Closure for the unspoken business

Gosh...it has been nine years since my last post! Reading through my old posts makes me reminisce about the good old days when the ultimate stress is passing the exams.

Nine years on...I am still facing the ultimate stress of exams (but actually appreciating the importance of it) and the stress of making the 'right' decision for God's most precious possession in the world...human's life. Some decisions are easy with no big consequence, like antibiotics, fluids, antihistamine. But some came with big consequence, like thrombolytics, chemotherapy, etc. There are so many stories from every person that I have encountered. How I wish I have recorded all of them as everyone has a unique story to tell.

I want to record this story of a man that has moved my heart. **Some of the details will be omitted for confidentiality**.

He has acute myeloid leukemia. He is a bit of a recluse and has been estranged from his family. But I really like him. Despite his unique personality, he has a quirky sense of humor and that 'loner vibe' which makes you want to pour out extra compassion on him. He sailed through two courses of chemotherapy with not a single complaint or infection. The only issue that he ever raised is a guarantee for a single room. Well, he is a bit of a recluse so that is understandable. He did not have any visitors or support person throughout the entire stay in the hospital but he is the most well person in our ward.

On his third course of chemotherapy, he developed 'THE flu' - influenza pneumonia.  He became rapidly unwell with respiratory failure. It was decided that he was not for ICU or intubation (don't ask why, there is a valid reason behind this). We tried the maximum non-invasive ventilatory support for him but watching him gasping for every single breath was heart-breaking. I knew there is nothing else we could do and he is just reaching the end.

I picked up the phone and called his son. He lives a few hours away. I told him his dad is not going to make it to the morning. There was a silence, then an uproar, then a stifled voice: "How long?".

"Not very long. His is tiring out," I said.

"Can you tell my dad that I called and to wait for me? I am coming."

"Yes. I will."

I went to my struggling patient. The tip of his nose is blue. I told him "Your son called and he wants you to wait for him."... and I added, "He said he loves you."

He rolled his eyes as if to say 'whatever' in his quirky way. He could hardly say a word now. But there were tears at the corner of his eyes. I charted a few 'comfort medication' and told the nurse: "Make sure he is not in too much distress. His son will arrive in a few hours." That was the end of my shift.

I arrived the next morning. His name was no longer on our list. I read the notes to see if the son make it. He did.

"He passed away peacefully in the presence of his son."

Mission accomplished. Although the ultimate goal is to keep him alive and cure his leukemia, in reality, that does not always happen. When I knew he is not going to make it, my mission is to reunite him with his son. I don't know what had happened to him in the past that he chose to withdraw to himself and it is not my business to know anyway, but a father always loves his son, and he needed to know that his son cares about him too.

P.S. Get your annual flu vaccination. Influenza infection is no joke. It can kill even a healthy 20-year-old.

This is embarrassing.

Police had seized 6 million worth of methamphetamine carried by 4 Japanese. All four had traveled from Malaysia via Sydney. Police and customs believed they had identified a significant methamphetamine importing operation with links to Malaysia.

How many years have we battled against dadah? I remembered the dadah campaign back in primary school...and now it has make itself onto the headlines of other country.

Yalah, makan rasuah lagi.

going crazy with monotonous secretarial job

>____< '''''''''''''''

Tons and tons of data processing.
No wonder they hired student to do it.

Gonna lose all my hair at the end of this...
Or maybe ending up in psych ward...

Maybe naruto can save me, yes, time for naruto!

Exam's over three days ago but my battery is even flatter than during exams.

Class dinner was fun because I get to see the usual hard outs loosen themselves. And inviting lecturers and deans to students' pure social class dinner is a bad idea. After a few glasses, some students even told off lecturers for setting such ridiculous 'shitty' questions. Funny thing is one of the lecturer was actually a bit tipsy and he kept saying to every students "you are such a diligent student, I'm impressed." I was sitting beside the table full of 'powerful' people and have to suppress my laughter after watching all sorts of funny drama generated under the influence of alcohol.

