Firstly, let me give you a brief description of where we stay. It is a 5 minute walk to the hospital. How great is that? There are 32 of us and we are all placed in a portable cabin called Scotia cabin. For a cabin, I would say it is reasonably posh. We have a small room that has cupboard, table, two chairs, and of course a bed and a lamp table.
It is in the shape of an H.
The 2 long rows consist of 16 bedrooms. The middle consists of 2 common rooms and two kitchens. Well, there are many Asians here. When social time comes, the Asians dominate one row and the Westerners dominate the other. However, East meets West once in a while, but not very often :P
So, that’s where I am staying now… Pretty fun I would say. The disadvantage is that we have no internet access. So I can’t update my blog as often as I would like to
The 2 long rows consists of 16 bedrooms each. The middle block consists of 2 common rooms and two kitchens for the two rows.
Last Friday, 12th Jan 2007
Friday… It is a very interesting day today
This morning, was the first time I went to the Hospice in Inverness. It was a very nice place with friendly people around. All five of us ( Sam, Sufian, Elaine, Rama and me) were watching a video clip that explains what happens in the last seconds of someone’s life. Of course, they got the information from people who had a near death experience and in the end, survived the threat. As you would have heard before, people usually say that they see a tunnel of light leading to Heaven. In the clip, it explains this; there is hypoxia in the sensory neurons of the eye and this causes the excitation of neurons and synapses in the brain. The brain interprets it as sparks of light occurring and then the information is sent to the motor neuron through the optic nerve. And this is then seen as a tunnel of light being surrounded by ‘twirling colourful tunnel’. Apart from seeing a tunnel of light, people often experience a sense of euphoria in the last seconds of their life. This experience can be reproducible by using a space centrifuge that creates G force. Apparently, in these circumstances, chemicals are released and this leaves people with a sense of happiness.
Further in the clip, they show a true story of the last moments of a patient who had a large inoperable tumour in his abdomen. He was told that he had a ‘time bomb’ in his abdomen and he can die at any time. He took it in a positive way and tried to enjoy every single moment he had left. At the time he passed away, the doctor looked upset and yet no tears were shed. I do not think I mentioned it earlier, but the GP has been taking care of this patient for years and has had such a good relationship with him. I thought about it for a while and I thought hard. I remember the time when my uncle passed away right in front of me. It was approximately 3 years ago when I was sitting for my end-of-semester exams in semester 3. Everyone present cried except for me. It is not because I had no tears to shed, but it was because I felt that nothing could be done if I were to cry. My grandmother was devastated. My uncle and I brought grandma out and gave her some water to hopefully calm her. This is not the first time I had not cried when faced with death. Well, I would say I am quite an emotional person, it is whether I make myself free from all my responsibilities or not. I feel that I am to portray an image of a strong girl in my family, possibly that is the reason why I do not allow myself to feel weak and vulnerable. I met this patient with SLE last year and she had a medical history that fits at least a 2 sided A4 paper using New Times Roman text of the size 12. I felt so much for her and I made an effort to visit her as much as I could during my posting which lasted for a week. I made her a paper bird to wish her well before I left. I appreciated our relationship and felt much difficulty when it was time to leave. What more if she were to die…. I do not know if I could have coped with that. I debated with the lecturer that morning saying that it is very difficult to care so much for the patient because it is almost like putting yourself in a vulnerable state. You allow yourself to get hurt and who is to blame but yourself. And another thing is, when I told Sam last time that I got so involved with my patient, he told me that I should be fair to all patients, if I practice medicine that way, I am bound to be unfair as there will be some patients that you can connect with better than the others. I think it is quite true. Oh well, I suppose too much of something is never good…. That’s my conclusion
:p
Friday evening
We played table tennis in the evening. Ian brought with him a small set of the game comprising two small table tennis bats (slightly bigger than my palm), the ball and also the net. I played, and it was not surprising that I totally sucked at it. Then my friend, Hui Sian came along. She tried playing. Well, how should I describe this…. She is a very strong girl, and you should have seen her playing against Ian… Ian was practically dodging the ball which was hitting him. It was sooo funny….
Friday night
Later that night, we went out for the celebration of Highland 2007. This was the first time Inverness had this sort of celebration. This was indeed a spectacular night. Although I had to admit that it was extremely cold. Firstly, there was a choir performance, then it was a Scottish song (don’t really know what it was but they were all wearing kilts and playing bagpipes). There the prime minister gave a speech and finally was the launch of Highlands 2007. With that, the fireworks began. It was by far the best fireworks I’d ever seen in my life… Oh, I forgot to mention that the celebration was at the bridge. There were also fireworks on the water. It was amazing. Good job, Inverness!!! It almost makes the one they had in Aberdeen look pathetic...
After that, it was street party TIME!!!. There were monsters on the street. It was really fun because all the monsters looked so real. It was as though we were all in a movie. It was like War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise. It was very much like that. There were some praying mantis look-a-like monsters, some dinosaurs, some funny looking creatures with sagged faces and also masked men on ostrich like creatures. Hahahah… was just so entertaining…
These are some of the pictures...
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