heart failure

just reading over my previous angsty post made me realise how angsty a post it is. i think an explanation is needed... a lot of the time the general public think christians are narrow-minded and foolish for believing everything the bible says.. but the fact of the matter is that it's certain non-christians who are narrow minded for not looking at all the overwhelming evidence of the authenticity of the bible, the gaping loopholes of the theory of evolution and the facts that point to the reality that there is a supreme creator of the universe. right, enuff said. whoever wants to find out more will take it up in a conversation with me, cos everything written is potentially misconstrued..

anyhow.. i just rejected an offer of a free all-expenses-paid trip to the big smoke that is london.. oh my goodness... i did what? i think i need to go sit down...

meanwhile, having the time to do as i please in terms of planning my ssm timetable is highly risky... i've been in only 1 full day on tuesday. an hour on wed and an hour on thurs.. although it's looking up cos now i've somehow managed to convince mcniece that we can't be idle and feel like real medics at the same time.. so we've decided to be dilligent and head in for morning wardrounds on friday.. i know.. i'm quite the eager-beaver.

non-maleficience.

"at some point, you have to make a decision. boundaries don't keep other people out, they fence you in. life is messy, that's how we're made...so you can waste your life drawing lines, or you can live your life crossing them... but there are some lines that are way too dangerous to cross... here's what i know. if you're willing to take the chance, the view from the other side.. is spectacular. " - dr. grey from 'Grey's Anatomy'

amy's birthday. mahjong night. bar brel's amazing guitar man.

epon. johhny depp is beautiful. brel man. summer flowers.

so life after exams has been amazing. it's so wonderful to be able to sleep easy again, to be able to read non-medical books and catch up with friends outwith medicine. what have i been up to? sleeping more than i should, reading, warm birthday dinners, bar-banter, gigs, steamboat dinner, late night tesco shopping with pete, 8am ward rounds at stobhill, thinking of how i should start cardiac failure coursework, etc etc...

boom monk ben+dj food+bigg taj at the glasgow school of art

so yes, started my first day at stobhill on tuesday for my cardiac failure ssm, which saw my longest day in med school... up at 6am, ward round at 8am, followed by echos, exercise tolerance tests and reading lots and lots of ecgs, was only home by 5 yesterday.. had dinner and passed out on my bed....more of the same for the next 4 weeks or so... with an essay on the multipharmacy of heart failure at the end of it. can't complain really, this is what it's alllll about! right.. off to stobhill this afternoon for more heart-hunting..

the fact of the matter

i am sick and tired of all this no-such-thing-as-religion shit. it is a non-substantiated argument, something non-evidence based and totally irrational. just because God and the Holy Spirit are invisible does not mean they're not there. and I am so sick of people questioning and being doubtful of a Christian's experience of the Spiritual realm when they know nothing of this dimension. not experiencing is not the same as not being real. what i also abhor is how free thinkers think they're free thinkers... well.. let's face it... a free thinker is never free. even worse are the free thinkers who claim a belief in all religions and teachings and claim they're 'not religious, but spiritual'. well, let me just say that they are not spiritual. their spiritual faculties are not alive. they do not listen to God's voice, they are not led by the promptings of the Holy Spirit, they are not overflowing with the Holy Spirit, they have never uttered a word of prophecy, they have never let their lips be led into tongues, they have never heard the Word spoken into their lives, dividing bone and marrow, body and spirit, they have never healed the sick, they have never discerned spirits, they have never opened their spiritual eyes to all the workings of the body of Christ... they allow the world to shape their beliefs and their morals and they plan their actions based on what mans' opinions, which is as careless as the wind. an atheist is a person who believes there can be no God. i repeat, believe. a Christian, on the other hand, is free to believe that everything in life is according to a divine purpose of God's will in their life. we are truly free to accept adversities and blessings in a graceful manner, to be able to live out God's will, listen to the Holy Spirit and achieve success in whatever areas in life God has decided to bless us with. i repeat. a Christian is truly free.


there is nothing the world can take from me. Christians are the most fearless people in the world.
"The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" -psalm 118:6

the end has just begun

sooo0000.. what do 3rd year glasgow medics do after their exams???

we.......

... pimp each other out...

try to elicit the pupil light reflex in pubs

me.gillian.douglas's hand.
get to know hot nurses...

richard.
humiliate our ourselves and our colleagues publicly...

me.rob.

jack.

me.max.
raise our LFTs...

get to sleep at 4am, shattered from the backlog of sleep from the past few weeks of the S word, wake up at 7am the following morning anyways just cause that's what we're used to, and spend the rest of the following day nursing our battered brains...

