had my second pdp session yesterday. prof goh brought us to see two patients, one with an infarct and the other with asthma. the guy with infarct had a family history of heart problems, and in fact his two eldest siblings have already since died of some sort of heart failure. his youngest kid is in primary two, his eldest in secoundary one. we talked to him about his dietary, exercise and smoking habits and his job. nothing surprising from a mi patient, just that a family history and all these factors worked together to bring him into hospital at the tender age of forty-eight.


the second patient, which fun and i interviewed was a forty-plus year old man who had come in for an asthma attack. this asthma condition of his was apparently caused by breathing in chemicals and dust while on the job. on top of this he has a generous helping of many other conditions, including diabetes, rhinitis and glaucoma. for rhinitis he has already undergone six operations for it to remove the cartilage in his nose, and the drugs for his asthma don't go well with the diabetes medicine, which is giving his doctors a headache. he did loosen up enough to joke that his wife isn't born yet, which was his humorous way of saying he isn't married.


achievement of the week: being able to identify the raised ST segment on the ECG, indicating an infarct. well, pbl does have some use, but i was quite pleased with myself (hey give me a break), and the asthma patient was using a drug similar to what i used during the a levels for my cough.


and to zing, cuz i can't seem to load ur tagboard: yes, you and zig are my dearest friends, and one thing is that no matter how long we've not seen or spoken to one another, we still feel as close as we were in 4h, and we still understand each other perfectly. there could only have been one answer to your one liner, cuz both zig and i have always felt that in you. -grin- and i'm not yet a doc! not even one fifth of the way yet! i'm happy for you, just that, uh, i'm not used to caling him matt.

it's wednesday, but i already i've had enough of this week. it's sheer torture to go to school nowadays, and i wonder why i'm feeling this way. i just want to lock myself at home and interact with snell and guyton and berne and levy and the rest. but no, since my parents have paid up a fortune for my studies, i need to get up at six everyday and drag myself to school and go for class while my mind wanders to far away places.


at least there are some vaguely interesting lectures. on monday there was an endocrine physiology review, and the lecturer did an excellent job integrating the science behind medicine and the ethics involved. he told us that a survey had been done about olympic athletes, apparently they all wouldn't mind consuming a drug that would boost their performance but would kill them when they reach thirty five. and in fact, a whole lot of athletes are dying, he showed us a long list of cyclists who were put on erythropoetin to increase their rbc and hence stamina, and they all died between seventeen and thirty five. the steroids/hormones industry is worth nearly a hundred billion us dollars, and for two weeks of treatment a doctor can earn up to two hundred thousand on each patient. so, he asked, would you let a woman who wanted to look younger for her husband know that her chance of breast and ovarian cancer is almost tripled or just give her the jabs? it made us all think hard, and we appreciated it.


perhaps it was more than a coincidence that i met zing, and matt for dinner later that day. he had a bit of trouble with his foot after all that marching during the ocs commissioning ceremony (and by gaw, he and tc got the sword-of-honor!) and he asked me about it. so i explained the stucture with the help of trusty snell, and to my surprise i found it a nice thing to be able to help someone understand more about his body. it's different from spitting it out in exams or having to explain certain concepts to a fellow medical student or being grilled by your prof because telling non-medical people what a marvellous thing your body is is like a revelation, and it has this child-like wonder to accompany it.


i've got more to blog about, but it's late. i've had a long day, but one last thing. i've been noticing from reading everyone's blogs that we all seem to be having some issues going on right now. someone has stopped completely but might restart, two have moved to a more private blog because they're trying to cope with something, and another is venting everything on the blog. is it just my imagination?

i was at parkway mph on friday when i stumbled upon this crappy book entitled Do Elephants Jump? apparently they try to solve what they call "Imponderables", things that just are but no one knows why. so to answer the book's title, no they can't really jump but they can clear quite a distance. but what caught my eye was the question why do we rub our eyes when we're tired? no, let me correct that, it was the answer that got my attention. cuz it says one theory put forth was that by rubbing our eyes we are stimulating the rectus muscles of the eyes and hence stimulating the vagus nerves, resulting in parasympathetic impulses around the body to help slow down your heart rate etc, essentially helping you fall asleep.


well, i'm glad that what im learning now can help solve life's little mysteries.

the endocrine notes are twenty-nine pages long. oh wow. spent half an hour editing the font and spacing of his notes, and replaced the block arrows with ordinary ones. glad it's done.


tried the jazz scores yesterday, and most unfortunately they didn't turn out as well as expected. or maybe because i was consciously trying to imitate stacey kent's voice on the piano, which of course is impossible. still, i've got a crush sounds weird, but i love the chords. talking about chords, i find those in it don't mean a thing a little weird. i don't remember it to be that way, especially the doo-wop part. hmmm.


let me enjoy my long weekend.

