Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Work and Valentine's

Work and Valentine's

In 3 weeks of work, I've scanned about 105 patients.

Interesting cases I've done/ seen:

1) Did my first scrotal scan. Men's balls ain't easy to hold down. The damn testes' swim around. And in the end I had to hold them with my left hand while I hold the probe steady with my right to get proper pictures for documentation. Dude had epididymitis. Testes were fine, but the outside of it was inflammed. Basically he had swollen, painful, and hot balls. Ok.

2) Breasts scan the very next day. Certain genes just have big titties. Not easy to scan either. They flop to one side, then to get to the other side, you gotta lift it up a bit so it flops to the other side, so u can reach the breast tissues. Not exactly foolproof, cos u're bound to miss something, what with all the flipping around, but not like we have a choice. Patient was fine in this case. I didn't see any lumps/ cysts.

*Now all that's left is for me to perform a TV scan, and I'd have done it all in this company. Have done breasts and TV scans, btw.

3) On Monday, I scanned a supposedly 7-month old baby that didn't seem to have a heart on Ultrasound. No foetal movement, small for dates, and when I dropped an M-line, the line was flat. No good. I saw the lungs, or what little there was of it, the limbs, the head, but no heart. I bet the baby was stillborn. It's heartbreaking. And the mother, I suspect, is aware of it, but is in denial. She says she can feel the babe move. Just a little. I think it's sad, but there's little to be done. Termination has to be performed. You can't keep it in there. Patient was referred to GH.

4) Saw weird kidneys today. Patient was referred for microscopic haematuria. Right perinephric fluid collection was noted. Not much corticomedullary differentiation seen. Suspicion of an isoechoic mass in the right renal pelvis with associated focal caliectasis. Left kidney appears to be malrotated with lobulated outline. There didn't appear to be corticomedullary differentiation, and it just looked bloody weird to me. Probably a congenital malformation. Either that, or chronic infection.

Appointment letter not given to me yet. And apparently, there's some medicolegal and management issues surrounding my employment and job description. Honestly? I'm not doing anything that's compromising my position, or future employment. Management issues, are management issues. I have no say. But medicolegal is my issue. And that's that.

Going out for dinner and drinks with friends later. I see an episode of SATC coming right up, Malaysian style ;) Thumbing my nose at Valentine's, the commercial one. Celebrating it, the traditional one.

Happy Valentine's and 'I Love You's' to:

1) My family

2) My Kuching pals (some of you I've known approx 20 years, more or less. Muax muax!! Something's got to be said for friendships that last that long. I call it Magic and Effort :))

3) My friends from UPM

4) My friends from work and beyond

5) Just my friends :)

6) Those whose hearts I've broken. Hey, I was young, and green and ignorant. And I've never done it intentionally. There are things I really didn't know then. Hopefully, I've learnt them by now.

Ciao!! Fa a modr.. (I think :))

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahaha!! ur work sounds kewl dude! man, who can say that they have men by the balls in their line of work? ;) literally!

ur job sounds tough tho, 105 patients in 3 weeks! I average 7-10 patients a day, 5 days a week. er, ok prolly the same or more but urs sounds much harder! :)

nemesis-on-fire said...

nawww... was at a campaign, so i scanned 40 patients in a day, average. normal days, depends la. seasonal, kinda.

different field, yerdeh, different field. meds would drive me nuts :P all that drug-drug interaction. eekkksssss....