first female

longest day of the week is over!

phew, am just glad that i had my attachment on monday instead of friday.if not, i'll be dreading for it to come for the rest of the week. anyhow..i havent been doing any reflection on the attachment since the new term began. we've been doing revisions for the past three weeks, pulse&blood pressure on the 1st week, respiratory system on the 2nd. and we did the cardiovascular system today. had a different doctor as our doctor was away for holidays(i think). the usual run through of questions that we need to ask for the history taking before johnny, sheila and i were asked to take history from a 65 year-old man. he was all chatty, which was good. heh. that you dont have to probe much questions. classic example of cardiac problem, chest pain+shortness of breath+orthopnea. and he had bypass about ten months ago. he told us that he was just in the hospital for about a week for the surgery. after being discharged, he went home and not long after he was readmitted to the hospital due to accumulation of fluid in lungs. and apparently he stayed longer in the hospital for that rather than when he had the bypass surgery.
once we're done with him, we had another patient and this time a 58 year-old lady. took history from her and heh, i found it easier to take history without the gp being there watching.haha. he was busy with another two of my groupmates doing examination on the first patient that we had. once we're done with history taking from the lady, our doctor asked me and johnny to examine her. and fyi, that was my first female patient ever.i mean, for this kind of examination, i usually got male patients. and you would just asked them to take their top off, no problem. but with female patients, i wasnt quite sure really...it sounded stupid but.., do you ask them to take their top off or what? you certainly cannot ascultate properly through the shirt.... so yeah, i wasnt sure.. i asked johnny to go first and he asked me to go first. i ended up doing the examination. it was relatively easy but heh, i could sense that the patient sensed our akwardness that she became uncomfortable. haih, bad bedside manner.. which i very much need to work on.

and she told us that she came to the doctor because of the swelling ankle. she was only beginning to take a healthier life approach:exercising+stop smoking+healthy diet and all. but she told us that her cardiac problems started appearing once she started the healthy lifestyle. ironic isnt it?


and heee, sheila drove us to the gp today.. eventho she was so nervous of driving, we got there safely..haha. guess she just isnt use to it yet. it'll be handy from this week onwards as i dont have to fork out like almost ten quids just for the cab.