This week was the first week in haemo. Compared to the exciting and new diseases we saw in neuro/stroke + neurosurg last rotation, everything seems so dry. Can't really blame them, I suppose. On the first day, there was at least 4 patients with the same acronym in their diagnosis: DLBCL...diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. That's not really a problem though. The problem is that the patient list was only 6 patients long. Haha, not much variety in the world of haemo. OK, so maybe I'm not being very fair. In all honesty, stroke was a little boring as well. If anything, there was even less variety there. MCA infarct, ACA infarct, PCA infarct, cerebellar infarct, basal ganglia infarct and all the above with haemorrhage as well. But at least all those things we could comprehend. If you cut off the oxygen and glucose supply to a section of the brain, you're going to get corresponding neurological symptoms. All you need is a tinkle of neuroanatomy to understand that. Now in haemo, it is true that there is only anaemias, leukaemias and lymphomas but there are so many sub-categories, all with their own different pathophysiology to learn.

Just this Friday gone, Yeu Sheng and I went over to haemo clinic after our ID tute. Unfortunately, god graced us with the opportunity to sit in with Dr. Quach...who is as enthusiastic as Andrew Wei and as demanding as Gerry Ahern. Bad combination...for us anyway. First patient: CML. First question: So what classic gene mutation causes CML? First answer: um... LOL, only after she kindly reminded us of 9:22 Philadelphia and Gleevac did all those Andrew Wei lectures come floating back into our minds. *sigh* And also unluckily enough, she is giving us a content-based tute this coming week so all our questions became homework on which she will quiz us in the tute. *groan* As you can already guess from the title of this post, I learned one important lesson from that day's clinic: keep your mouth shut if you don't want work (of course, if you know the answer already, not really applicable =P)