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Current weather : Sunny, -10 Celsius.

Doing: Eating instant noodles, pelmeni and cutlet + red wine.

I was watching this Thai horror movie yesterday which end up with the ghost sitting on the guy’s shoulders (looking up and around). Feeling very eerie now because I’m alone at home. Errr.. Scary.

Anyway, let’s count the amount of dead bodies I saw today in the Morph. 1, 2, 3…. I think it should be 5. Yeap, this morning was my post-mortem day for my forensic medicine cycle. Besides the eerieness when I think of yesterday’s movie, I’m actually pretty happy now.

I entered the building and the first thing that welcomes me is the smell! Smell like… dead bodies. And to tell the truth, I don’t really like the idea of seeing dead people on tables and being pushed around by personnels. For one moment I thought this whole process is going to be scary, eerie and disgusting. Everybody was pretty nervous in the waiting room.

We went into the room. Today’s victim is an skinny old man who died on the street. See, I told you, lotsa people die on the street during winter. The weather is cruel. We were quite relunctant to enter the room because there are another dead auntie lying on the other table. And it took us like 5 minutes? Or maybe less and our medical students curiosity kicks in and our hands are everywhere!

It was utterly cool to have 2 experts explaining to us what is going on, where is being cut, what is seen and we have the chance to touch and see for ourselves. The lungs was bubbling when we squeeze it and the adrenal glands are so small! But I guess the smallest ever would be the hypophysis. If he didn’t even point that out, I would thought that it was just some coagulated blood. When the scalp’s skin is over the face, I think even the most timid girl in our group felt okay and didn’t actually fainted (I was expecting that). We started with checking of internal organs, and saw cardiosclerosis, ‘fresh’ infarction and normal heart muscles in his heart (the cause of death) and then to the brain, the 12 cranial nerves and revised some signs of death on the patient.

I got blood on my arms.

But luckily my white coat is clean. LOL. (meaning no need to wash).

And it lasted for some 1 hour. I was anticipating for the chance to cut things myself but well, the teachers never initiated anything of that kind and so I kept quiet. It is end of the year! I would consider ‘not cutting other people’s body’ as a good deed this year.

If you want me to summarize today’s class, well, this is a very good experience! But I have some documents to fill up, one being the crime scene report and the other one would be the autopsy report. Hate homeworks on new year holidays.

That’s all for now. 1 last day to new year!

Forensic medicine is officially spoiling all the movie that I’m going to watch in the future. Today’s topic was about the crime scene which leads to ‘how to kill a person without leaving evidence’ to ‘bullets, guns, blood splash, how the blood splash, to where, how much and in which direction’.

My teachers (2 of them in a class discussing this) officially call us the nerd. Mind the word, it is called NERD, not GEEK. Nerd because we don’t know anything about things that usually Russian guys would know - weapons, guns, bullets. We were told to identify what a pistol and describe it. All we know is - pistol. No other words to describe that piece of metal. LACK OF WEAPON KNOWLEDGE.

LOL.

What to do. We are peace lover. Make love, not war right?

Further discussions make it clear that when you shoot somebody from the front, there shouldn’t be blood splashing out like in the movies! It is WRONG! Plus a bit knowledge on what guns do the policemen here use and why it is so. Basically quite an interesting class and tomorrow we are going to take part in post-mortem. Hopefully it is ‘quite fresh’ as the smell of pus can be very uninviting.

Adios!

Had been having my forensic medical cycle for 2 days already. The subject is interesting by itself. Before you think that forensic is all about CSI-kind of science, don’t start on that yet. There are more than meets the eye. My first class was an introduction to forensic science and started with the explanation of thanatology.

thanatology /%Tan@”tQl@dZi/ · n. the scientific study of death and practices associated with it.

Basically it talks about monocausalism (in terms of a sole cause) and conditionalism. This is very tricky actually. It is important to find out the ultimate cause of death. An easy example would be - let say a guy got shot 5 times but those bullets didn’t pierce through his heart, he died of lost of blood. So in the official documents, the ultimate cause of his death would be hemorrhagia, and the gun shots would only serve as a genesis of the cause of death.But, before I go on, an interesting question to ponder upon is why forensic medicine exist? Why is it important to know the cause of death?

Satisfaction?

A good answer would be to prevent similar incidents and to protect the Rights of human beings. The rights to find out who did this to them and who is the guilty person.

Well besides this, we also learn about all the signs and presentation of death in specific time (the way how they determine time of death) and other factors that could prolong or shorten the time of such presentation - like a dead body in the cold water or in a sauna room.

Basically these forensic medicine doctors work in 2 field. One that deal with violent death (crim or accidents) and another one with nonviolent death (disease, old age, sudden death). Post mortem can be very interesting and most of us are quite excited to lay our hands on a dead body (remind me of Grey’s anatomy).

By the way, there is this interesting question that I would like my readers to give some opinion:

For example, B got shot once at the abdomen by C. B ran away to save himself and C got scared by what he did, hide himself. B got home and tried to bandage himself. But after few hours, B died in the apartment. After post-mortem, the cause of death is due to massive blood lost.

