One hell of a scare

As you know, I have been doing my practicals or what the locals call elective posting in the hospital lately. While I was there, I did a full blood test. What I did not prepare myself was when the results came back with me being detected to have Hepatitis B antigen.

A short note on what is Hepatitis B - It is a virus that attacks your liver causing slow degradation to the organ and lastly liver failure which can be fatal. It is transmittable via blood products, sexual intercourse and hence can affect one's sexual life and also career for someone who works as a doctor or nurse (which I am). Hepatitis B antigen detected means that there is a high chance that the virus has invaded into your body. Whether it has started attacking your liver or is remaining as a carrier is not certain.

Hence, when I received the results I was really afraid. Anyway, upon returning home yesterday, I told my mum which as expected freaked out (but worse than how I thought she would) and rushed me to the nearest lab to get my blood retested. That night, I think all 3 of us(me, my dad and mum) did not have a good nights rest due to the shocking news.

The next day, I was still anxious to get the results and was afraid of what the outcome might be. Never in my life have I be so afraid of getting a single lab results. I now understand what those people who were told some serious illness such as HIV or Cancer feel like.

I came back earlier today because my ride had something coming up and had to leave before the time was up. I called my mum and asked her if she has taken the report (it was supposed to be out at 12noon and I called her at 1pm). She said "the report is out but your dad didn't want me to go get the test results by myself, he asked me to wait for you." I told my mum I would go get it myself and if they require the receipt I will ask her to come then.

Throughout the walk to the lab to get my results, my heart rate spiked and my adrenaline was pumping vigorously in order to anticipate the shock I might have to face upon receiving the results.

When I finally got there and the results given to me, a wave of relief washed over me upon seeing the words "NOT DETECTED". I couldn't thank God or whoever is up there more for it.

OT

It has been more than a week since I started my elective posting in HATTM. For me, being here was very fun(though of course there were dull moments). I was first sent to the A&E department where I got to handle a lot of different cases and experience the way Malaysian health providers cope with them.

Further down the week, I was sent to the department of my choice -O&G. Here I was tagging with a doctor and learned the ways of basic clinical handling of outpatients. Also here, I attended a seminar that was given by a drug company which was promoting their drug to the hospital and only yesterday, another company which sent one of their staff over to promote their scar healing drug(for cesarean section scar wound healing) was being pushed away by the doctor as she had a busy morning and had not taken her lunch despite it turning to 3pm soon. I then told her about my burn wound and scar and then got some samples to apply on my wound. Hopefully, it will all turn out good.

Today, I was able to go into the Operating Theater and there I saw a few operations one of which was a C-section. And later on, I managed to witness a natural delivery.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time in the hospital learning stuff. Hopefully, with the passing of time, I would make a good doctor in the near future.

First Practical in Malaysia

With the return to my home country - Malaysia, the summer holidays have officially begun. Even though it is called my summer holidays, I still have to do an attachment with the hospital of my choice in order to brush up my skills to prepare myself for the up coming job upon graduation.

The hospital I choose to work at was Tuanku Mizan Hospital, which is a newly opened hospital that is located some 1 hour ride away from my house and to top that, it is a military hospital. This means that the hospital is used mainly for the purpose of checking the health of militant personnel and also to give treatment to them and their family.

The LRT ride from my house to the one nearest to the hospital took an estimation of 45minutes while the walk from the station to the hospital is another 10-15minutes of walk.

Arriving the hospital, I had to pass the guard house(where I had to leave my IC in order to get a pass to go into the hospital) before reporting to the commanding officer. It was quite a scare for me as I have never been anywhere which has any relationship with the military forces, hence the way things work around the hospital was pretty scary (the constant attention and salutation to one another and their seriousness).

After going through the admission department, I went to the A&E department (accident and emergency) instead one of the 2 departments I requested for (O&G and also Therapy).

Over here, I found 3 other interns - one which studies in Moscow, another from Edinburgh, and the last which is a foreigner that studies in Texas, US. After some basic introduction, I went along tagging after the doctors and getting an idea of their work.

At the beginning, the flow of patients were pretty slow, but slowly, as the doctor were busy with other stuff, the amount of patient grew and I got to see a few different cases, ranging from basic flu to heart failure. It was a pretty amazing experience.

We were allowed to go home at around 1pm but since I found the cases so interesting, I told myself I wanted to stay for this case and after that another one. Just like that, time flew by and when I knew it, my watch showed me the time with its hour hand pointing at the figure "4".

I then headed home after a tiring but fruitful day. Hopefully the next few weeks will continue to be this exciting.