17 hours...

carol's neuronal saturation : 100%

72 hours encounting...

i know i'm studying too hard when i dream that i'm a teenage mutant ninja turtle and i've got cancer of the mitral valve and i'm having a duel with remesh (my gp partner) who's a teenage mutant ninja turtle too, who's got cancer of the knee joint...
*groggy*

come here... ....closer

there is this sinking feeling and it won't go away and it won't go away and it won't go away... why am i the only one who feels this? why do you sing hallelujah if it means nothing to ya? why? WHY?? there is not enough time...

convectional

i live for thunderstorms.

on a night like this in singapore, i would be:
sitting in my room with the windows open, looking out into street lamps as the rainwater hits the glass panes. shouting to Chance, who'd probably be hiding under the car in the porch, scared of the thunder, wet, cold and smelly. curled up, in my cotton shirt and shorts, sitting on my pillows, thinking of how beautiful the rain makes things...

but here i am, halfway around the world, in glasgow. in the library, reminiscing of home, of Orchard road, of clementi and yong tao foo and fish noodles and dao huay and being hot and sweaty, wiping the sweat off my brow, of looking forward to air conditioning, of having all my comforting things around me, of my comfy living room with the black leather sofa, of the ceiling fans in the 'upstairs-living room', of when i can get the car out again, when's the best time to go to St. Greg's, who should i ask out on my midnight jog tonight, or whether or not to head over to Ivanna's or Sarah's for the night... of whether i should have 'zhok' in chinatown or roti prata or sliced fish beehoon for supper, of whether or not i should go to zouk with the girls, of whether or not there's bought-breakfast for tomorrow morning, of whether or not weiming would be using the computer, etc etc...

first the thought, then the rain. cows on the field a portent of rain... what then, is rain a portent of??

MB3ChB

MY LIFE. period.

'Synovial fibroblasts have high levels of the adhesion molecule, vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM-1) , a molecule which supports B lymphocyte survival and differentiation, and of decay accelerating factor (DAF), a factor that prevents complement-induced cell lysis. These molecules may facilitate the formation of ectopic lymphoid tissue in synovium.'
- Kumar & Clarke. Clinical Medicine. 5th Ed. W.B. Saunders. Edinburgh. 2002. Rheumatoid Arthritis. pg 538.

so amidst studying for the year 3 finals (2 weeks!!! !$%^&$*#@$%^@##) i have taken to relieving my stress by fanatically baking... carrot cake is oh so yummy... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... pity the expanding pannus in RA isn't exactly the perfect appetiser...

meanwhile, besides books and a brain i've pre-emptied of the following :

-childhood memories
-conversational skills
-simple mathematical manipulation
-people's names
-methods of having fun

i've added :
1. coffeee.. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF COFFEE.
2. prayer. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF PRAYER.

to the mix, stirred it all together and.. voila! that's carol's secret of success! ahhh.... now if this caffeine-induced headahce would just subside....

 

7 minutes

... and she thought she had the truth by the collar, she thought she knew truth through and through, inside to outside, she thought she lived truth and truth slept with her and whispered to her day by day. but then one day she awoke to find that truth had gone. truth had gone to sleep with another. and she was lost, and she was desperate for truth again. because the world was darkened and nothing made sense to her as it used to. so she searched the earth for truth, but truth was nowhere to be found.... and then the big man said to her, "sometimes the search for truth is more important that the truth itself." and she let that relative truth hang in her head for a while. she let it sink, she soaked it in, she half-bought it and she analysed it, never letting that relative truth get the better of her, for she was the wiser... and then she eventually accepted that the truth was a whisper in days like these and with acceptance came the responsibility of attaining the standards of the truth, the way and the life. and so she buckled it round her waist, and hope glittered her steps and her courage was blind faith. she knew not what lay ahead of her, but she knew she was going to be fine. :) 

random hearts

we are all entitled to our own insecurities. but do we dare take that leap? do we dare take His word for real and apply it to our lives and to just GO and live. to go and dream, to dare to live? do we? do we dare force ourselves into awkward situations and force ourselves to jump out of the box and to push harder and fly higher and fight on? do we? does it make a difference whether or not we get what we want in life? does it make a difference whether or not we try? is there a difference between wanting and working for it? is self-worth a currency too dear for us to afford? jeremiah 29 and deut 28. how many dreams have we swallowed? how many dreams have we let fade into non-existence? how many words of our own have we eaten? how many resolutions have we broken? were they worth the ineffort? psalm 90. because it is Your work You have called us to do too. but how do i know? i know because of the very fact that i'm doing them now. cos if it was something else, You would have made it different. And if it's not meant to be forever, it will only be for a season, and You will make that change, i need not worry, i need not fuss. I need not work as hard as the other people who do not pray... but fortunately for myself, i am a woman of prayer. psalm 109.

it's true, what weiyao said... about hating what he hates. he has made me come to hate it too.. but... sometimes it's not in my control.. is this? my soliloquy is getting a little rhetorical. who will bounce with me? it is looking bleak tonight....

a day in the life of

once upon a time there was a bouncy yellow ball who had no friends. he wasn't like any of the other bouncy yellow balls.. this bouncy yellow ball had appendages.. lots of them. and he was ugly. u.g.l.y. ugly. then one day, it was sunny and this bouncy yellow ball was taken out of his lonely home and brought to the kelvingrove park, where he was thrown about, flung, caught, snatched. he flew through the air in quick passes, lobs, pops! he was snatched about, his appendages pulled, he was pulled at from all directions from different pairs of hands! he had never felt so wanted, so ALIVE! for once in his lifetime, he found that his appendages were useful for something after all! it was so easy to catch the bouncy yellow ball from one of his long appendages! never before had he been so wanted, so sought after!
"everyone wants me today! they can't get their hands off of me and they're beating each other up and tackling each other, trampling on top of each other and running after me wherever i go!" he thought.

