I watched an autopsy yesterday on a 26 weeks old infant. She’s a tiny little girl, at the size of a doll. Her little fingers and toes are well formed. Apparently some disease interrupt the pregnancy or maybe the pregnancy is threathening the mother’s life so they had to take her out early. She lived for 2 days and then her lungs gave up because it couldn’t produce enough surfactant to help her breath.

She got long curled eye lashes. Her heart is so tiny, about the size of a chicken heart. Her kidneys were so small like the size of kidney beans. All her organs are healthy and well developed. If she could wait few more weeks till the lung mature more, she will live.

If we all have a pair of eyes that can look through the abdomen, maybe when some mothers (single mom, accidental child, one night stand… in short, unplanned pregnancy) see how beautiful is that growing child in her womb, perhaps they might reconsider not to do abortion.

Children, they are the most beautiful gift from God and some people just don’t appreciate them.

NOTE: I got permission for these photos from my teacher, the head of O&G department. She pull me in the OT and ask me to take these photos. Besides it’s normal here in Russia, they publish photos during operation in pamplets promoting the university, magazine, present it in lectures and such for educational purpose, so it’s not a big deal. Everybody took photos during operation, with cadaver, in the hospital and post it in friendster and facebook lor. I understand that this kind of thing is a big issue in other countries and you will get sued. Well, I don’t mean to be disrespectful or what, I only thought of sharing the process of birth with other people.

There was a Caesarean section last Thursday. This was not my patient but I think they had to take out the baby earlier because she has pre-eclampsia.

This is low transverse type C-section. Firstly they expose the uterus. Then rupture the amniotic membrane.

As soon as the membrane is ruptured, the doctors have to pull the baby out quickly in few seconds.

Every child is bluish in color at birth. After few minutes when the blood circulation established, the infant will slowly turn pinkish color.

After the baby is taken out, the uterus will be sewn and put back inside the abdomen.

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Somewhat irrelevant photo.

And when the cat is not around, the mice came out to play.

Tee-hee, I suddenly find that psychiatry is a very interesting subject to learn. Somehow the more I read, the more I find that I have somewhat mental disorder lol. My topic for today’s class would be Hallucination and Delusion. I found something interesting to share with all of you.

Delusion is a belief that is firmly held on inadeqaute grounds, is not affected by rational argument or evidence to the contrary, and is not a conventional belief.

Delusions of jealousy
- are more common among men
- Not all jealous ideas are delusions; less intense jealous preoccupations are common, and some obsessional thought are concerned with doubts about the spouse’s fidelity.
- the patient follows the spouse to spy on her, examines her clothes for marks of semen or searches her handbag for letters, etc
- A person with delusional jealousy will not be satisfied if he fails to find evidence supporting his beliefs; he will continue to seach.
- An interesting feature is that the jealous person often has no idea as to who the supposed lover may be.

Sexual or amourous delusions
- are rare but occure more frequent among women.
- delusion concerning sexual intercourse are often secondary to somatic hallucinations felt in genitalia.
- A woman with amourous delusions believes that she is loved by a man who is usually inaccessible, of higher social status, or as famous as an entertainer or public figure and someone to whom she has never even spoken
- She is convinced that the ‘object’ cannot be happy or a complete person without her.
- The patient often believes that ‘object’ is unable to reveal his love to her for various reasons, that he is withheld from her, has difficulties in approaching her, has indirect conversations with her and has to behave in a paradoxical and contradictory way.

Whoa… when I read about amourous delusion, I thought I have it too. Lol. Because I like Wu chun (member of Fahrenheit)so much~~~~~~ that I stalks everybody who lives in Miri to korek info about him. (Hahaha blame someone for telling me that Brunei ppl like to shop in Miri and hence chances for someone to know Wu Chun from Miri is as high as 70%).

Oh well, now at least it is proved that I’m mentally ill not because I’m so satisfied and happy with Ken now. =D

Eh, so guys like to play jealous jealous more than girls? ^^ Hmmm, so anyone of you here spy on your own wife?

For anyone who wants to find out more about cancer, Subang Jaya Medical Centre will be holding a talk on CANCER AWARENESS.

1. Nasopharyngeal/ Nose cancer on 23/9/07 (Sunday)

For all above talks:
Venue: SJMC cancer centre, south tower.
Time: 3.00pm - 5.00pm

Went to the urologist Dr. Peter Ng today.
My kidneys are…. errrhhh…. hmmm……

phewwww…..

