Calculi (Stone)

A lot of people might have experienced the most painful sort of pain in the abdomen other than constipation pain LOL...

Almost every 2 hours we receive patients complaining severe lower abdominal pain that starts from the back and radiates downwards to the groin area. It is quite characteristic of a "ureteric calculi". Calculi means stone. In our urinary tract we have the kidneys, down to our ureters, then to the bladder and then out through the urethra.

When there is a stone in the urinary tract it is a normal mechanism of our body to get rid of it. So our body tries to expel it through our urine. What makes it painful is that the stone have sharp edges and as it tries to get its way out through the small ureters and urethra it has to be squeezed out by peristaltic movements and hence causing the pain. And mind you, even men have trouble bearing this pain, some would faint.

The bad news is the pain will only resolve after the stone comes out and it might take days. Look at the X-ray above, that stone on the left has a long way to go before it gets out. More bad news for men, your urethras are much longer then in females :P And even more bad news...It can recur.

To avoid getting stones in your urinary tract, drink plenty of water every day of at least 2L of water in healthy young adults unless if prohibited by your physicians for your other medical conditions. Eat plenty of green vegetables and fruits everyday and urinate regularly. Do not hold it in for a long time everyday. Also avoid beer and cigarettes.

Some stones may be very big, probably too big for it to come out but that is quite rare. That would require other surgical or laser interventions.

So make sure you get good healthy diet and drink clean water every day for the rest of your life. Believe me, you wouldn't want to experience this pain at all, ever.

Domestic Violence. Is it worth it?

Working in the Emergency Department in Malaysia we receive cases like domestic violence, child abuse and rape as well. I don't know about other countries though. It's heart breaking when we listen to their experiences first hand especially by the beaten and battered ones. However when it comes to rape cases, we don't really entertain all of their emotions well since most of the time they are not really genuine rape cases. Most of the time they are just annoying little kids who prefer to come half naked to the hospital (even though they were not recently raped) and heavy make up with no guilt on their faces and have been having that sort of fun sex even at young age as early as 11 years old with kids their age or whoever they want and probably have done it a thousand times or more and who are actually proud of what they did. Yeah we know, we do perform the examinations so we know. But don't get me wrong. Of course we have empathy and sympathy towards girls who were actually raped like real real rape. Not just by definition rape.

Domestic violence don't just happen among the poor, the uneducated couples or the problem gambling. Some couples went through tough times especially when there are no more love between them and no more respect towards each other. It's scary to even start thinking about building a family of my own after seeing the real picture here in the hospital. A woman who have been married for 3-5 years came to me one day and told me she was beaten by her husband and his friend in public one night. I asked her why did that happen? What was she doing? What was causing the aggravation? Her story was something like this. She's a working lady. Probably careered by the way she dressed up. Her husband has told her that she cannot socialize with her friends too late at night and at that time she was out with her friends until 2 am in the morning. And she was out with some guy friends and a girlfriend. I guess the husband had some doubt about her honesty and loyalty so he beat her up right there and then.

I guess we can never predict the future. You might be in love one day and the next day you may wake up next to a serial killer! (hehe..maybe that only happen in movies - i sure hope its only in movies and not in real life) Building a life is hard. To build a family is harder. But it's just a cycle of life that has been going on since the day Adam and Eve were sent to earth. And it must go on. Being in love is beautiful. The thing that holds everything together is even more beautiful and i think that thing is trust.

I wish all the best when it comes to love and life. I know some people have to experience rough patch one after the other in their life. But success isn't a destination. It's a journey.

Conviction

It's my day off today and I got to watch a few movies at home. I got to watch Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, Saw 7, Devil, and Conviction. Maybe I'll be watching some more tonight.

Have any of you watched Conviction? If you are the kind of person who loves movies based on true stories or the kind of movies that touch your heart and soul then this is the one for you. At least it is for me. Conviction was based on a true story about 2 siblings, an elder brother (Kenny Waters) who was wrongly accused of murder and sentenced to lifelong imprisonment while his younger sister (Betty Anne Waters) who was a single mother of 2 sacrificed whatever she had to prove that her brother was innocent.

