{Underneath the Stars.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

3:37 PM

TOday was take two on the trials of rat neurosurgery. Done solo w no help requested despite desperately needing it.

These days, the rest of the staff at the animal lab research are depositing their unwanted charges in my hands so that I can practise the protocol for injecting tracers. Just for the record everyone at the lab has been very nice thus far. They've been encouraging and helpful and willing to teach and accomodate. And their really fun too. Of all the labs on the 6th floor of NNI, I've noticed that Lab1 is the noisiest where laughter and shouting can be heard whenever you walk past it. the other labs are just so classic lab like...... DEAD.

Well...not to say the least. it wasn't all good. my first mouse died under anaesthesia.
Thankfully my second one didn't and manage to survive the 3 hour long surgery. Although it was kinda coming round whilst I was trying to suture the scalp wound. Let me tell you for anyone who's tried suturing will noe it's difficult for starters but just imagine yourself suturing a 2cm long wound with 3 clamps in the way using suture needles that are used in humans. Though I must admit that it's very good practice for suturing.

And drilling a burr hole is just SO DAMN FRUSTRATING.
I practically spent one hour trying to get the right spot to drill my hole, and actually drill through the skull. It's a combination of strainng through a microscope and lowering ur probe to get the right spot to drill and exposing that bit of skull which is forever too off to the left and covered my soft tissue which u somehow have to move out of the way to drill.

And shaky hands + reverberating drill = not getting the right spot = not accurate injection = failure of experiment = one innocent life lost.

Yup...so it was failed experiment in terms of accuracy but it was good in terms of practice and confidence building.

And the best part of it all was that my little patient was up and about when i went down to feed mice at 5 pm. 4 h after completing the surgery. Though with considerable weekness on the right contralateral to where I had injected the tracer which is probably an indication that I most probably destroyed some cortical fibres on the way in or went to far. REally hope that it survives the night. Though I must admit it suffered quite a bit of subarachnoid haemorrhage.

Fingers crossed. Prayer to God.

And may my first patient from yesterday's soul rest in peace.

And special thanks to Zhu for that very uplifting and supportive blog entry. Really gave me that extra boost! Cheers!

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

4:02 AM

Today was a tiring, stressful, depressing, self degrading and interesting day.

Today I did neurosurgery or more like attempted to do it with the help of a disgruntled but more or less patient mentor who did the important difficult bits for me.

Yes before you get ur knickers in a bunch, it was on mice. or more like mouse.

Today was my first lesson under my mentor Dr. Ma Dong Liang on how to inject tracers into specific areas of the brain. Man...I thought it was goin to be all computer controlled and stuff but when he brought me down to the animal research area I was like.... NO SHIT! we have to do this MANUALLY?!!!COld sweat...

So...Ma Lao shi ( that's how everyone at the lab calls him except for the 'lao ban' who is the principle investigator at the lab ) brought me down to the lab in the morning and showed me the procedures and steps on how to inject tracers. Basically it consists of locating and noting certain coordinates on the skull and then using a handheld drill drill a burr hole into that area of the skull and insert a probe through that hole.

SO we breaked for lunch and then he told me to come back in the afternoon to do the other mouse by myself.

basically it's not as easy as monkey see monkey do.

went back after lunch, anaesthesized my mouse and started to attempt to clamp the mouse onto the sterostactic board (i.e the stage ) and lo and behold I COULDN! SO I had to call my mentor up in his lab and basically went '' Ma lao shi, bu xing ah!! WO lian tou dou bu leng jia zhu! '' ( translation : Dr. Ma, it's imposible! I can't even clamp the head! ). And so the poor fellow said he would come down.

And so began a terrible nerve wrecking 2 hours as he went through everything again this time with me handling most of the stuff. At times I could feel his frustration. At times I could feel my own frustration. At the end of it all I had arrived at a rather definite conclusion: 1. I will probably never branch into surgery because under stress or pressure I develop truly shaky hands. 2. I'm seriously doubting my ability to complete this project.

But I must say Dr. Ma is a rather nice guy. Sure enough he can be a really scary when he criticises you and raises his voice, but in general I think he can be considered nice to have sacrificed and entire day of his precious research time as oppose to the initially allocated time of half a day to coach me.

haha...and towards the end of it he decided that this whole stint would be a matter of exchanging tutelage. in his words '' ok. I will teach you how to do this research. and you teach me English.''
I was like.... ... '' I don't think I can accept this responsibility''

I'm afraid Dr. Ma you've received the short end of the stick. The way I see it it might only be a one way flow. Fair enough, today i've helped him with hopefully accurate translations of 2 words.

YAh...and I couldn believe it that he was serious about this whole English thingy, when he chastised me when I started to talk to him in mandarin '' I thought I told u to speak english to me '' ................. WAtakushi wa...ima wa...hontoni ... damadesu....

