Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Hello there.

I feel so drained lately. Physically, mentally and emotionally.

Feel like taking a really long break and just leave where I am.

Yet it feels like another escapism when I say things like that.

How good it'll be if I can wake up in heaven tomorrow.

Yet it won't be the case because I have a journey that I need to walk through.

Do you feel the same way too?

I kept playing this song again and again.

You know, sometimes fixing your eyes upon Jesus is the antidote to the weariness.

The half-life of this antidote is short so you have to keep doing it again and again. Because as the antidote effect wean off, you feel the weariness again.

I really cannot think of a better solution for now. So I need to keep turning my eyes upon Him, if not I might not be able to make it to the end of this journey.

I really do feel like waking up in heaven :)

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace

Lord I am dry, so please fill my cup :)

What we don't know can, and does, hurt us

Knowing one's weight is very important in healthcare.

I always know my weight. There are many drugs in this world are dosed by body weight.

Vancomycin, a potent antibiotic that kills a multidrug resistant bug, is dosed by actual body weight. If one day i am infected by this bug, I always know what kinda dosing i will give myself because calculating by 15mg/kg 12hrly dosing, the dose is ard there.

Sometimes, I think it's a healthcare-acquired disease - that subconsciously, when you are dosing your patients certain dangerous but life-saving drugs, you tend to help yourself calculating the doses that you need too - just in case you might need them in future. And no one knows how to dose it better than you do.

Eptifibatide - another drug that is used in acute cardiac events, is also dosed by body weight. Ask me next time and I will tell you the dose. This drug costs a bomb too. So the heavier you are, the more expensive it gets.

If you have followed by blog before, I once briefly touched on TB regimen. When one's diagnosed with TB, they will be started on 4 drugs, all dosed by their body weights. In general, it's > 10 pills a day for just TB treatment and for a minimal duration of 6 months. Next time you should tell me your weight, so that I can calculate for you. Have that figures stored in your head just in case... touch wood!

Anyways, if you have known me well enough, perhaps you have heard me talking much about TB.

My eldest brother, a houseman officer in Hospital KL, is recently hospitalized and the primary diagnosis to date is pleural TB. TB is an infection caused by a bug called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. [If you have watched tv, sometimes you will see people in the past got sicked and coughed out blood - that's a TB representation, sort of]

It started with episodes of cold and cough which didn't resolve despite antibiotics (for cough and cold), and when he went for a Chest X ray, it was realized that there's fluid accumulation in his lung. I asked him the presenting symptoms - no shortness of breath, no fever.

Because of the fluid in lung (which is very uncommon), he was hospitalized. A series of test include blood and sputum culture showed negative so far. To put things in perspective, it's extremely hard to grow TB bugs and may take4-8 weeks before any result could be seen. The skin test (Mantoux), another diagnostic test, however told us otherwise.

Some information about The Mantoux test: a small amount of a substance called PPD tuberculin is injected just below the skin of your inside forearm. You should feel only a slight needle prick. Within 48 to 72 hours, a health care professional will check your arm for swelling at the injection site, indicating a reaction to the injected material. A hard, raised red bump (induration) means you're likely to have TB infection. The size of the bump determines whether the test results are significant, based on your risk factors for TB.

My brother has that raised bump.

Because of the fluid in his lung, today he had some painful procedures. The fluid in his lung needed to be drained away so a chest tube was inserted from the back to the lung to drain the fluid away - 1.5L(can u imagine??) of fluid was drained out. At the same time, he had a lung biopsy.

My dad kept asking us that we should call my brother and check on him more often. Daddy said I should talk to brother more cos I am the only one in the family knows what's going on due to the complexity of medical information which can be at times, and after I got the information I can update them so that they understand the whole picture. I guess me and my brother are spiritually-sicked. We always thought that we need to be accountable for our own affairs, bear our own responsibilities without needing to tell people, not even our own family, about the good and bad going on in us.

My sister gave me a serious talk on saturday which really touched me. She mentioned, we(my brother and I) often being too "independent", always think that we are living by ourselves alone out there, often don't care enough to update and communicate to our own family about our own lives. When shit happens to us, we deal with them most of the time ourselves; when we could have shared, leaned on our own family members who really want to care for us, whether we ask for it or not.

I know. I hate being like this, yet I am still like this.