They came from a poor family. These 2 siblings were so close together since they were at very young age. They have strong love for each other even when their parents went through tough times together. They lived in a broken home. When they grew up and both got married and started having children, Kenny was arrested and sent to prison. Betty Anne had unconditional love for her brother and she strongly believed that her brother was innocent. She was in desperate move to free her brother. The big problem was money and after 6-8 years of Kenny's imprisonment, Betty Anne decided that she would go through law school and become her brother's attorney and reopens the case.

Just imagine how a 30+ year old lady with poor educational background and children to look after would give up her life and sacrificed so much to free her innocent brother that she loved dearly. I wonder how many of us have that kind of love towards his or her siblings. I wonder how many of us would do the same. I don't even know if I would have the courage and strength to do so. Especially when it involves me going back to school for something that I know nothing about.

It was a good story with high moral values put into it. That is why I enjoy this kind of movies. It is always good to see things differently at various angles and different perspectives. It teaches me to appreciate life more and be content with what I have :)

My Artworks :)

I love paintings and I wish I am an artist. I can't remember when was the last time I painted something. My mediums are very simple. I use normal watercolour papers and acrylic colours. I have never used other papers and colours. Probably because I don't really have time to search for the different kinds of materials available and also because I don't know where to get them :(

I rarely paint because now I hardly get any extra time to do what I love to do. But when I get a sudden epiphany only then I will be in the mood to start painting and will not stop until my artwork is done. I think its fun to paint because since I'm an amateur I get to experiment different strokes, techniques and create different colours.

Somehow I noticed that most of my "good enough" paintings are mostly blue in colour hehehe... I don't know why. Maybe if I am a real artist I think people will nickname me Bluey :P

I envy the real artist to have been so gifted with skills and passion for art. As for me, my passion is so limited thanks to my "unconditional love" for my work...Puhlease... Somehow I think I need a long long long break away from the hospital and restart my hobbies. Don't we all.

Maybe one of these days I will make some time to paint. But its rainy season here at this moment. I need a good shiny day to paint. I usually wake up early to paint and start at sunrise and try to get it done before sunset. If I don't get to finish it by then, I'll definitely won't be able to complete it at all :P

I wonder what am I going to paint next. I always have this problem before I start painting because it seems that there are so many things to paint but I don't know which one to start with.

These are some of my work I've done over 2 years period :P Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I have enjoyed creating them :)

Save Lives

I've received some questions before like "what do I do to help an accident victim?" or "how do I perform CPR?"

1. First of all before you help others you need to first protect yourself and make sure you are away from any dangers. Example when you are at the accident area and you never know if the vehicles might burst into flames, etc.

2. Call for help! Call for ambulance.

3. When theres a major accident, what you should do first is help out those who you think have better chance at surviving, ie victims who can walk out or crawl out. Lead them to a safe spot. Then only attend to those who need to be rescued like those stuck in the vehicles or the unconscious ones.

4. For those who have any bleeding areas you should try to control the bleed. You only need a piece of cloth and gently apply pressure on the affected area. If you want to tie the area ie the leg, you don't actually need to tie it too tightly as to tie one end of the cloth to a tree and the other end to another tree :P

5. If you see an unresponsive victim, you may need to start CPR. It would be good if you can perform CPR well. There are CPR courses available if you are interested to learn and will get a certificate at the end of it. Otherwise theres a good video here on youtube /http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9T25SMyz3A

Have fun learning. Oh and yeah, don't practice it on a real person because CPR is painful to a conscious person :)

Malaysian Music Talents

I used to post in this online forum called Asiafinest. And I recently started to post again in there and texting some old friends I met before. There's a thread in the forum about some of Malaysia's very own bands from the 70's and I think they were awesome. I wonder what happened to these talents and what are they doing now. It would have been nice if more people know about them and other Malaysian talents such as these to be built and reborn.