finally, a break. one could sense the relief in everyone this morning when prof voon let us off after the cranial lecture, even though some of us still had ics. my group decided to go city hall for lunch at some indian restaurant, but most unfortunately only four of us could mae the trip. so only fun, rodney, greg and i took a cab to raffles city, and along the way we laughed about learning to drive. when we reached there we realised we weren't sure where the place was, but after a few phone calls and crazy turns in peninsula plaza, we eventually located the place. it had south and north indian vegetarian buffet, drinks and all for eight fifty. rodney of course took a second helping, but i couldn't. maybe because i haven't eaten anything spicy for about two weeks now, and the fact that the food was vegetarian did not help matters. i love my veg, but i can't eat vegetarian. get the difference?! anyhow, we quibbled over whether the buttermilk fun helped herself to was actually meant for drinking since it tasted weird, and a check with the waitress revealed that buttermilk is actually good for digestion. hmmm.


after lunch rodney left, and the three of us headed to the esplanade to explore the library. read a bit of the x-files sixth season guide (gosh, do i miss the show and i was pleasantly surprised at some good news) and flipped through the shooting scripts to fight the future and house of mirth. later fun and i went to search for scores, and we turned up quite a number. i also met kelvin who was doing his own search, but uh, i think i forgot about him when fun produced the jazz scores. oops. managed to photocopy it don't mean a thing,s'wonderful,come fly with me,she and fly me to the moon. i zapped rhapsody in blue as well, and i shall attempt to learn it over the next few days. looks hard.


when i reached home i just collapsed on my bed and slept for the next hour till it was dinner. it felt so good to sleep. i'm trying to make it a point to sleep before midnight nowadays and to do my mugging in the day, otherwise i'll look like some zombie or an extra from the x files.

went for the king edward hall play last night. met up with js and greg at funan mall for dinner at pasta mania. fun and oy were supposed to have joined us, but they went awol. -big grin- anyway, we all got a macs ice-cream each and consumed it on the way to victoria theater. as i predicted, we were only finishing the ice-cream when we reached the theater. at the entrance, js realised his ticket was with fun, so greg and i went up to reserve some seats first while he waited. they came in the nick of time, just before the guest of honour arrived. didn't know dr balaji was an ex-ke boy, and that he was in the hall play thirty years ago, and later married the director of the play! nice romantic story, fitting since the play was a modern take on shakespeare's romeo and juliet. story was weird but hilarious, and despite the occasional lame jokes and the unintelligible accents, the play was a great effort and a success. especially the sets. yay, joanna!


went home with dave, greg and suz. maybe i was drunk on the white wine pasta mania put in the dish, but i kept glaberring on and on. and for the first time in a while, i was truly happy, relaxed, and at peace with myself. i giggled when i saw a man sitting opposite me on the train falling asleep on the guy next to him, my mind hummed from the countless tunes in my head. a truly delightful feeling.

new layout, new beginning. no more crappy posts about my life and its intricacies. from now on, it's gonna be down to earth. serious. thoughtful.


let's hope i'll have the time to think.

and i love prof raj. he's just so funny and crazy and for a man of his age(no offense intended!) he's just incredibly witty and light-hearted. he makes the head and neck so fun to study. all the muscles with the crazy latin names like levator labii superioris alaequi nasi which is between the upper lip(labii superioris) and the wing of your nose(alaequi nasi). like he predicted, we all groaned when we heard the name.


just very glad that i've got nice profs in med, just like those in jc. they make learning so much more fun, and you can see the enthusiasm and joy in teaching anatomy. no wonder prof ling's so proud of his department.

the end of the first week of sem two. disappointing start, which later became a little more interesting. i'm beginning to pick up the mugger-ish mood, which is good, because this doesn't stress me out, it just exhausts me. fell asleep over guyton just now in the library, and when i awoke i realized i had become so cold that my feet were freezing so i had to move to the science foyer. maybe because i was late in getting to the library after the medsoc welfare sale, but the whole first floor was taken up, first time i've seen it that way this week.


going for the ke hall play tomorrow at victoria theater with the anat people. it's so weird how they managed to sell off all the tickets when they thought the sales was bad. so now several people won't get to go. so so weird. then again, the uni's so huge, a few hundred seats shouldn't be a problem.


twelve more weeks to the first pros.

it's noon and i'm in the library. can't believe it. i've never ended this early before, or rather everyone would have dawdled over lunch and hung around before reluctantly admitting the need to study. what the hell. seven weeks left,


there's so much i've wanted to say. like on monday. i can say what i like, think what i like, but when presented with the situation i can't help myself. especially now that it's been five years since. i keep asking myself, what happened? i can't put it to words, though it was something that became very apparent three years ago. -shrug- again, my post won't make sense to anyone who has known me only afer secondary school.


it's time to get back to renal physio.

well well, i'm part of the one third who failed. well done girl. it wasn't by much, but still, officially i failed, and my parents have started breathing down my neck. zig, guess there's some benefits of being far away from home. no one to nag nag nag. guess i'm fed up. i might be knowing my work a lot better this sem compared to the last, but there's something still not right. oh hell, it's only the third day of school.

five days to the start of school. yippee. five days to the start of the crazy term, eight teaching weeks, major ca, one month of revision, then first professionals. no one, i repeat, no one else has an eight week teaching term.


and the physio results are up, but i don't want to travel across the island just to see my (very probably demoralizing) marks. in any case one-third of the class failed, if the rumors are to be believed. which means that i have a thirty-three point three three three chance of failing. fantastic. what better way to start a new term?