Beautiful morning dew (taken in July 2010)

May 25, 2011

The thing about life that I've learned is that you're going to get hurt.
You're going to have emotional nights and cry yourself to sleep for hours.
You're going to suffer some kind of loss.
But you will also have those moments where you heal.
Those moments are the best.
You feel like you smile for the first time again.
You feel like you're alive again.
Life just kind of restarts.

Taken from:

May 22, 2011

I love it when I discover an amazing song through a TV show

This is from CSI NY's season 7 finale. It's a song by Ross Copperman called Holding On and Letting Go. I think the lyrics are amazing and perfectly describes how I am feeling lately:

Sometimes we're holding angels,
And we never even know
Don't know if we'll make it,
Or we know, we just can't let it show

It's everything you wanted, it's everything you don't
It's one door swinging open and one door swinging closed
Some prayers find an answer, some prayers never know
We're holding on and letting go

May 19, 2011

Versatility of medicine

For this week's respiratory medicine lecture, we looked at the effects of diving and climbing mountains (or living in high altitudes) on the human body - mainly on the lungs. For our guided learning session, we watched a series of videos chronicling emergency doctors working at Mount Everest Base Camps called Everest ER which I thought was pretty damn cool. You should totes check it out if you get the chance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktxzw1JLYO0&feature=player_detailpage

How versatile is medicine?!

May 9, 2011

LOL, of course only my respiratory physiologist professor would have such an EPIC excuse

This is what transpired in our respiratory medicine lecture today:

Dan (raises hand in class): "Sorry this might seem anal but did you mean 26-27 weeks and not 27-28 weeks?"
Respiratory physiologist professor: "Yes that's what I meant. Sorry I didn't get enough sleep last night, I was busy
sucking fluids out of my turtle- it had a pneumothorax...yes, I lead such an interesting life"

Boy did that make my day.

May 8, 2011

We keep running after people who least care about us, why don't we just stop, turn around and see the ones running behind us?

This is such a powerful notion that's very true.

April 26, 2011

Body of Proof is a cool TV show!

It translates to: "This is the place where death delights to help the living."
Every person has something to teach us, and we never stop learning- even in death. I love it when I learn something new from watching TV shows.

April 25, 2011

Happy Anzac Day!

Townsville's Anzac Day Parade
Perfect weather at the Strand + gelato right after watching the parade = awesome way to spend the morning. I love Australia. Alright, now that I'm back in my room and changed into my favourite yoga pants/plaid pjs thingamajig, I'm delving back into Hematology and Renal Medicine. HAPPY ANZAC DAY!


April 21, 2011

Best quote ever!

So I was sitting at lunch today chatting with Delara,
Me: "I've learned to accept that I probably won't be having real fun until the end of November..."
Del: "Yeah...when I think about how much fun I'm not having, I think of my parents. They NEVER have fun"
SO TRUE. LOLLL I love my friends.

April 20, 2011

I can't believe I forgot how awesome medicine is!

Today was possibly the longest day of classes I've ever had in a long while. I had
8am-11am Respiratory medicine GLS
11-12pm Hematology and Renal medicine lecture
12-1pm Respiratory medicine lecture
2-430pm Rural, Remote, Tropical & Indigenous Health GLS
5pm-815pm GPSN Suturing & Plastering Workshop (not a mandatory session but I decided to go because I wanted to
do be able to do some suturing and plastering in my mid year placement in Emerald)

Holy shit right? I admit I have been feeling a little stressed over the this year compared to last year. It just felt like the work was neverending that I've lost my enthusiasm for learning new things. Funny enough though, after today's epically long and tiring day, I think I've finally got my groove back on. It definitely had to do with the suturing and plastering workshop. We got to practice suturing on a pig's trotters and did plastering on each other. For the suturing workshop there were 5th & 6th year med students, a registrar and some doctors who helped out. The pig's skin was a bit tough to penetrate but I think I've finally gotten the hang of it. For the plastering bit, there were 2 orthopedic technicians who worked at Townsville hospital who helped out. It was really cool and got me all excited for medicine in general.

