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.