Question:

1. Is C guilty?

2. If the judge thinks C is guilty, will he be punished more seriously compared to (let say) shooting B to death on the spot?

Today’s morning meeting was an interesting one. Lots of doctors had participated in the debate and were busy discussing about this 21 years old male who passed away last week. The diagnosis was unclear. The man got admited because of general weakness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. On examination, his BP was low and he couldn’t react to the people around him. He had a history of meningitis 10 years back. The interesting part started when he did not response to the treatment given. A few consultations had been arranged with the neurologist, gastroenterologist, pulmonologist, endocrinologist and nothing seems to work for him. A week passed without any positive dynamic despite all the treatment and he passed away few days back. The given diagnosis was - Cerebral edema, intoxication syndrome, acute gastroenterocolitis, adrenal insufficiency n so on (I forgot, let me check back and I’ll add in here).

Today was the day the result of the dissection will be known.

The report shows that there is no abnormalities found along the gastrointestinal tract. One adrenal gland can not be found while the other one is very small. Horseshoe kidney. Bullous lung, according to the prof is quite characteristic for alpha antitrypsin deficiency. The histology result will come back later on. Yet clinically there wasn’t any complaints of cough and dyspnoea. So, this is actually a case that rendered all the doctors hopeless here. Interesting.

My day continued with a lecture on Diabetes Melitus. More like matematic classes thou, counting all the way from this to that. I gotta say that I seriously admire Banting and Best for discovering/creating/synthesizing the world first insulin. In fact, the whole world is in debt with them. DM existed for more than 3500 years but it was only this 100 years that people who suffered from DM survived because of their work. It must have felt so good to know that you changed the world. =)

Wow, lots of words, write something else next time. Ciao!

[Mood - Entah apa-apa at myself]

I just got back from my tropical infections test. The questions that I got-

1. Dengue fever
2. Helminthiasis

Instead of the 3 questions that they said, there is only 3 questions on the ticket. Well, getting dengue fever for a Malaysia med student is like giving a free ticket to him like that. At least that is what I felt. Plus I consulted HUKM sifu yesterday. This question is like… free.

I was preparing the 2nd question and think that this is not hard either. Just a general overview and classification of Helminthiasis and I would be free from this test. LOL. Little that I know that the 2nd question is actually a 4 color UNO card for the teacher, meaning they could ask anything they like. LOL.

Don’t know about you all, but when I got my exam or test questions, my mind will only focus on those 2 and didn’t think about other things.

And this examiner that I got, he likes to emphasize on places that these diseases are found. And he likes his job a lot (meaning he likes to ask a lot. LOL).

I sangkut (got stuck) in 2 places when I was answering the 2nd questions. (Please don’t laugh at me if you know the answers). The questions are:

1. What are the 2 helminthiasis which is considered contagious? Answer: Enterobius Vermicularis and Heminalepis nana.
2. What kind of filiariasis that is common in Asia? Answer: Brugiosis malayi and Wuchereriosis bancrofti

I have vague memory about the first question thus I only manage to answer one of the answers. While for the 2nd question, I was even surprised that my brain suddenly got stuck and forgot what to say! These are so fundamental things. Maybe the lack of breakfast. Sigh.

Anyway, got away with a 4+ because I can’t answer well for that 2 questions. Nevermind, I deserve my 4+, padan muka.

Back at 10am, what to do next?

Ever wonder how does the Grandma looks like after reading about her for so many days already?

Tada!!! Leedwi saw her and thought she was a hospital cleaner. Actually, she is one of the oldest surgeon in the hospital. Look at all those books around her. LOL.

Feoderov with red ink pen.

Grandma always make us go back late. And this is how it looks like in the hospital when it is time for us to leave.

Grandma: Кем ты хочешь стать?
Me : Великий хирург!

Today is the last day of our class with her. Seriously, I kinda hope we don’t get her again next sem. LOL. Well, don’t even know the reason but sometimes ‘good things’ happen once and it is enough. But thanks to her I have more knowledge on cryosurgery and etc.

It is getting colder nowadays. Rained quite often in the morning as well.

Some random photos

I think I should take more pictures here and there. This is the last year I’m here and it is good to have each corners of the city photographed as memories. Hehe. Another 9 months.

we have class with grandma. Will kinda miss it! Why? Because seriously I think she put lotsa plasters and meshes on my knowledge which has holes here and there (uncompleted knowledge). LOL.

During the classes, we practically ‘imagined’ our own operation, where she would walk you through all the small details and procedure, until the suturing up of the operation wound.

Being a final year student is quite fun. I finally have access to things that I don’t have access to last time. Instead of writing a full detailed history about a patient (which is always procrastinated to the last minute), now we write diaries for the whole wad (on the spot). Instead of choosing one to talk to, we talk to all of them. And thanks to grandma who introduce us personally to them, our conversations and sessions are pleasant and happy (even thou they are suffering from something).