The sutures that I did:
The plaster my friend did on me: (I got plaster all over my bb trying to get it out to get a picture of us)
So yeah, I can't believe I forgot how awesome medicine is!

February 9, 2011

January 31, 2011

This is definitely one of my future wedding songs

He sings with so much emotion this live version gives me the shivers.


You Make It Real- James Morrison
There's so much craziness surrounding me,
There's so much going on it gets hard to breath
When all my faith has gone you bring it back to me,
You make it real for me


Well I'm not sure of my priorities,
I've lost sight of where im meant to be
And like holy water washing over me,
You make it real for me


And I am running to you baby,
You are the only one who saves me
That's why I've been missing you lately,
'Cause you make it real for me


When my head is strong, but my heart is weak,
I'm full of arrogance and uncertainty
When I can't find the words, you teach my heart to speak,
You make it real for me


And I am running to you baby,
You are the only one who saves me
That's why I've been missing you lately,
'Cause you make it real for me


Everybody's talking in words I don't understand,
You got to be the only one, who knows just who I am
And you're shining in the distance,
I hope I can make it through
Cause the only place that I want to be is right back home with you

January 28, 2011

Reflections on my 2 week Queensland Ambulance placement

I did my 2 week end of year placement with Townsville’s Hugh Street Queensland Ambulance. I rode along with 2 advanced care paramedics. I did 2 lines (lol doing lines make me sound like I’m doing coke) with them – basically 4 back to back 10 hour shifts with a 2 or 3 day break (can’t remember if it was 2 or 3) followed with a 4 back to back 12 hour shifts. The 2 paramedics I worked with worked very well together, were laidback and were very approachable individuals which greatly helped my learning as I never hesitated to ask any questions.

One thing that really resonated with me was their excellent bedside manners no matter what hour of the shift it was (boy oh boy, the 12 hour shifts were pretty brutal especially during the wee hours of the morning- I did fall asleep at one of the chairs while waiting for the patient to be admitted to ED and one of the paramedics got a snapshot of me doing this...very professional, of me I know). Be it infants, middle aged or older aged individuals of the same/ different race or gender, they were able to connect on a level with them for them to give them the sort of trust such the patients felt comforted. At the same time, the paramedics could also get a good medical history.

During these 2 weeks, I mainly observed though I got to auscultate a patient. That’s the extent of “clinical skills” I got to do. Taking blood pressure manually was out of the question since they carried automatic bp cuffs and I was completely fine with that. I was told to cannulate but I wasn’t trained to do so, so I graciously refused. Despite just observing though, I learned a wealth of knowledge with regards to ECGs, types of drugs administered and the methods by which they are administered that affected the drug efficacy. Some cool things I learned that I can’t wait to practice (who wants to be my pretend patient?!?!)

- For cannulating patients, you have to start in the distal arm before trying it in the cubital fossa

- I learned how to find a good vein to cannulate properly and how to cannulate patients in a bumpy vehicle (it requires some skills for sure!)

- For psychiatric patients, you can directly ask them bluntly if they wanted to commit suicide and expect them to give you an honest answer (how about that for not beating around the bush?)

- They can administer oral glucose (glucagon), glucose via IV or via intramuscular injection (which I thought was pretty cool because when I was volunteering on SERT we only carried oral glucose)

- Patients with angina are usually prescribed with beta blocker drugs that help lower their heart rate, so when these patients are administered GTN (glycerol trinitrate) without having their blood pressures checked (uh-oh! Bad news bears), their heart cannot compensate the loss in blood pressure

- They administer various pain relief medications:

o Methoxyflurane (inhaled analgesic)

o Morphine sulphate (injected analgesic)- this one has stronger side effects like vomiting and nausea

§ It also lowers blood pressure so you’ve got to be careful if you wanted to use them in patients who just used GTN aka nitroglycerin

- Other than learn cool things, I got to visit quite interesting places. I got to see the inside of a holding cell at a police station, went and treated a prisoner (to be honest I was a little scared haha), got to visit Palleranda Beach. I definitely got to see more of the things I don’t see on a daily basis (i.e domestic violence/ assault). The one thing I wished I got to treat and didn’t get to treat was a drunken disorderly. I thought it would be fun since it would remind me of SERT and responding to all those drunk students saying gibberish and remembering, at one point in my life, I was like that.