and so it was on that fateful sunday that the bouncy yellow ball lived. and what a gloriously happy ball he was after that.

the end.

dead and buried

meanwhile, amidst 'colon scoppee and the infinite madness' of studying the whole of the GI system in two days, i have taken to finding an outlet of relieving my braincells of the arduous imbibing demanded on them by the masters of medicine.... and since there is

(a) no music room
(b) no guitar

in the study landscape, i shall take to blogging wrecklessly about nothing at all, based on no objective evidence, based on no rational thought...

click to view the enemies.

click me! for: The Future of the British, as anticipated by the goverment....

meanwhile, God, You're so funny, yes You are! haha... i'm laughing, but i'm also delighted to hear more of what You have to say... *grin*

and everyone should come to maggie's hk cafe, especially if you're:
(a) hungry
(b) stressed
(c) bored
(d) interested in chinese servitude
(e) missing asia
(f) like me, all of the above.

......

carol's current neuronal synaptic saturation : 30%

blood and sweat flow mingled down

it is lent... how many times i've actually remembered to remember, i forget......how often we busy up our lives to the point where God is so distant, so far away, so not part of your life, outside your circle of friends, outside your consciousness...not there?
i've come clean. this morning, one of the dwindling number of mornings i actually sat with You and talked to you, had breakfast with You, put aside my notes, put aside my worries, put aside my anxieties, my cares, my concerns about the exam, my selfish thoughts of me, me, me... and paid You the homage you deserve... remembering what You did those 2000 years ago on that day of the unexplained darkening, the day of that unexplained earthquake, the day of that unexplained death........
the ultimate death that defeated all deaths.
and yet, with that, so many unknowns...so much yet to be revealed...- just like Life. just like my life. and it is so easy to be afraid..it is so easy to think it's not okay...

but No! the death that defeated all deaths, the empty crown upon the empty throne. (was all of heaven crying on the day you left???)... the robes of majesty laid aside, the blood and sweat flow mingled down, the pain of hurt and anger and solitude and darkness and sin and disease and unbelief and rejection and pain.. how could You have let them do that to you???
why did you die for me? what kind of God...?





silence








but no, You say it is okay. and You ask me to take Your hands..and then i understand. and i know now, that for this Love, it was okay.

BLB

so picture this... bright, sunny, beautiful mid-spring day, flowers are out, scents are in the air, skies are blue, squirrels are out and about from their squirrel homes and everyone's got their shades, children and dogs out... and the first thing that comes to my mind this morning is, "i need to properly revise pneumonia today before revision session with the guys. what should i pack for lunch and should i have filter coffee or should i have instant coffee instead? but first, what shall i have for breakfast.. but wait, i had an early dinner last night, but i'm not feeling hungry!! but that's probably because my stress response has dampened my sensitivity to hunger with various hormonal systems.. these include ACTH.. what does ACTH do again???......" and then, as i pick up my M.A.C. concealer (works miracles!), ready to put on my makeup before the routine trip to the library and i think, "MAC - mycobacterium avium complex. yesss! i can remember what it stands for!" and then hours later, over at rob's flat, i let out a massive outburst at the mention of the mitchell library and had to confess to 3 other medics that i do love spending time in libraries and it was then that i realised, "oh my goodness, carol, you are such a geek!!!"

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

the best tasting leftovers in glasgow tonight.

meanwhile, it is soooo hard to find food that hits a spot in these chinese-deprived british cities... arghs... leaving me to my own devices... *grumble* i totally miss it in singapore when u can have a taste in mind, walk out of the door, come back in a half hour with just the right snack / dish to satiate your craving... it's totally not happening here... disgusting! what i need right now would be those bo luo buns from crystal jade kitchen... oh my word.. what i would give for one of those right now.... bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun bo luo bun...

watch this space.

watch this space : LENT BLOG 2006 .

no other

"Remember the former things,
those of long ago;
I am God, and there is no other;
I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the begining,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say: My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please."
-Isaiah 46:9-10

10 things i love about me!

10 reasons why carol is a nice, happy girl:

1. she has recently found her voice in julie doiron.
2. she has lots of shiny, happy friends!
3. she gets her 5 servings of fruit and veg!
4. she has lots of nice clothes!
5. she has healthy, shiny, black hair!
6. she is happy where she is and doing what she does!
7. she has a balanced study and social life!
8. she has recently been getting to know her guitar better!
9. she is single and carefree!
10. she has the best Daddy who loves and takes care of her no matter what the circumstances, no matter if she has friends or not, no matter if she has money or not, whether or not she has friends, no matter which country she is in and whether or not she's been naughty or nice. :)
and He is also the single one person she aims to please.

singapore.glasgow.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

"my people.... will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will receive a double portion in their land, and everylasting joy will be theirs." - Isaiah 61:7