a joke or an aftermath?

Complaints were lodged by one of the juniors’ parents in The Star:

++ Their hand phones were kept by the seniors and they were not allowed to contact their parents, family members, and friends. All these so-called orientation programmes go on until 2am or 3am, and they have to get up by am the next day. They have barely three hours of sleep and no time to do daily chores such as washing clothes. My son is not feeling well now and I am worried about his health both physically and mentally, if this continues. ++

I had been in UM medic fac for such a long time and this is the first time I heard about it.

Whose fault it is? Not the juniors, not their parents… ** One perhaps should seek out the first person who threw stones in the glass house, the individual who goes too far, the individual who disregard the ancient rules. **

will the real SMART ASS, please stand up!!

Rushing through…

Had pretty tight schedule at emergency medicine. Had another ambulance run last saturday for 2 indian fellows… drunk fellows who skidded on their motorcycle and bang into one another.

Now, currently in opthalmology aka eye posting, but having the postponed viva tomorrow. Tomorrow also going to the asian medical student’s association health checks, meeting delegates from all over asia including taiwan, japan, china, bangladesh, pakistan… all of them preclinical. My group members are See Wie, Peng Peng and Nurul Suhaiza posted at Taman Seri Manja - we will be coordinating the other delegates and start writing appropriate referral letters prn (pro re nata).

Had to train hard daily now for inter-college team in ping pong, plus becoming the team manager together with my coursemate King Chong being the superb coach. Hopefully, with blessings, will have a medal in this sport in my final year in uni.

Will the real smart ass please stand up!! Recently heard a lot of stories, real stories about smart asses among the medical personnels, and being there myself to see a smart ass in action. I start wondering: Had I ever been a smart ass before? Or will I turn into one someday in the future?

• Death of a famous female athlete, because the smart ass dr does not believe the patient,
• Death of an uncle with abdominal distension, because the smart ass dr refuse to believe the nurses,
• Unattended fracture of the ankle, because the smart ass nurse refuse to believe the misalignment of the ankle as mentioned by the passer-by.
• Increase morbidity of patient because the smart ass medical students refuse to pass the chance to illicit the ‘interesting’ signs.

Pain & suffering & death more and more is caused by smart ass people nowadays. Have you had any encounter with any smart ass lately? I believe smart asses are everywhere in every field, and they come in various level of IQ, mostly high.

In conclusion, my birthday wish for this year: Hope that I will never ever be a smart ass, and also wishes everyone I care and around me to be ’smart ass’-free.

Gonna share a few touching lines from a birthday letter to me, from my senior, a 4th year senior when I was 1st year, Dr. Lim Kai Inn, currently at Hospital JB.

It is definite important to learn facts but we don’t need a smart ass to make you doctor. Learning fact is very much different from seeing a patient, a patient that has a life like you and me.

Look around and understand your life first.

Find the truth of life, before you put your hand onto the dying body and suffering soul!

Study your book and mean times study your life as well.

P/S surprised he brought up the ’smart ass’ word. As if we had telepathic link. the letter is longer, but I shall kept the more private sides of the letter to myself for the time being.

saving lives

Trails of pilocarpine:

Still pretty stranded in Accident & Emergency department, providing orientation help guidance to the freshies…

Pretty pissed off these few days when I asked some of the questions to my juniors aka freshies. Firstly, I asked them the typical old traditional conservative question "Why do you choose medic?"

Typical bullshit nonsense answer: "to save lives"

How many lives can they actually save? If death is inevitable, how could they help the patient? How can ‘mercy‘ be matched with the word ‘killing’ when both is words carries a totally different background of meaning? I faced a silent mode.

This is Andy the ambulance. I had the honor to follow an ambulance call at A&E recently. That night, it was raining rather heavily, and none of my group members would be sane enough to go to A&E, but I just felt like going despite that rainy weather at night. I was tagged along with a superb male nurse Ah Chai. The caller identified the emergency as ‘heart attack’ at the Pasar Malam at SS2, somewhere rather near UMMC. Reaching there, I saw the man still could walk, very very weakly, limping, i guess. Very very breathless and once he summoned all his energy to get into the stretcher into the ambulance, he just collapsed with GCS around 8/15 (meaning his consciousness dropped). And there I was delivering oxygen with the face mask & Ah Chai inserting a line into the patient’s vein with the ambulance swinging wildly from left to right, acceleration with deceleration. Superb skill from Ah Chai. And he also had time to ask & tutor me about the situation. Learnt a lot. The patient was resuscitated and he SURVIVED!!! We were all extremely relieved, especially me. Whenever I heard about "to save lives", I had an urge to request a few freshies to go for the ambulance call.