Anyways, I only told them that the hospitals do all these test on my brother so that they can try to grow the TB bugs and if the TB bugs really can't grow much later, that's means he's not actively infected with TB. If it grows then it's TB.

But I didn't tell them that the lung biopsy and lung fluid test were done also to rule out the possibility of cancer. Because one of the reason of fluid accumulation in lung can be malignancy and lung biopsy can tell us if it is. I kept saying it's darn hard to get a TB because we are all immunized since young, unlike the older generation. But if it's not TB it has to be something else. The skin (Mantoux) test can be false positive under some situations, and given the negative results for the rest, honestly, I am worried.

Yet how am I supposed to convey these information to the already so darn worried parents. A simple word like 'maybe' can send them down with a few sleepless night. I wonder if I am too rationale, too healthcare professional-liked, to digest all the information myself.

People asked me if I am afraid of TB.

I said no. Because it can be treated, and it should be treated with properly dosed TB drugs (no under-dosing please!). The course is tedious and painful, with side effects etc, but it can be treated. I will not be worried if it's TB.

What if it's not? I wonder if this is going through in his brain right now.

On a positive note, I don't think it can be cancerous stuff. For he's too young for that, and I know that there's so much in him that God wants to use and will definitely use. I guess he must have created a legacy in his hospital - a houseman down with ?TB - off duty for ? months. It's an atypical path that God is already subjecting him to, and I know that He is in charge of his life. But if it happens, I really hope to be able to see the good out of the difficult things that my brother and my family will have to go through.

Wonder if you ever encountered things that you've never thought will ever occur to you? I did have a fair share of them, including this. I must say, what we don't know can, and does, hurt us. It hurts people who doesn't know Christ even more significantly. I feel that so strongly from my parents.

Dad has been coughing and unwell for near a month.

All I can say is, I can only release the burden of all the difficult things that are on my heart into His hands, cos He is the only One who can lift it off and carry it for me. I hope things go well, really. And if things have to happened, I pray that the timetable of this family is therefore hastened.

He made the burden light :)

Hello! :) How are you?

This week I am working late shift, ie from 930-7pm. Coincidentally, Linqun is also working the same shift, just that she's in outpatient I'm in inpatient.

As I was walking to mrt from hospital yesterday, this tree caught my attention and I thought - wow, it was quite scary hahaha :)

How have you been? This week has been fine for me, and I really thank God for keeping me safe and at peace. Somehow, He made my burden light. If it's the HC 3 months ago, I am sure I will be darn frustrated with things.

Yesterday, I walked into my ward feeling very "Strange". From the entrance, I could heard someone playing songs very loudly from the laptop. The song that the patient played was also

another thing that surprised me. Not sure if you know it, but he's playing "万君之耶和华" from Stream of Praise. To put it more explicitly, he was basically playing the whole album throughout the day.

To me, I think it's quite exciting cos it's really refreshing that someone is blasting the songs I like early in the morning. But as I saw how the other patients in the same cubicle is reacting silently, I felt a little "oops" kinda thing.

Sorry for the randomness. All in all, I am good :)

Perhaps a little updates from me. I have officially started my work in Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. The wards are very new and beautiful but we are still coping with the "newness" as everything has to start from 0 again.

The population in the north is quite different from what we have in AH last time. The people here are younger and with more acute conditions. I was quite overwhelmed these 2 weeks because I find it quite challenging to manage my patient's medical conditions and their therapies. At the same time, I am excited - because I know God is training me clinically. I am really thankful because things have not been that bad, and I have good people whom I can seek inputs from when I need people to throw me insights as to how to manage my patients.

All in all, I'm very grateful of God's timely providence and grace. Amen :)

Because my shift starts later, I have more time in the morning. I have ample time to quiet down myself before starting my day and I really like it :) And I can stay up late the night before to do and dig whatever I like, how good is that!

