i give up

i'm having the flu but i'm worried that my constant sneezing and coughing will irritate my next door neighbour

what is wrong with me?!?!?!?!

medical students can get a bit ahead of themselves sometimes.
today, my group had to take a respiratory history from a SP (simulated patient). A student asked "Do you have a temperature?"
After everything was over, the person overseeing the whole thing asked that student, "What is a temperature?"
The student was dumbfounded.
The other person explained that sometimes your patient might not get simple phrases that we take for granted. So she asked him to rephrase the question
"Do you have a fever?"
"What is a fever?"
"Erm.. do you feel hot?"
"That's subjective"
So she said you can ask if the patient feel any chills or ask if they find they have to change their nighties (sweating).

after that, the student was complaining. he said "who wouldn't know what a temperature is?? even a 5 year old would know that"

Sorry dude... I really wanted to tell him that it seriously depends on which part of the world you come from. With the massive amounts of people moving around the world, we can never take for granted who can come walking into our consultation room (or whose bed we come walking to). It can be a foreigner where English is a 2nd or 3rd language. But I kept it to myself as usual. Imagine asking that in a ward in Malaysia. I can guarantee not everyone will understand.
I had to explain what alcohol was to the orang asli in Hospital Gombak. Imagine that.

Riding the train back from Bradford today, I was rushing to catch the train. As I was going in, a man came out to notify the conductor that he saw a red handbag lying on the floor of the platform. I went to an empty seat an peered out- there it was, just underneath the bench. Whoever who left it there must hv placed her handbag on the floor while waiting for the train. The conductor informed the station staff, a burley guy, who then picked up the bag. The train driver made an announcement over the speakers, asking if anyone left their red  handbag on the platform. A woman frantically came out and the bag was returned to her ( the station staff was probably asking her to be more careful since the handbag also contained her metro card. Without it, she probably couldn't have travel)

In Malaysia.... The story would be completely different.

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Simple English. I don't think I'm an expert in English. I use "lah" "mah" "yah" etc. My sentence structure is less than desirable. I've uttered sentences where I feel like kicking myself later cause the grammar is so atrocious. This is worse coming to a country where English is a first language. Acceptable English standards is no longer accepted. Then there's the local slang n accents. Then I realize, what they speak here is British English. Their usage of certain slangs is their vernacular. I speak Malaysian English. I have no reason to feel embarrassed by my accent. It's my vernacular.

Ok... I got side tracked. Malaysians all have different levels of english proficiency. Some are quite bad, and some are really good. In uk, i still hear very bad grammar which still pains me. Joanne will understand my pain. Ahahahaha.

But what can I say right? I can't speak Chinese. The ones that aren't proficient in english usually can speak other languages better. So, gah....
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Feels like i'm a total dumbo. Mistakes after mistakes. Went in late, let an elderly demented patient out, didn't help the nurse, forgot to wash hands after drawing blood(c. d. pt summore) + I didn't even get any blood after stabbing her twice. pretty damn stressed. Hoping for the best.
Waiting to observe a peg procedure now. Basically a feeding tube that goes straight to the stomach through the skin.

And.. Strange observation but there are a lot of Filipino nurses in the ward.