I passed up my 15 pages translation of cryosurgery to grandma today, which marks that I have no debts or whatsoever to her and this whole cycle.

She promised us that we would be testing it on a dog. I HOPE SHE MEAN IT! It had been like 2 years since the last time I hold the scapel (cutting at 2 cats)! (For animal-lovers, Russia have another kind of rules for this and it is allowed! And even thou we did all sorts of things on them but they will, most of the time, still be alive and healthy!)

So.. hopefully better days will come. And I’ll be smarter. Kekekeke..

Cat surgery 2 years ago…. :)

First time again..

Well.. For example.. Today is my first time 24th birthday. LOL. Oh, happy birthday to shealing as well. Same day. Hehe.. She is still single and available, anybody interested can ask for more details here later.

And, today I gotta go to class (going to class on my birthday, no big deal), and because of my birthday Nizhny don’t have class on Saturday (lucky you joethew) and today is the first day I observe cryosurgery! (how cold and cool is that!)

Grandma came in this morning after the meeting saying that she has a surgery to do. And told us to get ready a few things for her.

About the surgery, it was a case of pancreatonecrosis. Before this I read that most of the cryosurgery is used in oncology, but I think the indication is getting wider now. The operation lasted for like 4 hours. Most of the time was taken in mobilizing the omentum and duodenum. The real cryosurgery part lasted least than 10 seconds. HAHAHA..

Tissue destroyed on contact with the probe is removed by phagocytic white blood corpuscles in a natural bodily process.

During the surgery everybody seems to be shouting, not because of the tense environment or what, but all of those loud conversations were made because of our beloved ‘grandma’ who can’t listen properly. I think the younger surgeons felt stress working with her. Sometimes I really REALLY wonder whether she chose to ignore, or she just filter the conversation, or she merely has bad hearings. She has her ears inside her surgical cap all the time..

But no doubt, during her younger years, she must have been a very successful surgeon.

Okay.. class ended at 2pm.. will blog about my day when I come back later. Ciao!

Recently monster complained about having migraine. And I thought it would be good for me to revise some of the details that I might have forgotten about this common yet painful condition.

To identify whether a classical migraine, there are few criteria to be fulfilled.

1. Paroxysmal headache
2. nausea and/or vomiting
3. an ‘aura’ (mostly visual - shimmering, zigzag lines and etc ; sensory - numbness.)

A migraine can be one with/without aura. A classical migraine starts with a non-specific prodrome of malaise and irritability, an aura and then a throbbing headache associated with photophobia and vomiting. The headache may persist for days.

Triggers - mnemonic CHOCOLATE ( ah I like mnemonics ) Cheese, Oral contraceptives, Caffeine, alcohOL, Anxiety, Travel and Exercise.

Condition can be treated by simple analgesia with paracetamol (monster, see?), and anti-emetic such as metoclopramid or domperidone.

Of course, this is just superficial knowledge on migraine. Lazy to type.. Please consult the nearest OHCM. Cheers~

Day 18 - Farewell party, group x-ray

Today night is our farewell party organized by the bachelors. Actually the doctors had also invited us for a group dinner but the bachelors kinda ‘kidnap’ us, so it ended with us joining the bachelors and the doctors and family having their own party without us. Too sad, I hope I can be split into 2 and attend both places. Anyway, these are some pictures that we took during our chapatti and curry chicken night.

The chicken farm.

From left, Dr. Emil, and the X-ray man - Arun and Vijay

Vijay jokingly said that we should take a group x-ray as well. Lol. The idea is very creative but I wonder how can that be executed. I thought he was really serious when he said that.

Our farewell party.

Day 19 - Good bye Asha Kiran!

Going off today. Maybe I would go back again? Maybe when I have more knowledge and is ready to help I guess. All these 19 days are indeed good experience. We were constantly reminded that there are really people out there who needs medical help. We see the results of the powerful combination of knowledge, dedication and compassion. Maybe after this, each time I eat a chicken, I would think of all the people who do not have the chance to enjoy the simple comfort that I enjoy everyday.

It is sad to leave this place when each part of the hospital had our foot prints and memories. People that we have come to know and love. People that we have come to respect and adore.

Life is about a lot of meetings. Meetings that need to end at one point of time. And maybe next time where will be a chance again, but of course, I vow to be more ‘knowledgaable’ next time.

Dr. Ravi and Dr. Shoba

Dr. Vinod, Dr. Angel and Jason

Dr. Herold, Dr. Susitra and Samuel

Pankaj the lab assistant and Pratibha

Aunties that cook our breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We said our good byes to all the friends, and took the jeep to Bheja. And we are on our own now! Next destination will be Vishakapatnam, Agra, Jaipur, Chennai and home!

Day 20 - Train ride to Agra

We reach Vishakapatnam the day before and stayed in Heritage hotel (dorm room) which is just beside the train station. We catch the morning train to Agra. The journey is quite uneventful except knowing some new people and etc.

Bheja train station

Since I had uploaded a lot of pictures that I took along this route, I’ll just put my best pic here. This scenary is real, taken by me lousy camera.