikare-Akoko) had medical officers and consultants and a number of the things you’d see in a city hospital. This is where I completed the paediatrics and obstetrics/gynaecology postings. The hospital staff felt like family because the hospital wasn’t so big. The indigenes were also nice, although they could be stubborn and have their moments. A lot of doctors wouldn’t want to work in a rural area. I also didn’t want to. I remember when I got to the hospital the first time, I literally wanted to run out. I couldn’t believe that I was there. For like 10 mins I was freaking out and almost cried. I remember telling some of my friends at that moment that I might have gone for my NYSC early. After I built up the courage to stay, I began to enjoy it. The months I spent there are easily the best of my house job year and the other house officers I met were also the best – they’re one of the reasons I’m glad to have stayed back in Ondo State. The second hospital was State Specialist Hospital, Akure, now University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital Complex, Akure. This is where I completed my surgery and medicine postings. Being in the city, the hospital had more patient load as well as a higher calibre of doctors. The conversion to a teaching hospital was during my time there and in retrospect, I am thankful for that. There was a huge difference between the training in a teaching hospital setting and that in a General Hospital setting. For me, the major downside to interning away from my comfort zone was missing my friends. I don’t particularly fancy going out that much so I didn’t miss the party life of Lagos. The calm and sanity I experienced this one year were bliss and I really wish the state was a bit more developed to encourage people to stay back. This is not to say that I didn’t miss the ‘Lagos life’ a bit. At this point, I’d share some lessons I picked up from this entire journey. It was a real experience. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Getting an internship placement post-graduation can be quite tough in Nigeria. You’ll be doing yourself a disservice by applying to only one place for your internship. The best bet is to apply far and wide. Some times, you might have legitimate reasons to want a particular place but if that’s not it, then just try everywhere you can. Do it afraid, you’ll never know if you don’t try. A lot of times during the year, I had to ‘do it afraid’. It is usually daunting when a new task is before you and it seems like you have no idea what to do. Most times just trying your hands at it helps build your confidence and you can ask for assistance along the way. Life is in phases. I remember feeling very anxious at the start of the year. I saw the older house officers doing stuff and I was just feeling bad because I couldn’t do them at the time. Now that seems very silly of me. I had no reason to be anxious because, at that phase, I was just starting. I shouldn’t have judged myself by their skills at the time. Those things I was anxious about are things I can do confidently now. The journey matters more At the start of housemanship year, I just wanted it to be over already. Maybe being far from home added to this. However, along the way, I realized that finishing is not just what matters but actually the process and how I went through it. The start and the end are static points, it’s the journey in between that really matters; it’s the experiences and lessons learnt during this year that built me up. This applies to every phase of life – the journey matters more. I hope to carry these lessons along with me and imbibe them as I move on to other things in life. I will still be sharing the feature posts I mentioned in my last post so don’t stay away for too long. Or better still, subscribe so you can get notified once it’s up! Cheers to new beginnings!

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/lessons-from-housejob/feed/ 0 Housejob Chronicles|| Rounding up Medicine https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/medicine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=medicine https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/medicine/#comments Sun, 13 Oct 2019 17:00:01 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=469 4 of 4!!! Can you palpate my excitement through this post? You should be able to. I’m officially done with Housejob; no longer a house officer, now a medical officer. 😁😁 #Justlikeyesterday I’ve documented the journey so far here on the blog. I’d share a post on my overall experience and lessons throughout this year in a different post, shortly after this. Internal medicine is a sub-speciality of medicine which deals with the diagnosis, medical treatment and care of adults. In medical school, medicine was actually my best posting. Not in terms of grades or ‘stuff’, but because things there seemed a bit more straightforward than other departments. You could almost always tie all the symptoms together neatly (this is true for every aspect of medicine but it feels truer for internal medicine). People view them as the stuff-moving peeps (no lies there) and you have to like and know stuff to thrive in it. I didn’t expect that it would be my last posting, but in retrospect, I’m glad that it is. Firstly because most people presenting to the hospital have medical issues, not surgical or gynaecological. So, I feel it would help during my service year as a medical officer to have most of those medical details fresh in my memory. Also because it seemed like the most likely speciality for me to branch into if I am considering clinical medicine. I feel it would be an interesting field to specialise in, so maybe. (I wrote the above paragraph in my first week of the posting and put a strike through it in my fourth. Medicine posting was actually a lot more than I anticipated – more work, more time-consuming. It’s also a pretty depressing posting; I probably saw more morbidities and mortalities in the past 12 weeks than in the previous 36 weeks of my Housemanship year. So no, it’s no longer my most likely speciality. Maybe this is just a Nigerian factor and things might improve in ‘the abroad’, but for now, it’s a no no.) It’s typical for most HOs to lose the fervor and just slug it through the last posting of the year but I made a deliberate effort to avoid that. I did my best to be more active than normal. I would have loved to be posted to the Endocrinology unit (because