Anyway, after dinner, we went to Karaoke. Having the history of failing every singing sessions in royal board of piano exams, you could imagine how off tuned I was especially with mic which tends to amplify the eekiness. Apart from that, listening to friends rapping Jay Chow's songs after songs (and trying to mimic his dysarthric singing) is very fun.

Next day, Yoomi came around so we went shopping and end up buying nothing, zeepers. And you would never believe what I did. I went to 'club crawl' with friends. People often associate club with alcohol, flirting and dirty dancing. But mind you, we are a bunch of 'geeky weirdo' that don't drink and the only reason we went to town is because we want to utilise their dance floor to dance. To prove how geeky we were, we even created dance moves associated with different neurological disorders including one of our signature hemiballismus. Sure, there were other not so drunk people who looked at us as if we were a bunch of ultimate geeks. But that's the fun of it. When we got sick of one club, we jumped to another and checked out their dance floor and the music. I even managed to learn basic ceroc other than our crazy dermatomes and myotomes ataxic dance. We visited 5 clubs all together. It's real fun to hang out with friends who do not drink( so that you don't have to babysit anybody) and just dance for the joy of dancing.

Today, Steph came to visit so we did a little bit of exploration around town. Had jamming session again this afternoon which was epic. Finally found a pianist for our band---Yoomi. Gosh! She's another Michelle Yeo. Any songs. Any chords. Any modulation. Any transposition. After jamming, I went to the most 'money-in-the-bin' movies of my entire life. It's supposed to be a Halloween movie surprise. I hate Halloween. It's just another reason for people to party and get drunk. And it's evil. Anyway, the only reason I went to the movie is to accompany friends. Ticket is 16 bucks and it was such a low budget film. Only four actors in the entire film and two only appeared like less than 10 minutes.

Anyway, I saw this cool as movie thriller of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. So looking forward to that.

We have cute cells

I was doing pathology practise questions and this is one of the electron micrographs that came up:



I bet Joss is pretty slick with this now after four years of memorising those crazy cellular entities. Apparently the feedback answer is "happy mitochondria within a normal cell". How cute is that. HEHE.

Drummer boy

*Drool*

I've only I could drum like him.

*Drool*

And it doesn't hurt that he is CUTE too.



Here's my second favourite MJ's song.

testimony

I have a great testimony to share with you guys!

It is something that happened recently which really put my faith to test and from this experience I learned the power of Praise and Prayer, the ultimate weapon.

Last Friday, my dad send an email telling me that my mum has a re occurrence of breast cancer. *Tips: Never jump into conclusion until confirmed by medical report.* It was the most dreadful moment as I read through the sentence over and over again, just to make sure I had not mistaken any words. I called my mum and she told me that she felt a lump at the same spot where she had the tumor excision few years ago. She went for mammogram and was still waiting for the result. It is so not true when people said studying medicine can help reduce fear because you know better medically. In fact you felt worse because you know the odds. The literature said re occurrence after local excision without LN involvement is 15% in the next five years. 15% might seemed relatively low but when you felt a lump at exactly the same spot, the human pessimistic instinct kicks in and amplifies it to 115% to the worst case scenario. My mum was optimistic however, she said it could be a fibroadenoma and she still believes that God has healed her 4 years ago. If just so happened that I came across the blog of an old friend who has lost her mum through breast cancer a few months ago. And another friend of mine who wrote on facebook how he missed his mum after she too had die from cancer few years ago. I did a few literature search on recurrence of breast cancer and most of them indicates increased risk if patient is obese and smoking, which my mum is not. I felt anger of how unfair this is, my mum tried all she can to stay healthy and yet she fall into that 15%. (Already, I am making up my mind towards that direction). That night, I have a really long talk to God (mainly the why why why). On Sunday, He gave me three words - faith, pray and praise.

"...if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." Matthew 17:20

When Paul and Silas were imprisoned, they prayed and sang hymns. Suddenly there was an earthquake and the prison doors flew open.

I started to praise God and thank Him the healing that he already has done few years ago. Today, I received the news about the report of the mammogram. Apparently the lump is a surgical scar from previous operation. See, God is telling me to have faith even as small as a mustard seed because our God is a faithful God. =)