Yup, after that I had to feed 5 cages of the mice that we induced yesterday to find that one had died. And I left it in a biohazard bag on the floor. untied. NObody told me that it had to be tied and placed in a -20 degrees fridge. tomorrow I will have to run down there and pray that it's not a rotten mess.

Dear God, please let the mouse who was so unfortunate to be my first try at injectin a tracer live. I would be very grateful for that. Please god please...the poor thing does not desrve to die for my ineptitude.

good bye....

Monday, June 26, 2006

2:17 PM

Yesterday, the 26th of June, was truly a day to remember.
It was the first day that I reported to the Epilepsy Research Labs at the National Neuroscience Institute just behind TTSH ( Tan Tock Seng Hospital )

Managed to find my way and was soon happily bundled off to HR to do idemnity documentation and other red tape legislations. yes...my mentor had so generously agreed to take me on but forgot about the other administrative stuff. haha.

Well...so after running here there and everywhere with the help of a very friendly sempai to get
lockers, Labcoat and trying to windle an security access card on the sidelines to no avail finally went back to the lab where I was assigned a project. Yes....my own project. which apparently I have to do everything by myself. And by everything I mean, all investigations and that means I have to learn all the protocols for the different methods of experimentation. So in view of my rather short stay with them abt 2 mths and the fact that I now have to write my own paper, it has been deemed that within this first week I will have to achiever what pple take at least a month to master and that is I have to learn how to pilocarpine induce status epilepticus in mice, perfuse them ( i.e fix their organs with formaldehyde), retrieve their brains, cut their brains into coronal sections and fix them on slides and learn how to read the slides. And I also have to learn how to physical inject tracers in a specific point in the piriform cortex, which from what I've read in their past publications involves the mastering of stereotactically injecting the tracer into a live mouse, encompassing drilling a minute burr hole into the skull of the critter whlst it's still alive.

OMG.....I'm so SCREWED.

First off....I had no idea I was goin to be assigned my own project and that I had to complete it within my stint. I thought I was just going to assist in one of the investigators projects. Needless to say my newly assigned mentor is in a high state of doubt at this point in time.

Secondly, I thought that la dida it's basic neuroanatomy and neurophysiology which i think i'm kinda fluent in. Yes it is but of a TOTAL new subspecies.... yes ladies and gentlemen, I spent the first 4 hours in the morning before lunch trying to cram in RAT neuroanatomy and embryogenesis with the help of a book that's about twice the thickness of a 7th edition Kumar and Clark ( medical bible ) and a dog eared manual with pictorial representations of coronal and longitudinal sections of Rat brain.

AFter lunch, sempai brought me down to meet my new best frens ( sorry B1 and B2 u guys will have to take a back seat). Man the smell that first met me when we went to the animal research labs was nauseating on first whiff. Didn' really help tat it was located next to the mortuary i suppose.

haha but i think that was the start of my really exciting day. within 3 hr I had learnt how to stimulate status epilepticus in pilocarpine induced mice, how to catch mice by the tail ( though I still don't know how to grab them by the ears because they scare the shit out of me when they wriggle abt ) , and to put this in a short and rather delicate way I made up for the lack of anatomy dissection teaching in 1st year using a mouse model. And to wrap things up I also practiced brain retrieval. I must say that almost nothing in animal research goes to waste. Especially when theirs a CLUELESS student attachee to ur lab.
Wow... after this I feel so confident in doing open chest surgery.

well...that's my exciting day. tune in for more misadventures!

Saturday, June 24, 2006

4:35 AM

The story of phase 2m is finally over

It was a long and tiring flight home.

Plagued with prayer and fatigue.

Got off the plane at Changi. Went straight to the nearest free internet access spot and checked the results for my final degree exams.

RELIEF!

PRAISE and Thank God.

This story ends and a new one begins come september.

Stay tuned in the tragedy of the now 3rd year Medical student.

Thanks to everyone who has supported and stood by me all this while.

Hontoni arigato gozaimasu!

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

1:17 PM

Just finished watching 'Sad Movie'
forwarded courtesy of Zhu.

The title says it all.
The americans may have their sad movies, the japs there's as well, the English have their 'Love actually' but up till now I think no one beats the Korean at their game of writing romantic love tragedies.

If someone as apthethic as me can be brought to weep a tear, it's definitely a good movie.

The only other movie that has moved me so would be ' Ima ai ni Ikku' @ Be with you

Finished watching Hur Jun, the epic korean drama series about this legendary korean doctor, who wrote this collection of medical journals that are considered one of the epic publications of oriental medicine. and needless to say it goes through all the difficulties he faced throughout his life and his miraculous saves. haha....yes yes...kinda similar storyline to Dae Jaeng Gum @jewel in the palace.