The Strollers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrTYsVsZiyg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Dp8UQkHIE

And how I miss all of the P.Ramlee movies. Love his movies, love his work. Recently I got to know that he actually didn't play all of those instruments that we all thought he was good at. He only knew a few. I forgot which one. Here are some of my favourite :)

P. Ramlee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlaPiPv9wMA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PdoelbBKi8

Personally I don't think the new age Malaysian music scene isn't that bad either. Only that I wish that they can be more internationally recognised for their talents because I think it is only fair that they are well known for the efforts and talents they have been gifted with. Enjoy the videos. I sure enjoy them :)

Yummy yummy

I don't know why but I have this passion for spaghetti. I love spaghetti so much that I just have to eat it once or twice a week and that actually takes a lot from me since I have to prepare, cook and clean inspite of my busy schedule when most of my colleagues will just say no to.

I think what I love most about spaghetti is how spongy and how smooth they can be. I've been trying on some new recipes lately. I bought a book on spaghetti and now I feel like I can start my own spaghetti bussiness, hehehe. It's interesting learning different styles of spaghetti/pasta recipes. I'm so enjoying cooking now and loving it. Only that I don't like to mess up the kitchen because at the end of the day I need a lot of cleaning to do.

In my fridge I always have tomatoes of different colours and types, lemon, any kind of fresh herb, cheese, mushroom, onion, capcicum. Those are the must haves so that I can make spaghetti any time I like. And at the moment I love this new recipe that I've tried. It has fresh basil, grape tomatoes, black pepper and lemon juice, and oooohhh..how it gives me food orgasm. Hehehe.

Dengue Fever - New Beginning

Happy new year everyone :)

I was on call in the emergency department last night and I had quite a good call. Yesterday wasn’t as busy as I expected since it’s the holiday season and all. I’ve been wanting to write on Dengue Fever for quite sometime but always have forgotten about it soon afterwards. Somehow it feels like dengue season is all the year round in Malaysia. Probably shouldn’t be called “season” since it really does affect a lot of lives all through out the year.

Dengue fever is caused by transmission on dengue viruses through a vector (something that carries and transfers the virus) very well know to all of us, that’s the mosquito. Not just any mosquitoes. It’s the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. We recognize it for having black and white stripes over its legs. These little buggers also transmits other viruses causing Chikungunya and yellow fever. As we all know they like living and breeding in clean stagnant water. So if you haven’t washed your used glass of water with probably some water in it somewhere in your sink or under your bed, please get to it. Wash it off and you might save yourself from being bitten by what you have cultured in there.

How do we look out for symptoms of dengue fever?

1. As the article said it, we usually suspect dengue fever if your fever persist until day 3 of fever.
2. Muscle and joint pains. This is quite common even in other normal viral fever (the not-so-dangerous kind of fever)
3. Headache.
4. Vomiting and diarrhea (watery stool). Do not hesitate to go to the hospital for check up for thinking that it might be a regular food poisoning symptoms. Severe vomiting and diarrhea may make you very dehydrated so do not wait any longer!
5. Bleeding tendencies, such as gum bleeding when you brush your teeth. Or nose bleed. Sometimes some patients present with rashes. You might not be able to understand the pattern of the rash that you see, so whenever you see your skin gets red you should probably get it checked instead of trying to be a doctor of your own.

How dengue kills? Many would ask this question as to how a simple mosquito bite kills a human being or to be exact, dengue fever claimed up to tens of thousands of lives per year in Malaysia (alone). To simplify the effect that brought about the severity of this illness is by the fact that it causes the water level in your body to reduce drastically and significantly leaving you all dried up and hence if treatment is late that person may go into a shock (not a shocking-scary-shock but a term used to describe reduction in perfusion and oxygenation in your tissues) and that causes death. So in short, when having any fever at all you need to drink a lot of water. However, I’m not suggesting you to stay at home and drink 5L of water per day because it will only cause you more harm then good. What you really need is to get yourself treated in hospitals.

You may neglect the facts that this mosquito business is a serious matter. Until you have lost someone you know or love who succumb to dengue fever. Only then you may open up your eyes and try to do something about it when you know it is already too late for the damage has been done. I have seen so many of young, well built fellows who suddenly collapse from dengue fever and in an instant die in front of my eyes. I know life and death is a fate and we can’t run away from it. But let’s just try to create a better and healthier living environment for ourselves and those whom we care for so much.

Let us start cleaning what we have left so to kick off a brighter future ahead of us on this new year :)