| Sunday, 8 April 2007 |
| because blood's more alkaline than water (part2) |
Oh I forgot to mention that my brother is getting a car this time round. Yes. My mom specially flew down to get him a car this week.
Am I jealous? *Can you smell the jealously? Hurhur!*
Not really, because I haven't gotten my license yet, and I'm sure that after I get it, my parents would probably let me drive the cars back here as well. Plus, they are already sponsoring my Europe trip this coming May, so I really shouldn't complain.
But still, he's getting a car. Its been something he has been begging and hinting at for quite some time now. Bet he can't wait for it.
Another thing. I just found out from my aunt yesterday that one of my distant cousins got admitted for some sort of potentially damaging illness.
He was having a fever (39.6), nausea, vomiting and even nose bleeds, and apparently, he is not showing signs of the knee jerk reflex. Plus the boy's only 5 this year. Doesn't it sound familiar?
When I first heard about it, a chill when down my spine because the whole loss of nervous function coupled with fever thing reminded me of Polio which we did for one of our PBL cases long long ago. Plus he's only 5... and Polio loves to strike children of that age range. But then I sorta remembered that children in S'pore are vaccinated to protect them from Polio... so I was sorta bummed.
Then my aunt had to ask me for my opinion of the matter. Obviously I was VERY reluctant to share, because I don't think its nice to tell the whole extended family around the table, that the boy may have Polio. (Plus I haven't even passed my M1 pros yet, so really, I don't thing I should be sharing my views about Medicine any time soon.)
But you know how relatives are. They just keep bombarding you, so I just tried to stall for time by asking for more information, and if the doctors did any other tests. They told me that he had to do a Lumbar Puncture, and that my cousin cried and cried because it was so darn painful. (I immediately thought of my group's FRS topic...) But the test results were negative of any virus, infection or anything.
Anyway, his fever has already subsided, but he is still not responsive to the knee jerk reflex. But apparently, his calcaneal reflex is still working... so it might be his L3, L4 nerves are damaged by infection or something.
Or hopefully its just part of the recovery phase and he'll get it back again. I don't really know, cause I'm not a doctor or an expert in this field.
Anyway, the bottom line is that I was really quite uncomfortable with the idea that I was forced to think about the whole situation because the person involved was a relative of mine. Nevermind the fact that he was only remotely related to me.
But the thought of the boy running around during Chinese New Year this year was enough to pretty much freak me out. Its quite scary when you realise that a relative of yours is having a potentially lethal or life altering disease.
And its quite unfortunate that, from now on, I'm going to be the one they go to for opinions on this matter. I mean, I going to be the one telling them bad news, stuff that they don't necessarily want to hear.
Which left me feeling quite certain that I might not be very welcome at future family gathering and dinner parties. Hehe.
Sidenote: MARTIN LEE'S NOTES FOR RENAL ARE KILLING ME.Labels: family |
posted by voldemort33 @ 11:08  |
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