Besides all the other stupid questions that me and my fellow had asked, I asked a serious question: "what is the name of the course that they are taking in UM?" 30% don’t even know the name of the course, 90% don’t know about the curriculum, 70% knows only about the basic sciences they are taking in the first year, namely anatomy, biochemistry, physiology… And they already had at least 2 introductory lectures about the NIC (new integrated curriculum) and they don’t even know that basic sciences is just 1 of the strands in NIC, together with PPD (personal & professional development) and DPHS (doctor, patient, health & society). I had doubt whether all my beloved coursemates (including juniors) knew about this. To some of them, Basic Science 90%, PPD 5%, DPHS 5% as in our exam papers.

I had a lecturer who seems to strive for excellence for his patients and always critises the inefficacy of malaysian systems. But on one occasion, he really disappointed me very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very much. There I was waiting for the elevator to go to 12th floor, 2 elderly ill looking patients in wheelchair waiting together with a few nurses. Suddenly the door to the lift opened, and as the 2 wheelchairs were heading towards the lift, out of nowhere, suddenly that ‘respected’ lecturer rushed into the lift talking some Greek with another dweeb lecturer, ignoring the 2 patients. Even the nurses paused to give way to the patients. I guess the freshies could not ’save lives’ at this moment, nevertheless the least they could do is BE CARING, BE SENSIBLE. Caring is not a word, it is an action.

Surely I wanted to yell to that 2 lecturers "I know what’s their (patients’) problems, but what YOURS!??!?". But I didn’t. Let me pass my final MBBS exam first, anything could happen in our ‘malaysian’ setting, right?

- It is the little things that we do that matter the most -

parents: who are they?

Trails of pilocarpine:

at last, back into UM again.. errrhmm… again… Orientation started, being swarmed by freshies, busy like hell in A&E, no guidance yet as Dr in charge still at holiday…

First day at A&E, and I’m on call, stayed till 2am, first time in my life, learnt to do gastric lavage, tasted the charcoal with my finger tip… did an arterial sampling from the femoral artery… participated actively assisting an intubation…

Who are the people that we identified as parents? The one who carries us so burdensomely over the 9 months? The one who wraps us up in the most precious way when we come to this world? The one who bears the duties as our protector, our healer, our educator all the time? The one we hang onto dearly during our childhood? The one we are ashamed of being with at our activities or outing during our teenage hours? The one who we sees as the big nagging machine as young adults? The one who is delirious, childish needs us around to give them diapers & help of ambulation when we are adults?

Last night, an uncle comes in to resuscitation. He was suffering and had multiple problems - his sons knew it… and they were complaining about it, rather than keeping the good spirit of taking good care of that uncle.

One nurse commented "1 bapa boleh jaga 10 anak, 10 anak tak boleh jaga 1 bapa".

First few years of life = last few years of life

1. we’re fragile, easily susceptible to disease & injury
2. we’d incontinence, too - faecal & urinary, at least before 1 1/2 years old.
3. we’re started off with innocent babbling & crying loudly during nighttime.
4. we had strange behaviour at times… correction… most of the times…
5. we needed more care & support from our loved ones more than anyone else.

The only difference is when we are small, we are on our way to accept life, (parents are always with us) and when we are old, we are on our way to accept death.

Who are we to judge our parents?

special thanx: the nurse at A&E

war of the worlds

‘War’ things so far…

1. Went to watch "War Of The Worlds" last night with my dad, sis, and her friend at MPV, Prangin. As mentioned before it was more than 10 years since my dad last watched anything in a cinema. He done a big mistake of not listening to my sister - "Wear thicker clothes, it’ll be cold". Indeed it was cold, and my dear dad end up being very very hungry post-’war’. He actually asked me whether he had to switch off handphone during the movie, and I asked him a very stupid question "do you watch with your handphone on last time?". He laughed "Where got handphone last time?".

   The movie was enjoyable, overall because it was good quality time spent together with my dad. There were several times when my dad really talk to the movie, just like the opening reminder, and inevitably I had to ‘consult’ aka "ssshh, dad"… Have to also "consult" my sister as she was also making stupid comment about all the clothes flying around after the tripod laser blast being underwear…

2. Heard about the tragic incident at London. The war between terrorist & mankind continues… Lastest stats 50 deaths and 700 injured…. - grief -
3. Went to War Museum, Batu Maung this afternoon. It was an outdoor museum, with tunnel, cannon, artillery area, torture chamber, wells, observation chamber… RM 10 was worth it definite

Let’s face it. Like it or lump it. The world is at war. War against terrorism, an invisible war by itself, which the only pain we felt in our heart currently is just plainly sympathy… not feeling the REAL pain.. Even if we imagine our KLCC(or KOMTAR) being striked by 2 aeroplanes, or our PUTRA LRT was bombed at Station University, we wouldn’t have felt a single 1% they are feeling.

This war is borderless, and (touch wood) what I had mentioned above may come true. Let us just take a brief moment of silence to think about it.

How do we face this war? Or should we wait till the real terror strikes us first…