Glioblastomas

are tumors that arise from astrocytes—the star-shaped cells that make up the “glue-like,” or supportive tissue of the brain. These tumors are usually highly malignant (cancerous) because the cells reproduce quickly and they are supported by a large network of blood vessels.

The occurrence of glioblastoma is rare, so so so rare that in most European and North American countries, incidence is approximately 2-3 new cases per 100,000 people per year and usually by the time patients are diagnosed, they have a median survival rate of 4.5 months without treatment; 15 months with treatment.

Glioblastoma took away a dear brother in Christ yesterday, leaving behind his wife and three young sons. Felt glad for him that in a way that he had definitely fulfilled the missions God had for him on earth and is home now with our heavenly Father for eternal life, yet still felt unjust and sad for his family because it is those that are left behind whom suffers the most. They will need to go through this unbearable degree of pain of losing someone so dear and loved to them. 

Unlike the toughest physical pain, labor pains which passes and will be forgotten once it passes, it is this form of emotional pain that just etches and roots itself deep within your heart, resurfacing with every opportunity it has, just so that you will not forget, this degree of incomprehensible, indescribable pain.

With the demise of this brother, we are once reminded of God's sovereignty, how God has the ultimate control over our lives and how His plans for us might not necessarily be the plans we have for ourselves way earlier.

Coincidentally, I came across this as I was tumblr-surfing.

"Mankind still have so much to do, but so little time and effort left
to allow great things to happen."

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelations 4 : 21

Of happies and saddies,

So many things have happened of late! 

One of the greatest happies that just happened recently is this!

Krabi, Thailand

07.04.13-10.04.13

My friends and I just came back from a trip at Krabi, Thailand and it was a really amazing holiday. I have always enjoyed beach holidays, so Krabi is just perfect. 

It was a perfect getaway from all the neuroscience craziness we are all in the midst in right now(we are all Medical students) as in we have great values for food, scenery, food, entertainment, food, souvenirs and more food.

Krabi is just budget-able within a varsity student's means. It is not that touristy like Phuket, well when a place is a major tourist site, everything will be pricey and its not that there is no one else other than the fifteen of us in Krabi, there are, tonnes more Caucasians, Asians but the crowd is just nice to make you feel comfortable. 

This is our first overseas holiday together,
there will be more to come in near future, hopefully

I really really really had a great time there
and I certainly will visit Krabi again if given a chance.

Another happies will be, I AM TURNING 21 TOMORROW!

I am happy about it, not particularly euphoric, ecstatic, elated about it but well, there is just this deep sense of comfort within me that I am turning twenty-one tomorrow.

My friend once said, when you turn twenty-one, you have legally earned your right to a death sentence. That statement kinda left me dumbstruck but it reminded me once more how I am indeed an adult now I can no longer be in denial about it, I am solely accountable for my actions, and I still have so much more to learn, to see and to experience about adulthood though I cannot deny that I am enjoying that extra tinge of freedom I have right now.

I do not know, is it normal that once you have hit another milestone in your life, thoughts will start to flood through you and make you wonder what is ahead for you in another ten, twenty or thirty years time? I know it did for me, there has been a lot of reflection and thinking these couple of days, for me, about life and I am still praying to God to paint me a clearer picture about it. 

Do not get me wrong, its not that I am unhappy about how things are for me right now, I am happy about how things are for me right now. 

I have my family who love and adore me to bits though they might not be really expressive about it most of the times ahhh well that is what that happens when you are an Asian but it is also through their tiny actions and seemingly insignificant encouragement that reminds me how much they love me, and I really really really love all of them.

I have an amazing boyfriend whom self-acknowledges that his sole duty is to make me a happy princess HAHA even if that means a lot more teasing and bullying FROM ME ahhh he is all in for it, heh I love him deep down to the core too. 

I am on my way to be what I have dreamt of ever since I was what, thirteen or fourteen. I still have another three more years to go before I graduate to be a doctor, I am very very very excited about that and the current advancement of the Medical field in terms of technology and theory, they still never cease to interest and fathom me. There are still so much to explore, understand and learn about our amazing human body.

I have currently reach this juncture of life where I am contented with the people I am surrounded with. There are good friends to share with and good acquaintances to have a good laugh with.

Life is quite settled and good for me, as a twenty-one years old young adult, I could not thank God for blessing me enough.

So there you go for all my happies, well they should really be happies seeing how much I wrote about them haha so I will make my saddies real short and neat because they are hmmm saddies.

