August 2015 - Jan 2016.
It was a satisfactory semester.
Less grumpy pre-coffee-8am faces in a stuffy/freezing (never just nice) lecture hall, wondering why did we even bother to appear knowing that we wouldn't understand a thing the lecturer was blabbing about.
Less long, never-ending pharmacology lectures and notes filled with names of drugs that are so long you can't even read them correctly on your first two tries, and scratching our heads figuring out impossible mnemonics to help us remember at least half of it. The classes of the drugs, the receptors they act on, the mechanisms they inhibit/enhance, the indications, contraindications, the side effects, the pharmacokinetic and dynamic aspects........
Less time spent in Clinical Skills touching our friends' chests and abdomens, listening, and tapping. No creating our own cases and pretending that we have a pain somewhere or had a heart attack so that our friends could do history taking on us. No lining up at 8am just to get a room with a good couch and functioning air conditioner.
Side note: probably a lot of all these in the following semester cuz exam *cries*
Less time spent ranting and raging on microorganisms and parasites, trying to remember their long-ass names that sound more Spanish or Latin or idk... They're just impossible... And the organs they invade, and lay their eggs and travel and grow and reappear and multiply..... Because we've established that our brains can only fit this much and if we did remember all these we would forget what diabetes mellitus is.
It was a semester that started with five long weeks of learning about how we eat and how our feces is formed, four boring weeks of what happens after we drink liquid, and four confusing weeks of how a tiny nub at the bottom of our brains and two small pyramids of tissues capping our kidneys can make our bodies go haywire. Three more major systems and our knowledge on the human body will be (slightly) complete.
The semester ended with a three-day 'batch trip' to KKB. Cheap food, great company, a hospital that functioned better than we expected it to. Followed by a three-week wake up call in GH Ipoh, which reminded me of how little I know and how much there is to know. It showed me the population that I had not been exposed to. People who knows nothing at all about medicine or their bodies, people who are helpless in every aspect, people who are grateful for what I am going through, with the intentions of helping them in the future.
To those people who think that it's just A HUMAN BODY, here's what you're not seeing:
12 systems that consist of 78 organs in total. Every system is dependent of one another, if one collapse everything else will be compensated. Every single organ supplied by a group of arteries and veins, which all arises from many other arteries and veins, which eventually leads back to your heart. All controlled by groups of nerve supplies, each nerve cell synapsing with other nerve cells, sending chemicals and impulses along their way. An organ being made out of different kinds of tissues, each tissue containing their own type of cells, Every single cell having ions and substances being pumped in and out of the cell, influenced by other substances around it.
One glass of water, the liquid will seep through your intestines, into your blood vessels, leading to your kidney eventually. Your blood is diluted. Water is pumped into your kidneys, sodium ions too, then they're pumped into your blood again, to make sure that your systems are balanced. It goes in and out until your body is happy with it's conditions, then your pee is formed. It goes down your ureters, into your bladder. Your bladder becomes full and distended, and your brain is informed....... (really this goes on and on)
Your body really isn't that simple of an object to study thoroughly on.