In 1st year of med we learned about interprofessional relations multiple times between healthcare professionals and it was during this placement that I saw it in play firsthand (between the triage nurse, the ED nurses, paramedics and the ED doctors and you could say the cops as well). The handover of patients to the triage nurse at the emergency department had to be concise. The paramedics had to paint an accurate picture and how significantly it affected patient care outcomes.

The most memorable activity that I undertook was transferring a patient to the Royal Flying Doctor Service. This patient was being sent home for pallialitive care. His partner was very emotional and I was also getting very emotional as well as she started talking about her children and how hard it was to lose the father of her children. I decided to steer the conversation away from her dying husband and got her to talk about her children and her future aspirations of them. This particular case was so memorable to me because I was moved to tears by a stranger (though I tried very hard to hide it) and felt her pain and felt honoured in a strange way that I got to spend the last few days of his life with him. What was also heartbreaking was the fact that the paramedics had told me that her husband might not even make it through the night due to his deteriorating condition and her not knowing it, but at the same time, me feeling like it wasn’t my place to be telling her that for fear of making her feel more devastated. In a way, I felt helpless. The bright side of things were that he had one of the most aggressive type of brain tumour and had 2/1/2 years of healthy life despite being only given 8 months to live. (I’ve changed the number of years and months to preserve confidentiality)

That’s the beauty of the healthcare profession. You see people on their worst days and at their most vulnerable and you hope that somehow you’ve helped in some way or another and though sometimes you’ll know, other times you’ll never know. I think what’s most important is that you did your best with the knowledge that you have.

How Your Friends' Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think and Do!

I started reading Connected: The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler but couldn't be bothered to finish the book, so I went to their website and downloaded their powerpoint slides summary (I know, shame on me for being so lazy). Technically I've "read" the book now that I know most of the main points so you've got to give me some credit here. Anyways, here are some of the more interesting points that I learned about social networks from this book that I would like to share:

1. We have more control over our social networks than we think:

- we determine the structure of it (how many people we are connected to)

- we influence the density of the interconnections between our family and friends (introducing friends from separate groups to the other)

We control how central we are within our network

2. Our actions’ influence ripples through the network via 3 degrees – you are affected by others you don’t even know!

- The influence disappears after 3 degrees because of

o Intrinsic decay due to the information being corrupted

o Network instability- social ties become unstable at 4+ degrees

o Evolutionary purposes- us evolving in small groups

3. A person is 15% more likely to be happy if directly connected to a happy person

- At 2 degrees, 10% more likely to be happy

- At 3 degrees, 6% more likely to be happy

And each unhappy friend decreases the likelihood of happiness by 7% (Quick, defriend that negative unhappy individual who insisted on being your facebook friend! Haha I kid) J

4. Long term happiness is affected by

- 50% genes ß so we have a set point for personal happiness that’s influenced by our genes

- 10% circumstances

- 40% attitude

5. Most future partners are 2-3 degrees removed from one another

The interesting thing is: The National Survey of Health and Social Life or “Chicago Sex Survey” reveals:

68% of people were introduced to their spouse by a common acquaintance

32% met via “self-introduction”

6. People care more about their relative standing rather than their absolute standing in the world

- In fact, in an experiment testing the relative standing phenomenon in the workplace:

- “The majority of people involved said they would rather earn a $33,000 salary with everyone else getting $30,000 than earn $35,000 and have fellow colleagues earn $38,000”

7. Social networks affect relationships by

- Influence opinions and perceptions

- Dictate our position in the network

- For example, we have indirect mate choice: the tendency to choose a partner based on what others value

8. Your Friends’ Friends Can Make You Fat

Wow, I didn’t know how much of an influence social networks could have! The joys of learning something new everyday J I love life. Also, I just accompanied my mom to pick my sister up from starbucks and was too lazy to take off my winter coat. I do look like a turtle poking its head from its shell. It's super attractive I know...