Saddies number one : I did not get to participate in our 13th General Election. In a couple blog post prior this, I mentioned how excited I am if I am able to vote for this coming 13th GE but oh well, it did not happen that way for me, so I have another FIVE more years to go before I can fulfill my duty as a Malaysian.

Saddies number two : I mentioned too in a few blog posts before this about my application to the Malaysian Medical Fellowship to be a volunteer of their mission team. About two months have passed by, some of my friends have gotten theirs and I have not received any news till now, so I guess that is it. I could not deny that I am rather disappointed and upset about it because I have taken up a lot of courage to set my mind straight to be a blessing to others. On the other hand I could plan for another holiday with my friends yay.

Basically today I wrote about the two happies and two saddies for me. What are your happies and saddies?

A good day indeed

I had the chance to experience God's kindness and love through a good Samaritan today.

Her actions reminded me how God send His one and only beloved son to earth, to help the woeful soul, to awaken the doubtful ones, to empathize the longing soul and to die for us, the sinful ones, for our salvation, so that we will have eternal life in Christ.

Today is really a good day, which I will give all my thanks to God.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, 

“You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Mark 10 : 21

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise

The extensive measures humans have done, are doing and will do to cave into social convention or in other words, the norm, simply baffles me.


In sociology a social rule refers to any social convention commonly adhered to in a society. These rules are not written in law or otherwise formalized. It is argued that these rules are socially constructed, that these rules act upon every member of a society, but at the same time, are re-produced by the individuals.

In order to gain societal acceptance, mankind are succumbed to uncalled-for social issues, such as peer pressure, racism, discrimination, physical abuse, emotional negligence,moral declination, prostitution, poverty and many more. 

Even right now as we are living in the twenty-first century, we are nowhere close to addressing all these issue yet somehow, one way or another, we manage magnify them. 

Oh well, this adds on to another incredulous never-ending cycle. 

Like what I said, it baffles me, and I am certainly still struggling with this. How I wish, how I wish sometimes that I am Sheldon Cooper. I will have more reasons to be inconceivable at implausible times.

 

 "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise"

Stay away from fools, for you won't find knowledge on their lips.

Proverbs 14:7

Shadow proves the sunshine

I noticed how my blogging pattern has a monthly cycle. I could lament on my busy schedule of being a Medical student, my endless preparation for the upcoming 34th Asian Medical Students' Conference in July which include tonnes of meetings and appointments and how I just do not feel the need to blog about anything at all and that I have no idea on topics to blog about. 

I have nothing to complain about, because this is what I want and I chose to be. I will save the reasons for me to be a health care professional for another post.

As unhappening things might seem to be for me, I have a good feeling that my end of semester break this coming July and August will be indeed a fruitful one.

First of all, in early July, I will be involved as the organizing committee of The 34th Asian Medical Students' Conference Malaysia. It is a week long conference involving 450 international delegates from 25 countries in the world. I am excited about it. Together with the rest of the team, we have spent nearly 18 months (by July) of sweat and tears to make this happen. All our hard work in preparing and organizing this conference will bear fruit in the end through a wholesome experience and knowledge gained by the delegates regarding community medicine; and through every single friendship made among people from every continent when they are all gathered here for this conference.

Then I am hoping that in early August, I can be part of the Malaysian Medical Fellowship mission team to visit either of these three countries, Sri Lanka, China and Thailand. I have just submitted my application as seen above so now all I need to do is to wait for the committee to screen through my application. 

I came to know about this organization and its program through a friend. I should say that I was quite moved after scrutinizing through its webpage three days ago. I wanted to submit my application to be a volunteer instantaneously but I held back. The fear and worries of visiting a third world country suddenly came flooding me. I have been overseas, but to developed countries such as the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, Bangkok(the developed city of Thailand), Manilla. I know that I am a lucky girl because I had all the great stay, food and sightings in these comfort zone.  Rural villages at any of the countries of my choice are associated with words such as "poor", "grief-stricken", "under-developed" etc.

I prayed about this for the past few days, asking God to give me the courage to overcome my fear. I know that this mission trip will be a meaningful and blessed one, not only to me, but mainly to the less unfortunate people I will come across with during the mission trip. Plus, I really feel the need to step out of my comfort zone and if I am really doing it, by benefiting and helping others, why would not I do it?

I did just complete and submit my application about an hour ago. I am really looking forward to this.

I am glad that I have God to guide me through this right now and much later.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"

Philippians 4 : 13

THE GIANT CATASTROPHE

that did not happen literally on the 21st of December 2012 but rather here on rachelramblebabble that lead to a moment of silence and stillness here.