Korean romantic tragedies and korean historical dramas are great. They just have the knack of putting in the place of the characters at the time of their death and somehow with their more normal looking actors and actresses complete with pimples and scars on their faces makes it more believeable than the more fashionable american films of the day with airbrushed features, and where even the poor girl off the street has got a set of porcelein chompers.

well to round this off this is a translation I got off the MV for Lee Seon whee's '' In Yeon'' (Destiny). Not too sure about the stanzaing though. It's the song that currently blasting on continuous play on my player. It's the MV for the movie '' the king and the clown'' another korean movie that i'm anxiously waitng to watch. Starrin a very beautiful Lee Jun Ki. Just google for his pics, you'll see why.

In Yeon

I promise you when this moment is over
On the day I will be able to see you again

I will throw everything away,
to stand by you and protect the path
you have left to walk

They call this destiny, we can't deny it
Can such a beautiful day as this
Come again in my life?
You're a gift on this tiring road of life

I'll always let this love shine,
polishing it so it doesn't rust

Our encounter was short like we were drunk,
but it opened the locks to the gates and took its place

We couldn't cherish it,
but i don't regret it because
nothing is forever

They call it destiny,
we can't deny it
Can such a beautiful day as this
Come again in my life?

There are many things
I want to say,
but you probably already know them.

Far off on the day that we meet,
Don't let go again.

The love that we could not have
in this life,
The destiny that could not be
in this life,

Far off on the day that we meet,
don't let go again.

Such beautiful verses. As my dad says, the koreans are just great at poetic prose.
Just reading this melancholic ballad brings a twinge to the old ticker.

I only hope that the translation is right.
Even so....it makes for good reminescent reading.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

12:45 PM

Time passes ....
time flows ...
time waits for no one .....

Time reveals ...
time heals....
time softens....
time ceases for the lost....

Lying on my back
watching the clouds drift aimlessly across the azure sky
bathed in sunlight
cooled by whispers of wind

time flies
time halts
time for tears
time grows fears

Nights of whispered sighs
Days of plastered smiles
Afternoons of banter
Mornings to treasure

The cries of children in the distance
the chatter of friends beside you
whispers of the past behind you
murmurs of the future from far beyond

this has been my day in the park.

Monday, June 12, 2006

10:44 AM

At last!
....freedom!

The exams are finally over....
Time to rest recuperate and just degenerate to absolute vegetable status.
HOORAY!!!!!

this year hasn't been an academic great!
I'll be glad to just pass it and make it to third year....and then the struggle and fight starts again.
man....

Argh.....

.............................( dinner break and then off to watch X-men 3 with vivian)......................................

Just returned from X-men 3

I found it really interesting and exciting to be honest.
haha...all the super powers the weird powers...and obviously...
haha.....the very obvious ageing of the actors....that i must say is super interesting.

Jean Grey: looked not too bad in X-men and the in XM2, OMG, she looked really old....not too sure if they changed actresses there or was it just a matter of well...the tick tick tick of the endless march of time. yeah....that was just so striking, and then she 'died' and it was like....wow...that's nice. early retirement.

and then she reappeared in 3 and to be honest it was only in the get up as the phoenix ( fixed dilated pupils, facelift plastered greenish veinous appearance that that she actually looked more hollywood runway material.

Scott 'cyclops' : lets just say he's not hugh jackman and the rundown, unshaven, 'i'm grieving over my old looking GF' look just doesn't work... thank goodness his misery was put out early in the show.

But my goodness, there really were some 'tasty' new tidbits. hehehe....
particular mention would be the guy with the feathery appendages.
forgot his name....but with his blonde hair and toned body...yeah he could probably pass off as a slightly oversized but more appealing cherub.

haha...
don't know if there's going to be an X-men 4. seeing as they've killed off more or less the big 3 in that show. and seeing as it's called '' the last stand''. maybe the next one will be called '' The final fall'' and then it will be a hit and XM5 will be '' resurrection'' and XM6 wll be ''A new beginning".

you get my drift?

Well...I don't care....so long as they make X-men movies, I'll go watch them for sure.
some say it's a cheap thrill..
but i say..."yeah it may be a cheap thrill but it's exciting, interesting and come on, who hasn't thought of having super powers once in their dreary life?"

Cheers!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

1:30 PM

the lord is great
the lord is good
the lord makes all things including broadband good in his time

Minasan~!
yes....my home broadband is back
And i'm back in business
though I must say the speeds that i'm so used to ( 500kb/s) on the university servers
make this come back rather disappointing

But i'm so glad to be out there and with the world once again!
Life is perfect

I will survive!

Thank you god!

And now i will return to diabetes and its management!

ARGH!
EXAMS!!!!

Ta!