Wednesday, March 15, 2006

heist

hey all.
haven't aired my dirty laundry up here for a long while. not that i haven't got any new dirty laundry to air, but more like i've been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sirty laundry i can have. maybe i'm still reeling in shock. ha. my eloquence has flown merrily out the window together with my wits and they both said cheerio, adios.

not a good sign. when one's eloquence and wits wave bright yellow sun-brollies at a gape-mouthed oneself and sing happy holiday songs and basically abondon one when one needs them most.

been dogged by a couple of nasty infections lately. They certainly knew how to antagonize me to their fullest potential by popping up just right after the release of results and the commencement of the flurry-hectic-panic application cycle. so happily i was, stuck in a hospital bed (deja vu) gazing no-pointed-ly at the whitewashed ceiling whilst my multitudes of peers challenged each other to phalange-fracture by pecking furiously at their keyboards and waxing lyrical on why they'd make excellent scholarship or course candidates.

honestly i felt rather blissfully detached from the panic that everyone else was inevitably undergoing by not having a single application form in my presence. it wasn't until some innocuous little voice in my head (and i swear for the fifieth time i'm NOT schizophrenic) told me that the psc gateway closes (literally) on the 10th that i started panicking full force. which led the entire freaking ward to understand what a chao-loser i am (with lousy results) with an absolutely kiasu-kiasee attitude. ha.

but eventually i did manage to render whatever little bacteria-infected brain matter i had left into a 497 word essay, which i promptly submitted to the darned gateway at around 1am and just flopped like a dead convulsant fish onto the bed and writhed around making myself look perfectly like the backached-headached-eyeached dying fish that i wasn't.

anyway. people, learn from the great guru. do not sit like a shooting-range duck and wait for ur smartass doctor to instruct u... cos basically some of them can't be half-arsed enough to explain to you (since he/she reckons you're just like any of the other 5,673 braindead retards who're illiterate, uneducated and uncouth that they have to treat every year) and the other are just half-arsed enough to know that they don't know enough to put crap together to tell u shit. so they just keep mum, sit on your test results and nod their heads in a sagely/enlightened manner. do go online and trawl through the veritable trove of information (and tons of shit as well) and find out for yourself, through various sources, what exactly ought to be done. and don't be afraid to tell the half-arsed idiots that you want specific tests done if you read up enough to know that they're conclusive, useful tests. and apparently even the best need not necessarily be right (yes, yes, i know, holier than thou and all that) so get a second and a third opinion.

well anyway the above paragraph was an excerpt from my conversation with my boss. he's awfully concerned and nice. but if i don't haul my ass back on the double, even a nice man can have limits. so i am being a good obedient girl and resting at home. (well, mostly.) (ok, i TRY, ok?) (and yes, i know RESTING is stretching it a little bit.)

anyway. i found out most of what i needed to know from the internet regarding my bacteremia cultures. i think of the two, chryseobacterium meningosepticum is slightly more interesting. i say this, bearing in mind the key aspect of it being a lesser known isolate and role as an EMERGING infectious agent compared to pseudomonas aeruginosa, which we all already know is a common nosocomial infections agent. and apparently the fact that 2 out of 3 of my team doctors can't pronounce the name C. meningosepticum properly tickles me enough to put it at a slight headstart against its buddy pathogen. yup. its easy to google the names if you have them, and most of the stuff can be found from nature, pubmed or CDC (if you're dealing with infections). contrary to popular belief, nature does not publish articles solely related to the mating behavior of gorillas and alligators. they do medical papers too. and if the text is too arcane, check the online dictionary or come ask me!!!! *waves hands wildly in air*

people, is USP very elitist? and is anyone actually sacrificing an application slot just to fulfil the needs of a scholarship which i'm rather confident of not being awarded? gosh.