I like Endo) but I got posted to Cardiology (I was still happy because the doctors here seemed nicer, which is key to having a good posting experience). Unlike my surgery posting where I got to move through all units, I was stuck with cardiology for 12 weeks. It sounded hellish when I found out but I made it through. The activities revolved around morning reviews, ward rounds, clinics and seminar presentations. Cardiology clinics are always full – cardiology cases are prevalent in society. During one of the clinics in my first week, we had over 160 patients to see in the clinic only 6 doctors manning the clinic, so it wasn’t a surprise that the clinic was rowdy and so long. While waiting to be seen, one of the patients became unconscious, the clinic immediately became an emergency room. Several attempts were made by senior colleagues present to access her veins in order to administer resuscitative fluid and meds but it was proving difficult. The veins in the elderly are usually tortuous and can be really hard to get. I didn’t think to try since others were there. As soon as I noticed the woman getting worse, I decided to try and I got a patent intravenous access on the first attempt! I felt really good. Necessary medications were administered and the patient got better, after which she was admitted to the wards. Remember that part where I talked about people slugging it through the last posting and how I wanted to be better? It was a real struggle for me to do better. It also didn’t help that I was doing a daily countdown. I had to give myself constant pep talks, reminding myself about how I had to be present in this phase (I regularly recalled a quote in my mid-year review) and not be in such a hurry to leave it (not like I could hasten time or anything). I think this is a thing that happens to almost everyone at the last stage of anything – school, projects and all. This posting also shed more light on the constraints in the practice of medicine in such a country as Nigeria, both in the patients part and the doctors. For the doctors, there’s only so much you can do for a patient without having the results of necessary investigations which the patients sometimes cannot afford. In the rare cases that they can afford them, there could be one or more ‘logistic’ problems – faulty equipment, no equipment at all, no electricity amongst others. You then have to just make do with what you can get. For the patients, there’s the lack of awareness which causes late presentations. Apart from that, sometimes the costs of investigations can also burdensome. There are also the costs of drugs to deal with. A good number of people still pay for health out of pocket which can be draining on anyone. It’s really sad that we have to deal with all these challenges. That’s possibly what made me enjoy the posting less. Towards the end of my posting, we had medical students come around. Watching them clerk and do all the regular medical students’ stuff transported me back to my med school days. It was actually a welcome experience. It reminded me that there are times and seasons for everything – there were things I saw them struggle with which came easily to me. They were things I had struggled with in school as well, but with months of hands-on experience, I have gotten better. I also recalled how naive and unprepared I felt at the start of housejob. It’s a long ways away from the confidence I have as a doctor now. This also affirms something I tweeted a while back – degrees are static, skills are dynamic. Yes, I have a medical degree, however, without practice, it would very easily become redundant. I have now come to the end of this one year journey. I’ve had a lot of emotions going through it – from thinking I’d be in LUTH to having to work in an entirely different environment. I’m grateful for it all, for the experiences and friendships formed. As a way of rounding up the housejob chronicle series, I’ll be sharing a post compiling my experiences working in two different hospitals in this housemanship year. I will also be sharing posts featuring other interns sharing their experiences interning away from ‘home’ and also balancing having a life during housemanship year. Make sure you subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss any of it! It’s been fun sharing my experiences and getting feedback from y’all. Cheers to the close of a chapter and the start of a new one!

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/career/medicine/feed/ 2 Money Talks || Why you shouldn’t save in a traditional piggybank. https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-piggybank/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=money-talks-piggybank https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-piggybank/#comments Fri, 11 Oct 2019 10:49:51 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=241 Hey there! Do you save part of your income? How do you do that? Do you save in a traditional piggybank? Whatever your answers might be, just read on, I have gist for you. Before getting into the post proper, I’ll be sharing some backstory about how this idea came to be. Stay with me. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling with whether or not to delve into writing about personal finance. The idea was particularly inspired by a message I received from an old classmate reminding me of when I helped her save money back in secondary school. I had contemplated starting this series a while back, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t want to feel like a fraud because although I follow most of the principles I’ll be talking about, I’m not as diligent/consistent as I would love to be. But I guess talking about it and encouraging people to adopt it might give that extra push I need, abi? After a lot of back and forth, I decided that sometimes you just have to do what you have to do! Ready or not. So while I might not be a ‘finance girl’ or an expert on money matters, I sure do have some things I’ve picked up over the years which I feel could be useful to more people beyond my friends and those on my contact list. I’m also praying (and doing my own part) that my account cooperates and blossoms even as I share these tips. Because how awkward will it be if I stay broke while sharing money tips?? Too awkward. Enough pre-gist. Let’s get into the main gist of the day. In this introductory post, I’d be talking about saving inside wooden piggybanks