SAFE!!!!~

My gawd, wasted half a day there in SJMC only. Like I diagnosed myself suspected, the swollen left kidney (hydronephrosis) was caused by massive intravenous of saline and antibiotic. Some more that sakai ultrasound doctor wrote such a SERIOUS report for me. Haiya leave me with my heart bup-bup-bup-bup everyday for the past 3 months. =_= worry for nothing.

When mentioned about radiotherapy, most of the people will give me this reaction,

“I know! I know! You use radio to play music to treat cancer patient because radio + therapy mah.”

Yes, you are nearly there. I remember the first radiotherapy I had, they were playing the old English song “When I need you…” eh, I dunno what the title is and who sings the song but I know how the song goes. And then the next song is “Yesterday” by Beatles. Feel so nostalgic in there.

Wei~ wrong answer la! Though SJMC did play some music for us because it will take about 10-20 minutes for each session of radiotherapy.

You all know that Radiology is the use of radiation in medical imaging and diagnosis a.k.a X-ray, CT, MRI etc.

Radiotherapy also known as radiation therapy is the medical use of ionizing radiation as part of cancer treatment to control malignant cells.

There are many types of radiotherapy, each type is used for different type of tumors according to the location of the body. So what are the types of radiotherapy? Eerrrhh sorry mates, I haven’t have my oncology class yet, so stay tune, I’ll back to this topic later.

The one used on me was Intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). It is one of the most precise forms of external radiation therapy available because it uses sophisticated software and hardware to vary the shape and intensity of radiation delivered to different parts of the treatment area. The planning process for IMRT is complex so 1 week time in advanced is needed for the planning, but it has been shown to provide greater benefits to patients by improving recovery time and reducing side effects and complications associated with conventional radiation therapy treatments. Therefore IMRT treatment is also more expensive (was about 3x more expensive than conventional ones. IMRT cost rm30k, while conventional rm10k for my case.). IMRT is used to treat selected patients with prostate cancer, head and neck cancer (which is me! eheh) , breast & other gynaecological cancers, some brain tumors, peripheral soft-tissue extremity tumors and selected lung cancers.

This is the machine for radiotherapy. It consist of a medical linear accelerator which generates the photons, or x-rays. The machine is the size of a small room—approximately 10 feet high and 15 feet long. The patient lies on the treatment table, while the linear accelerator delivers beams of radiation to the tumor from various directions. The intensity of each beam’s radiation dose is dynamically varied according to treatment plan. For my case, 60 rad of radiation dosage is given so that it won’t do much damage on the surrounding nerves. (Mine was quite at dangerous zone because the important facial nerves, hypoglossal nerves, vestibulocochlear nerves are involved at that radiation area.) So thank God, I still can chew now!

A mould is placed before the treatment starts to secure the body at the specific lie/pose to make sure the precision of radiation because the points for radiation was marked earlier during the 1 week of planning.

The main side effects caused by radiotherapy includes:
- skin looks like as if it is burnt at the radiation area (apply baby oil on skin to prevent dryness. If blister or pus is found means got infection, look for your oncologist immediately, he/she will give you saline solution to clean the skin surface and hydrocortisone cream to apply on it.)
- dry mouth( drink a sip of water every 10minutes to prevent dryness in mouth and to avoid sore throat…. it is very suffering to feel pain from the tip of the tongue till the throat!)
- mouth ulcers and blisters (use special Biotene toothpaste, aspirin gurgle after each meal, use Gengigel mouth rinse and mouth gel for pain reduction and quicker healing of the ulcer.)
- feeling of heaty or high temperature but it is not fever! (drink plenty of water and fruit juices - honeydew melon, papaya is recommended)
- gastrointestinal discomfort; this effect varies depending on individual (I only had nausea and vomiting, which msot of the time I relieve it by sleeping. If it gets too serious please consult your doctor for medication)
-hair loss (I got hair loss as well, my bundle of hair becomes thinner but I did not lose too much of hair like other patient because the radiation area only affects the lower hairline.)

*Note: All the side effects listed are based on what I experienced and it is not necessarily everyone will have such side effects. If you feel any discomfort, do consult your oncologist immediately. Doctors are meant to help.