I have been eating dinner with lin qun lately. It's weird that I often tell myself that I should not eat dinner because I exercise less lately and my metabolism is slowing down, so I should reduce on my intake. But at the end of the day, when me and Linqun left work, we are incredibly hungry and we often resolved to a big feast for dinner. It has been like that for the entire week and I just had KFC with her how bad is that? Today has been mentally challenging for me actually - cos I encountered things that I haven't come into before and more drug questions are coming from doctors too. I think I'm a lucky girl because I have a chance to deal with these issues and I am starting to like psycho-geriatric wards :D Yea so at the end of the day, I was really really tired and hungry and I need to binge. :D

There's this eating place in yishun which I wanted to tell John and Huijun badly last saturday but I forgot. It is founded by this ex-drug addict and he continues taking in such kind of people to work here. The food is really nice and affordable and the people there are okay too. Yea, it's me and linqun feasting again :D

ACCP conference is starting this friday. It is a 3-day conference so I was quite sian about it hahaha. I am presenting on Sunday 5pm. The slides are done, I hope it's well done though. Wish me luck :)

Some pics here:

Obesity doesn't come from one time Binging

Hello, how are you?

I have not been writing. There's a lot of apprehension when I am about to blog. I questioned myself many times, who are you? Who are you and why are you here reading what I'm writing? Did you come here because you've nothing better to do and would like to get gossip topics about hooi ching? Or do you come because you know me. You really know me, and would like to know what's going on in me and how has my life been?

Honestly, I did think about ending this blog because it reveals a lot of weaknesses in me that I cannot extricate myself from, yet. I was then reminded how painful it was to shut down a blog because it meant closing down the stories - be it your own or those you shared with other people. I felt a sharp pain in the heart and was awakened. You must be wondering, why am I so free reflecting on this not-so-important issue like whether I should end a blog or not? I guess it's because I feel so rotten inside out already, and my perceptions towards things and people have been quite skewed of late.

Today I did start reading the book of Psalm. If you're also doing your quiet time with God, I encourage you to start at this book too. It's a gem :) Are you now starting to wonder why someone as rotten as me will think book of Psalm is a gem? Instinctively, I have an answer to it -- It's because this book exists for people like me - rotten, helpless, praying for hope and strength, and the perspective towards many things.

I am a nobody. I cannot flaunt about myself being a faithful Christian despite attending church and listening to sermons regularly. Because many times I feel that i'm like a sink with an open drain - nothing gets retained.

I have a confession.

I haven't met God in the longest time ever. I can now tell you that this is the worst method to live your life. It gives a downward spiraling effect that only engulfs you more and more to the point of utter hatred towards life. Why?

Because life is simple. There are only 2 ways to live your life:

ONE: "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night." The way of righteous.

TWO: "... They are like chaff and the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment

, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.".The way of wicked.

My compass must have been under-construction, if not why do I feel that I'm the foolish one walking towards the 2nd path? Fortunately, I know I am fine despite I don't feel fine right now. Whatever happened, I just want to walk with God and meet Him now.

Today, I have another confession. (Yeah again!)

I want to re-discover myself before the Lord once again. I want to stop judging myself outside of Christ and start seeing myself in the realm of Christ. I need to stop hating myself for not doing what's supposedly right. Today, I need to present the accumulated bitterness to God and ask for forgiveness.

All in all, I need to really wake up. :( I have to stop feeling lousy and ashamed of myself because I don't need to. I don't need to because I am God's precious child, all I need to do is answer to Him and not others. I don't need to feel lousy because

any incompleteness in me is to be and can only be made complete in Him, only if I welcome Him into my life again. I should stop getting angry with myself for keep doing the wrong things because He knows my inert inability to do so and I will one day overcome them when I start praying and not rely on my limited wisdom.

Today I am also one step closer to letting go.

I should have done so long time ago, for it is taking too much of me, and making me too unhappy. Slowly but surely I promise You. I should let myself go and stop living

life using the myriad solutions that the world can offer, only to realize that I ended up on the 2nd path. I ought to start practising on how to let go of them and get reformatted all over again. I

know one day, You will make me strong like a tree planted by the river... and the leaves don't wither.

Sometimes people just need to start getting serious. Throughout the church camp that just passed, I realized one thing - that is the people on the stage --> they are dead serious about God and His words. They are dead SERIOUS you know? I got electrocuted for a moment actually - must be I have not been serious! And that life had been okay then and there and the accumulated grace from the past seemed to be STILL sustaining me through.

But then, the only change I need to make in order to get back to the right track again is to be serious first!

I know after saying all these, I will still make mistakes, still get into things that make me and people miserable in one way or another. But I shall let You give me a bolus of hope now. Show me that obesity really doesn't come from one time Binging!

ps: sorry for the incoherent thoughts. I can't explain myself actually :(