a BIG day

27th May 2006 is a BIG BIG day for my parents. Yes, it's my convocation. It's a day as important as (for a couple), walking down the aisle and saying "yes, I do" to the priest in front of all the witnesses.

My parents, brother, sister-in-law and little sis all attended the ceremony.

It's a good time to catch up with classmates, ever since I started working :)

All classmates are scattered throughout Malaysia- some working in Peninsular, some in Sabah and a few in Sarawak.
I was emotionally touched by the speech given by our Student representative, Dr.Ng.

"For the past five years, we have been struggling, battling and striving hard just to pass our exams, and assessments. Come to think of it now, these five years are nothing (as compared to our housemanship now)"

"After all, IMU has prepared us well towards the path our career!You will never realised this until you begin your housemanship!"

"Ever wondered why and how you are sitting and listening to my speech here today?It's because of them!Our parents, IMU, the lecturers and those hospital staff...their undue support, limitless sacrifice and unsparing teaching and dedications..."

Yes, I absolutely agree. Thank you dad and mum. Thank you IMU, my beloved lecturers and those respectful doctors in the ward :)

My first call

Today is my first call, after a two-weeked tagging in the paediatrics department. My first call is in Paeds ICU (PICU)unit. Something special about doing oncall here is (hehehehe...sniggering) : The house officer's oncall schedule is only from 5pm to 11pm, and yet we claim for the full time oncall (36 hours) allowance. We need not to stay overnight in the PICU.
As the name inplies, this ward is a place to cater for the critically-illed children patients. Some are road traffic accident victims, some are oncology patients (patients with cancers), few with respiratory problems that require mechanical ventilation and couples of children with acute illness that necessitate intensive and close monitoring (for instance, Dengue haemorragic fever and Dengue shock syndrome, acute severe asthma, acute heart failure, severe pneumonia with sepsis/septic shock, meningoencephalitis...etc).

So, my job here is to monitor those patients in the HDU site (for your knowledge, the PICU is further subdivided into acute bay, high dependency unit a.k.a HDU and isolation room). There are a total of 6 beds and 6 ventilators in the acute bay, 8 beds in HDU and 3 beds in isolation room. Besides taking care of the patients in HDU, i need to help my M.O. to do some simple procedures also, for the patients in the acute bay, like bladder catheterization, blood taking, arterial-section and tracing lab investigations results.
So, the day went on smoothly. No major disaster happened, not too busy, not too many procedures, no admissions at all (kekekeke) and a few breaks in between to chill out at the pantry, having gossipy chats with the nurses :P