Breaking News: pULSE!

everyone, take a look at the new pULSE website!! having worked on the earlier, printed versions during my first two years of med school, i'm excited and proud to witness this new development. it's for both graduates and undergraduates alike, so if you want an article published or just want to give feedback, drop the team an email!

three cheers for the juniors!

Of Many Things

it's been a hectic three weeks. had a query cauda equina syndrome that got everyone excited a bit, but which was later diagnosed to be a pid (mri showed nothing, loss of bladder control attributed to some gynaecological cause). second night call wasn't as good as the first, but we found a budding professor in one of the housemen, so at least we learnt something. then in the last days of our formal posting period, we found that one of the textbooks that we have been using contains the wrong information about certain things, which makes my mind reel since no one has ever told us this. and to think it's one of our "standard" texts!

sometime in this three weeks they managed to slot in a visit to the cerebral palsy centre as well as an afternoon in the paediatric ortho clinic. cerebral palsy has an incidence of about 0.1% a year, so it's quite gratifying to see a whole complex dedicated to their needs. the centre houses a school and a sheltered workshop, and on the day we visited, the children were preparing for a school trip to the airport. really glad to have had the chance to have a look at the place, and at least one colleague signed up on the spot to be a volunteer. heh.

performed in my first dance recital on saturday and it was over in a flash. three minutes summed up weeks of practices and late scramble for costumes. then it was over, and we went to the back of the auditorium to watch the rest of the groups. there were a couple of indian dances, one of which was very bollywood and very good, and a fantastic lyrical jazz item put up by a university group. so after i'm done with my jazz exam in june, i shall have pointe and lyrical jazz to dream about.

i've recently been sucked into the vortex that is facebook. it all started because i wanted to keep in contact with a cousin overseas, now it's become a past time. argh. the good thing is that i've found people from primary and secondary school whom i haven't heard from for the longest time. besides, it's fun to be part of a group like "Wikipedia is helping me get through med school!" good, brainless fun.

it's electives planning period and everyone is trying to approach tutors all over the island. and there's this conspiracy theory about a certain rotation in a certain hospital that's driving me nuts. right now, all my plans hinge on this theory. if it's true, then all my elective plans will come crashing down. ouch.

i had my ortho clinical test today. better than i expected, and i'm glad to have it out of the way. now to focus on the theory test on friday...and after that, pirates!! yay!

and to think my celebrations already started this afternoon when i went to my neighbourhood mall and bought myself a new bag. haha.

Of Birthdays And Night Calls

the cg celebrated mother goose's 22nd birthday on friday. dinner was at crystal jade korean bbq and because we booked early we got a whole room to ourselves. private room = crazy antics and conversations not to be repeated outside the room. heh.

after the food we took out the cake:

looks nice -- and it certainly was a most delicious chocolate cake, but not before the guys took over the cutting and totally destroyed it :

makes you wonder why there are so many guys in surgery.

anyhoo, it was a great night. we wanted to go up to the rooftop garden at lido, and spent a great deal of time going up elevators and ending up in creepy parts of shaw tower. those places are perfect locations to film horror movies, and the dingy lift landing was reminiscent of the movie dark water. in the end, we were told by the security guard the place was closed in the night, so we went home.

the next day was saturday, and i was scheduled to do night duty. thought i was late because the traffic was literally crawling on the highway, but when i arrived, there was scarcely anything happening in the wards. had a nice talk with the housemen on call and helped to take some bloods. i must say that my blood-taking skills have improved greatly, and oddly enough because of my gp posting where i drew numerous blood samples for the maid checkups. no spectacular cases, only a pid and a likely pathological fracture of the distal femur. we stayed past midnight to watch the nurse set up a thomas' splint on the second patient, so i would say it was quite a good night call (especially with the two funny housemen) although i was appalled to see my name up on the board under "doctors on call". the list started with "consultant" and ended at "medical students". pretty scary, so it was fortunate that no one really noticed it. heh.

