Physiotherapy (Day2-5)

21March,Sunny. Luckily government department doesn't work on saturday and i can at least have two days off. However, this morning i woke up at 6am and hardly fall asleep again.haiz...maybe my biological clock is used to waking up at 6 and go to work at 7.

For the past few days i was too tired, once i got back i just doze off, and no time for blogs.

Day2, I was asked to follow two physiotherapist in electrotherapy unit. Basically, this unit deal with patients with mainly back pain and some shoulder pain. The main treatment here is pain relief. THey have all sorts of gadgets powered by electricity such as Trancutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) and Short Wave something(sorry i 4got the name). But, basically they try to use electric to stimulate and massage the muscles. And i was told that they have a special term for massage,haha, its STM (soft tissue manipulation). They also apply hot pads on patients' back. The idea for hot pads originates from the caves man where they uses warm rock to relieve pain. For day 2, there was no PPD stuff learned. The only thing i realised is that it was not bahasa iban that the patient spoke (as i mentioned in my previous post), it is bahasa sarawak.

As i was brought up in a chinese family and pure chinese school, i was not exposed to bahasa sarawak. ok, lets show u an example:

"sik, tuk aku punya bah"

"sik" means "no" .instead of "lah", bahasa sarawak uses "bah". "tuk' is "itu"...haha,i just smile and node my head when i don't know.

For bahasa Iban, if you want to say you dunno Bahasa Iban you say: " Aku nak numu cakup iban"

Day 3, it's a coincident that they have their annual back care programme when i'm having my attachment here. THerefore i help them to move all their machines to make space for the mattress used for this programme. Okay, i call this volunteer work and it meets my one of my objectives for elective.haha... THis programme involved 27 participants from diferrent departments. Main objective is to educate them some basic exercises for back care. In the afternoon, i was back in the gym for some neuro patient. I saw two patients with cerebellar ataxia, intention tremors and past pointing. Wow, i have never seen this before. THey have difficulty in controlling their gaits. Besides, they can hardly stand up. their body and their head are shaking like those youngster who had taken ecstasy pills.

Slowly, she tried to stand up by controling all her muscles voluntarily. I guess, within less than a second a normal person can stand up involuntarily. But for them, they took few minutes and with great effort. THen, when the physiothrapist said:" awak ini goyang macam orang makan pill". Once she laughed, she forgot about the voluntary control of her muscle, she fell on the bed on the next second. Oh my, PPD stuff came in again. I really felt empathy for her. Because she is around the age of thirty plus with two children with the age of eight and twelve. With patience, the physiotherapist taught her how to walk balancely.

Day 4, today is more interesting as i get to go to othorpedic ward. To compare with HUKm, the male othor ward in cbu is kinda run down. The worst thing is that it's not air-conditioned. We saw few patient and the one that gave the deepest impression is an uncle with one amputated leg as a complication of uncontrolled diabetes mellitus. He is going to retired this coming June. He said his life totally changes in these two months when he was admitted to ICU for two weeks. THe doctor amputated his leg and he was so angry as indicated by his "CELAKa" when he spoke to me. He said he had juzt bought a new car and thought he could drive it after retired, but now...only one leg left. I think there was some miscommunication between the doctors and him. From the dialogue, he blame the doctors for doing all these to him.haiz....sometime the doctors are trying to help the patient but....

THen, i was brought to SCN (special care nursery). This is an unit for premature baby. there were ten ventilators in this unit. Physiotherapist play their role to do some chest physiotherapy. THis include loosening the sputum for better and easier suction and drainage of secretion for the intubated babies. It makes me remember the PPD movie which i forgot the title ady.

Day 5, Friday is more relaxing for government servants. Haha. We have longer lunch break ( 1145am-215pm). It started off with a visit to ICU. I followed Miss Connie who i think she is just a few years older than me. But definitely she is more than few inches taller than me. I think she look like one of our coursemate. We talk about the organization chart in their department. Most of them were trained under a college somewhere near HKL. All of them were within the age of 25-30 as before this very few people took this course. And they rotate their role in different wards every three months.

THe Icu was quite packed and it reminds me of the labour room in HUKM. THe nurses in ICu always prepare all the machines before the patient came in. THis is just like in the labour room where we prepare the CTG, BP monitoring set and stuffs. THey prepare the ventilators, cardiac monitoring system...and it's vry annoying to hear the beeping of each machines (de..de...du..)

Actually, i wanted to take some photos but i was told that i was not allowed to take photos without Director's permission. So, paiseh, cant show you all lo.

Next week, i will go to medical ward to meet some UMS medical students there. Then, surgical ward, and agape centre. I hope this post would be useful for some spm or stpm school leavers who is interested in physiotherapy.