once upon a time in Navan

Here's something from Navan, that always made me smile broadly at times reminiscing about.

One day in the week before the exam we were busy finding patients with good clinical signs to be examined at. After lunch Yanie and I went to do chest examinations on this lady, and came to conclude that she had a previous heart valve replacement based on our humble clinical findings. One thing was missing, we couldn't appreciate the 'click' from the valve on chest auscultations. Something fishy must been going on we thought, or was it just two unskilled medical students making assumptions. So we bumped into our Arab mate, Y who had previously seen that patient.

"Do you know that she had an AVR (aortic valve replacement) before?"

"Yes she did."

"But why was there no 'click' or anything like that? I thought you'll hear 'click' with prosthetic valve won't you?"

"Yes you will, but she had no brosthetic valve, she had big valve."

"No no, but she had a valve put in!" Typical big-headed me, it's always going to be my rule.

"Yes I know that. OK let's go and see her chart (patient's medical notes) if you want," typical Y, smooth and readily adapted to my stubbornness.

So we went to the chart's trolley.

"See I told you she had a valve, ah ha got'cha! I was right, she had a tissue valve put in!" Face glowed with winning streaks.

"Yes that's what I said, she had big valve."

"Oh no you didn't, you said she had no prosthetic valve. You said she only had big valve!"

"Yes I said that, it was not brosthetic valve, it was a big valve. A valve from big!" This time he smiled once, turned away and left us dubiously.

"Weh aku rasa dia nak cakap makcik tu ada PIG valve la bukan prosthetic valve," kata Yanie sambil menyiku-nyiku perutku.

Alamak.


post-scriptum:

• tissue valve = pig valve; it's either prosthetic (artificial) valve or tissue valve they take from PIG, the closest being to human form (in terms of heart valves)
  

• due to language discrepancy, some Arabs usually can't pronounce the letter P correctly, coz not like our Jawi letters they don't have 'pa' in Arabic. So most adapt and use B instead of P when speaking.

• I wasn't screwed up, he knew it was a 'healthy' arguement. Ha ha.

I have pinguecula in my eyes..

U know lately I've been spiritually and emotionally dampened, macam bara api yang baru kena siram dengan air. Nasib baik ada lagi serpihan bara kat bawah tu yg selamat dari simbahan sebab air yang dia guna utk simbah tak byk, jadi selamat la bara-bara yang kat bawah. Tinggallah mereka, ditiup semula oleh angin yang hanya sepoi. Atau boleh la nak kata ditiup semula oleh kawan-kawan sefikrah yang sempoi. Haha. Sekarang dah pandai guna jargon yang baik punya.

I tried to be ordinary and started my entry with "What I did today" or "Hari ini saya bangun pukul bla bla..kemudian saya makan toast dengan bla blu ble.." but failed. U know it's kinda my bloggy dream to be able to do that, coz all these while I always tell myself to be different and now I've fallen myself into indifference.

I called my parents late one night, and it was early morning at home. And oh Naqib was with my parents, apparently Along was sick. He was pretending to sleep while my parents tried hard to get him to school. After a good persuasion, he was put on the phone. I said, Naqib kene pergi sekolah sebab nanti akhir tahun ada hadiah kedatangan penuh. Acu dulu tiap tahun dapat hadiah dari darjah satu sampai darjah enam.

So I don't know now should I tell myself, Acu kene pergi sekolah sebab nanti minggu depan ada periksa akhir Ophthalmology..

anhedonia

Irish weather's getting more depressing. Most days I saw sunlights only through the hospital's windows coz it's dark when I left home in the morning and remained dark when I reached home later in the evening.

Irish youths are a bunch of depressed chaps who lead their lives being superficial, individualism and hedonism.

Am I losing hope on Ireland? (or was I just not getting my cup of black coffee yet?)

2006

Alhambra, Granada, originally uploaded by Shu Hada.

I miss writing here, though whenever I started typing the feeling fades away and I'm left with few unpublished drafts. Nonetheless, I don't think I'm ready to hang my keyboards now, not yet.

And it's 2006 already, felt like yesterday I was still the newbie with my crumpled tudung and sloppy orange shirt on my registration day, oh well I still wear crumpled tudung nowadays anyway..

Espana~

I'm in Granada, Spain at the moment (or should I say memento). We (read: Yanie, Arnee and myself) arrived here in the morning after spending the night in the bus for a tiring 8 and a half hours journey from Valencia. And I thought I never survived the journey.

The night before we went to eat Doner Kebab near El Corte Ingles just around the corner from Estasion D'autobuses (read: bus station) and a group of guys with the most Malay looks came in. We "spoke" about them in our mother-tongue, just on general issues. An hour later while waiting for the bus at the bus station they came and approached us with "Are you from Malaysia?". So meet my friends, Min Jat from Sabah, Ahmed from Uzbekistan, and 2 anonymous from Philipines and Cameroon. The former 3 were the ones who looks like Malay, and you'd imagine the latter has a totally different look based on the country of origin. They're doing Masters in Water and Coast Management in Andalusia under European Union. Interesting.

Valencia was nice, quite a small city though. We toured around the city and went to the same places of interests more than twice in general, on foot. Other than paellas (read: Spanish rice dish of fish or chicken with vegetables and saffron) and Valencia naranja (read: orange), I couldn't find anything else that amused me, oh well I must mention other than the Hispanic's unconditional love on jamon (read: ham) although their shops smelled like ____ you'll puke. The message is if you want a fast tour of Spain, skip Valencia.

In truth we're already in this (self-proclaimed) exotic land of Espana for a good 6 days now. We flew to Barcelona on Sunday morning and spent the earlier 3 days there. I mentioned this to the very end intentionally, coz it felt like 'luka lama berdarah kembali'. Man..

Whatever happened, there must be some good reasons behind them. A lot of 'What Ifs' been shooting out of my mind lately, but I know that Allah's plan works best so I just play my part and pray and keep on praying. Honestly, it was actually a good halt for me, coz the previous couple of month's been treating me really great, I must've crossed the border at certain points. So when thing happens people stop and reflect, and I did. My friends been asking about "Betuke Shu hilang EUR500?" and I might as well answer that here, thanks for your concerns but I did not actually. Though I did lost a good sum of money for leisures and my nephew's photo in my purse but it was an indestructible damage and alhamdulillah I'm still thriving. It was just the aftermaths that cost me a change of perceptions on Spaniards and the tour itself. Numbed.

And the sun started to come out again today. Granada is a pure bliss to the eyes. My heart sank as I went back in times to witness the fall of the golden age of Islamic rules in Spain and whats-left in the surviving monuments of Alhambra..