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ok. waking up with a smile obviously didn't happen. I woke up with more like... a groan. And snooze my alarm for another 15 minutes before I realize I probably would miss the bus/train to Bradford if I didn't get up then.
Oh yes... for those of you uninformed, since I'm so terrible in updating my blog, I'm on Elderly Medicine rotation now in a place called Bradford. Still in Yorkshire (which is still in UK. ahhahaa, dang) I was supposed to get an accommodation there but due to some email screw up, my mail didn't get sent through, I wasn't allocated a place, so I have to travel to and fro everyday. The best part is.... ALL MY GROUPMATES HAS AN ACCOMMODATION. That's like... coincidence of the century since only 16 rooms were allocated to a batch of 30-ish students doing their placements in Bradford. And out of that 30 students (all groups has 6 students each i think), my group is the only group where 5/6 got an accommodation. Me being the unlucky one. gahhhh.
Lucky I have a friend to travel with. Makes the travel pass faster.
So everyday, I have to get up at 6.45am
Get ready, eat breakfast, have my morning coffee (yummm... cappucino.. thank god for tesco's half price sales) and leave my accommodation by 7.30am
Get the bus outside my accommodation to the rail station to catch the train to Bradford leaving at 8.08am.
20 mins train journey, then walk to the connecting bus station to catch the bus to Bradford Royal Infirmary. This has to be done in sequence cause if the train is delayed by 2-3 minutes, i would miss this bus and have to wait for another 10 minutes for the next one.
Then if everything goes well.. I reach the hospital at 8.50am. Just enough time to dump everything in the lockers and walk to the ward.
So today I had some free time and I managed to get a history (although I was secretly hoping to get glucometer signed off and cannulas but no such luck for me. again... for those who are blur: we're given what we call "the blue book" [for obvious reasons... the cover is blue. med students are such creative ppl]. It's officially called "The Basics Skills and Practical Workbook" and we have to get little things (cannulas, venepuncture, taking a history, doing examination, etc etc) signed off by nurses, doctors, etc). I didn't really help save the world as I was hoping with the butterfly effect. In fact... I may have caused that particular patient a delay in discharge. Opps. Only towards the end the guy kindly told me that his son was waiting. I felt so horrible for keeping him longer in hospital. But he was a really nice guy. So hooray to nice guys in this world.

what's task 2?
hmmm...
task 2: think "I CAN DO IT" and shout it out in my loudest mental voice whenever I feel I can't.

tiny steps to joy. 

Ina garten's lemon cake modified by smitten kitchen (smittenkitchen.com) into a grapefruit cake. It has yogurt in it so texture is a bit like bread. Drizzled with concentrated grapefruit juice and sugar.

Taste verdict:
Needs more sugar. Hahaha. But otherwise quite yummy.   No wonder they recommended the glaze.i omitted it since I don't hv any icing sugar.

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reading my post from 2.5 years ago, not so long ago when i just entered imu. It's strange how i find my old self more entertaining than my current self. The post back then were made when I was less sad, less plain, less worrisome, in short, less emo. My post nowadays are more like shoutouts to show the world how miserable i am, to wallow in self pity and to complain about everything. just like some old grumpy lady. and friends have helped me get out from the rut i was stuck in (big random thank you to joanne, sabby, kaye, xx, siao chen, morgan and countless others for cheering me up last time or just lending an ear). and i'm back here, complaining about the same things. i would hate to be my friend. ahahahahhahahaa.

so... task 1 tomorrow: wake up with a smile, think positive, believe that you're making a difference (the butterfly effect isn't all chaos- perhaps by me taking a history from the little old lady, she forgets about her pain for a minute or so [ok.. i'm lying. i can't take history that fast. more like 30-40 minutes for a full history and a few extra minutes due to my inability to stop them from talking about their pets and neighbours] and because of that she doesn't complains of pain to the already tired nurse who then doesn't make life hell for the junior doctors, making their day happier so they can make better informed decisions and thus lives saved. see... such wonderful effects)

i'll update to let you guys know if task 1 was a success. also makes me update more often. and you guys will notice i can blog from my phone now. so yay! more frequent and random thoughts coming your way. perhaps i should just succumb to media pressures and get a twitter account. tweet tweet. 

Whoa. It did appear. Testing the image fxn now. Picture of a garden I normally pass by when I walk back fr Leeds general hospital. Before this is was devoid of colours. Just the hardy grass n dead looking trees with bare branches. Now it looks like it's going to be pretty! Imagine flowers in full bloom and trees with plentiful leaves. Few more months now. Can't wait

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Hmmm... Will this appear? Testing blogging functionality fr my phone. I'm such an attention deprived child :-S

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