Community service

Have done two community service projects in Batu Pahat during my final semester of clinical years. Both projects were actually some sort of health screening that was within the scope of our capacity as medical students. The activities included blood pressure , blood glucose, cholesterol, BMI measuring, visual acuity and colour blindness checking, counseling, health talks, deworming, referral of patients to clinics or hospitals and distribution of pamphlets.
I was the event co-ordinator in the first project, held in Rengit, off Batu Pahat, from 10th to 11th December 05. Basically I was doing all the odd jobs of the whole project, like helping in registration, counselling, screening, distributing pamphlets, referring patients to our lecturers and others (that lack of manpower). Enconterred a few interesting cases here. One 6 year-old child was vomiting away in front of our registration counter early in the day. He has not taken breakfast that morning before heading to our health screening spot, by foot for several kilometers. As he arrived, he ate some steamed sweet corns offered by his sister. Bouts of undigested corns spurted from the orifice, suddenly, while he was queueing up to register. I led her to see our paediatrician, which later he was sent home by one of our classmates, by car, to get some rest, instead of exposing to heat and sunlight.
Another lady of her nineties claimed to be well and healthy, found to have accelerated blood pressure, of 190/110mmHg. She was perfectly well and appeared aymptomatic all the while. In fear of cerebral-vascular accident (stroke) or transient ischemic attack, we later decided to start her on anti-hypertensive tablets instantly. She was also advised to stay at our tent, to be observed, before we allow her to leave, after stabilization and complete examination.

Another community project was held in Summit, Batu Pahat, one week later (18th December 05) whereby this time we targeted different population for health screening. Here, community of a higher social economic class and better health status was expected.
I was assigned to take charged of the paediatric station, to give Albendazole syrup to children for deworming and to carry out sporadic physical examinations on these children.

While examining a Chinese boy who gurgled shyly, "Omg, I couldn't palpate any testicle, is this boy having undescended testes*?"I told myself mutely, before alerting my colleagues. With repeated palpations and self-convinced diagnosis, I informed my friend that I need to refer the child to the surgical department of the hospital for orchidopexy**."Are you sure?"My colleague confronted me, and yet I was firm with my diagnosis. With repeated palpations from different hands, we agreed that it was just retracted testis. We finally could feel the testicles hanging in the groin. :P

*Normally before a child is born the testicle descends from very near to the kidney in the upper abdomen to the scrotal sac. In some children, the testicle may be located in a site either high up in the inguinal canal (groin) or in the abdomen. This is called Undescended Testes. If this does occur, a surgical correction needs to be done.
**A surgical procedure to bring down the testicle into the scrotum.

Later, I was called to help out in the counseling station, where a counselor who can speak Mandarin fluently was in demand. While counselling patients there, a funny thing happened. I spotted two teenage girls lining up to get their blood pressures (BP) measured, said this :

"Look, that guy doctor in the fourth roll, looks so charming and handsome!"

"ya..somemore he is so well-mannered!" (saliva drooling....)

"eh, we should go to the next line, i'm sure your BP will shoot up when he measures it! Then he will definitely tell you to rest there for a while before he takes a second reading again later!"

And as they were waiting in the queue, they used their handphones to snap several photos of my friend (the guy)...can't imagine that! Omg, what a daring act they were doing!!(maybe I'm just too conservative :P )

At the end of the day, out projects ran pretty well. We called it a successful and meaningful day, which spiced with a lot of humours and derisions :)