Well what should I say, year 2012 ended while year 2013 started arduously with endless of papers and evaluation to assess all the necessary clinical skills or medical knowledge I should have as I am already halfway through my second year. That by all means should suffice to justify my month-long of blogger silence even though my semester break began bout five days ago. 

 As I am typing this, millions of thoughts started to rummage through my mind while I am trying hard enough to figure out what should this post be rather than allowing my first post in 2013 to really be a piece of rambleblabble.

Hmmmm so far year 2013 has been pretty decent to me, there is not much of daily shocking hoohaa drama neither many days did passed by without being tad bit happening. Perhaps, a better word to describe my daily living will be "mundane". Please do not get me wrong, I am not complaining that life is boring or uneventful for me right now on the contrary, uneventful is good, it is really good indeed in the medical world. I am glad and comfortable when things fall into routine, it is good, to me; routine enables one to be organized and well-planned; routine will lead to this re-assuring, calming feeling which once again is something good for someone hot tempered like me.

I wonder what new year resolutions you all have in mind? I do not have a lot of big plans for year 2013, knowing that it will really be a taxing year ahead. All I want and ask for would be for God's wisdom and peace to be upon me as I journey through each day. With God's wisdom bestow upon me, I know that all decisions I make, no matter how gargantuan or minuscule they seem, will be align with the plans He has for me; with God's peace granted on me, I know that no matter how demanding, disappointing, rewarding, exciting my days would be, I have Him to count on, I have Him to be my faithful listener.

 I guess from this post you can clearly tell that I began my year with lots of thanksgiving though Thanksgiving Day is really still 876318467816871 days ahead in 2013, but I strongly believe that is how it should be, one should count his blessings everyday and of course all the credits will go to our Father in heaven.

In the beginning of year 2013 as I was tumblr-surfing, this post flooded my dashboard:

“Start on January 1st with an empty jar. Throughout the year write the good things that happened to you on little pieces of paper. On December 31st, open the jar and read all the amazing things that happened to you that year.”

I have yet started on this but oh well, there are about 10 more days to go for the month of January, and you have February, March, April MY BIRTHDAY MONTH AND I TURN 21 ZOMG yada dida until the month of December then POOF IT WILL BE YEAR 2014 ALREADY ZOMG so I guess I am not late at all to start this, would you be joining me in this?

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

John 3:16

As we converse daily,

more often than not, we always take the context of our daily conversation for granted. 

Research shows that words have emotional, physical and spiritual impact. The words we speak can lift an individual up or send him into a downward spiral. They can cause physical changes in one's body and change the spiritual atmosphere.

Words have the power to build bridges. They have the capacity to close the gap between one and other. They can also demolish bridges and make it impossible to heal a rift.

God spoke words in the spiritual realm to make things happen in the physical world. When God wants something to happen in the natural realm - He speaks. God spoke our physical world into existence.

Words, the basis of communication, are more powerful than we realize. They have the power to wound or to heal; discourage or encourage; tear down or build up an individual, just by words. 

Once again, today I am reminded that words could be hurtful. The logic behind this is because mankind feel words with their hearts, they will be hurt when they received words their heart would forbade them from saying to certain people.


As our days pass by, how many of us actually think about the words we said and the power they carry? 


“Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” 

― Benjamin Franklin

clinging on to memories,

just because we are humans and we are emotionally wired that way.

Biologically, the red highlighted area is where our memory is being stored.

The hippocampus is a horse-shoe shaped area of the brain that plays an important role in consolidating information from short-term memory into long-term memory. It is part of the limbic system, a system associated with emotions and long-term memories. The hippocampus is involved in such complex processes as forming, organizing, and storing memories.

From time to time, if not most of our waking minute, we constantly find ourselves swimming through waves of memories. Good or bad, they can be easily triggered by familiar person, objects, scent, surroundings or sounds. 

A huge portion of our memories carry the objective of  increasing mankind's productiveness and efficacy. In other words, we remember(generate memory) for the sake of achieving a goal. It could be as simple as remembering shopping lists to memorizing solid facts. 

The irony of mankind, despite having such highly functional brain is that the brain tend to generate its own "fictitious" memories, in other words, there is a possibility that our brain "remembered" something that did not happen. This is mainly the reason why human memories are considered unreliable.

 

Memories, be it good or bad will always be an undefinable paradox. Sometimes they will come in handy. Yet most of the time we find ourselves in a constant battle with an unforeseen victory ahead, the battle between remembering and forgetting. Hence, we hold on to our memories even tighter, but without us realizing, losing them too.