aka ‘kolo’ and why it’s not an ideal set up. A while back, I saw a tweet about a woman who saved N3,000 daily over a period of 14 months. It was an impressive sight, seeing her sitting with her one thousand naira notes all around her. (I understand that she might have had her personal reasons for saving this way. I’m only using this as a case study for educational purposes.) My first thought was that this woman allowed her money to sit idle for too long – I’ll explain further about that in this post. That was actually my second thought. My real first thought was how she managed to have the money intact, with the different stories of money ‘disappearing’ from such wooden piggybanks going around. People say this happens, never happened to me though (I’ve never really had one). I decided to ask if people really fancied seeing their cash as opposed to having it in a bank or some sort of investment. I got this response below. Later during the week, I saw a post about an interview with Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest businessman. He stated in the interview how he once withdrew 10 million dollars just to believe he had money. But here’s the thing about Mr Aliko, he put the cash back where it belonged – in a bank working for him. The reason why I had qualms with that lady’s method of saving is that she could have earned more if she had put the money to work. At an interest rate of as little as 10% per annum, compounding daily, she would have had more than she saved. But since she didn’t put the money to work, she got just exactly what she saved. Saving in an interest giving platform rather than a kolo also helps preserve your money against inflation. The value of N1,000 this year, is most likely less than what it was a year or 2 ago. So if you’re saving in kolo, the 2 million naira saved over 2 years may have a lesser value at the time of use. Saving on such platforms also makes money available for investments and other profitable actions which wouldn’t have been possible with the money docile in a piggy bank in your room. So, you’ll be helping the economy as well, not just yourself. I hope I’ve been able to enlighten you about why saving using an interest giving platform is better? In case you want to start saving on a different platform, here’s an online saving and investment platform which makes savings easy and fun. People have had good experiences using it. You can check it out here. There are other platforms out there as well which you can explore. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing more tips concerning saving and investing. Kindly subscribe to this space so you don’t miss any of the posts. Did you find this post enlightening? Educative? Fun? Will you like to see more posts like this? Please let me know in the comment section. P.S: To be honest, I sometimes have issues coming up with an appropriate opening for my posts, and seeing as this is a new kind of post on here it made it sort of harder. I decided to go with hey there! Kinda like calling your attention to this post. It worked right? Right! 😊

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]]> https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/money-talks-piggybank/feed/ 2 Sonder – The profound awareness that everyone has a story, as complex as yours. https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/sonder-the-profound-awareness-that-everyone-has-a-story-as-complex-as-yours/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sonder-the-profound-awareness-that-everyone-has-a-story-as-complex-as-yours https://www.sisikunmi.com/lifestyle/sonder-the-profound-awareness-that-everyone-has-a-story-as-complex-as-yours/#comments Wed, 14 Aug 2019 08:20:58 +0000 https://sisikunmi.wordpress.com/?p=480 One sunny Sunday afternoon, while I was on call duty at the accidents and emergencies department at my workplace, an officer came in and mentioned that he had brought a patient (Mrs A) who was involved in an accident. I thought it was probably a fracture or something of that nature. I was with other patients, so I couldn’t go and attend to them. The casualty officer on duty was available so he went to see. Upon reviewing, he certified Mrs A dead. I was shocked to hear that because I hadn’t really expected it. The backstory (history) of Mrs A even made me more shocked – she had been driving home from church when she suddenly swerved from the road and hit a pole. She had just a bruise on her leg and no visible bleeding. Those around her quickly rushed her to the hospital, but she was dead on arrival. An autopsy wasn’t carried out to identify the exact cause of death; chances are she had a cardiac arrest prior to sustaining the accident, which was probably what made her lose control. What’s the point of this narration? That same day, shortly before this woman came, my mom had come to visit me at the hospital on her way from church – she brought me some food as I don’t like eating the hospital food while on call. ❀ As I heard the story behind this Mrs A’s death, I began to think about how that could have been her. I wondered what I’ll do if that had happened, and I just couldn’t bear to – because the thought alone weakened me. Still does. I wondered how Mrs A’s husband, children, friends and other loved ones would be feeling, hit by this sudden loss. This is not the first time thoughts like this have crossed my mind – it occurs almost every single day, both in the hospital and out. Seeing people going about their daily activities, being on admission in the hospital, the thought crosses my mind that they are more than just mere statistics. They are very real people with very real lives and dreams, just like me. This realization, this awareness that those around me are as human as I am helps me interact with people better, to treat people with more respect and kindness. Sometimes it overwhelms me and I realise that the world is bigger than just me. Other times, it strengthens me – knowing that there are other people in the world with cares and worries and joys, just like me. I don’t always think this way, because I feel constantly thinking this way will be paralysing. But when I do, it helps strengthen me – knowing that I’m not alone helps make me more confident. As you read this, remember that you’re not alone – everyone has a story, a maze of life that they’re trying to figure out. It’s a journey we are all making.

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