Of Fake Lattes and Rolling Rolls

what a day.

woke up this morning feeling as if i hadn't slept a wink at all, and it was such a struggle to drag myself out of bed. when i reached the western hospital, i was ready to go home (and to think that mother goose had given me a ride), so i went to 7 eleven to get a can of coffee before trudging up to the seminar room where we have our orthopaedic lectures. i sank into the cushioned seat with a sigh, opened the can, and gratefully drank a sip of...

milk.

it says "iced latte" on the can, so i've got no idea why there's only milk. checked the list of ingredients and sure enough there was not an ounce of coffee in it. i had to go the morning without a caffeine boost, and sat through the lectures like a stupefied duck. ugh. i only regained full consciousness after a lunch of chicken rice and iced mocha, which was one of the better meals i've had at the western hospital's kopitiam.

then later, on my way home from the train station, i dropped by cold storage to get tissue rolls. i picked up the packet on the top of the pile, and began to walk towards the cashier. i felt the load getting lighter as i walked, so i looked down and saw a trail of tissue rolls on the floor and a bemused old lady looking at me. it probably looked like those charlie chaplin shows, where the tyres of the car detach one at a time and roll away, leaving only the chasis of the car. haha.

some new, exciting stuff is coming my way, and if everything goes as planned they'll start in july when i'm doing paeds. will need to prioritise, but oh how tempting it is to take on all of them! i'll blog about them more when the details are confirmed. heh.

Spiderman, OSCEs and Trains

we had our mid-posting ortho theory test on thursday, which was horrendous, given the crazy mcqs and white-as-chalk x-rays that we had to interpret. all of us had spent the past few days cramming the past year mcqs even though sometimes we barely knew what we were reading. we even had a straw poll right before the test (courtesy of our friendly class rep) to see who agreed that psoriatic arthritis causes tufting of the distal phalanx!

but nothing could prepare us the x rays. the first slide was a lateral view of a knee joint, so we all stared hard at it...and stared and stared. it looked like a perfectly normal knee joint! i took a quick glance around the room, and not a single soul was writing. everyone was looking at the screens, pen in their hands at the ready - but no one was writing. hilarious. only when the time was running out (we were given 3 minutes per question) did everyone start scribbling furiously. i could think of nothing other than to declare it to be a patella fracture with effusion (the patella was clearly separated from the femur) and listed a meniscus tear as the possible associated injuries. turns out it was a torn posterior cruciate. -groans-

generally the x rays shown were over exposed, so what we saw above the druj was just an area of white instead of the carpal bones, and a pelvic xray was just a mass of white with the posteriorly dislocated femur as a faint line transecting the milky way. i'm kinda exaggerating here i know, but oh man, the xrays on centricity are so much clearer, why couldn't those be used?! oh wells, at least i identified half of them correctly (colles, physeal fracture, posterior dislocation) but my mcq section is definitely going to bomb big time.

to let off steam my cg went to catch spider man 3 at cineleisure. i must first state that my expectations of this third installment were quite high, since the first two were so good and there will probably not be a fourth movie, hence i was a little disappointed. i shan't reveal too much of the plot here, but suffice to say that the plot revolves around revenge, and how revenge makes us turn ugly and seek powers we can't control. in the end, the characters learn to forgive and let go, and...well, i don't exactly know what happens to pete and mj. heh.

tobey maguire and kirsten dunst are excellent as the leads, and so are the supporting cast of james franco (new goblin/harry osborn) and topher grace (venom/eddie brock). thomas haden church takes on the rather dull role of sandman (he was fabulous in sideways) and bruce campbell has a bit part as the hilarious maitre d'. spidey 3 has magnificent cgi which probably explains the hefty US$250 million price tag. the stories were a little too loosely put together in my opinion, and i expected something darker after having watched the trailers. but a spidey fan would not complain, since the film has enough rough and tumble to keep the momentum going for two whole hours. my verdict: 4 out of 5.

this week also saw the change over of the house officers, and it's crazy to see the seniors i've known since they were fourth years worrying about the patho exam now running after the consultants during ward rounds. it's even crazier to see the ex-housemen running their own clinics as medical officers. time really zips by, and in no time, it'll be my turn. no wonder someone told us it's not too early to think of what to do after graduation. hmm.

and to round off an exciting mid posting period, i was caught once again in a train disruption on friday night, this time from harbour front to dhoby gaut. we were first told to take the free shuttle buses (and the station staff didn't even know where they would bring us!) before hearing the announcements that train services had resumed but that we had to get to dhoby gaut via the east-west and north-south line. took me over an hour to get home. i've resigned myself to the fate of the londoners, where numerous signs are posted outside tube stations stating the line and station closures for the day, and even disruption maps and updates on the main website!

wells, let there be no more disruptions for the rest of the year! i shall take a break this weekend before i continue my ortho posting at the western hospital. can't wait for the hols to come!