A trip to Surgery Room

Assalamualaikum wrt wbt..

Despite the abundance of work that I need to do, I feel like sharing a story from my day, probably one of the most valuable experience in my life..=). A bit outdated maybe, but I think the memory remained well-preserved fresh, at least for me..

Last Wednesday, Naziha and I was arranged to go see a hip replacement surgery at St. Thomas Hospital, just a couple of minutes from Vandy. This was not just an ordinary hospital visit. We were about to see how "surgical retractors" were being used in operating room, in order to give us a good idea to proceed on our engineering senior design project..

Okay, let's back that up a lil' bit. Before I went on with the surgery story, let me give you guys a good sight of what our senior project is all about..

Basically we're designing a "modular retractor" used specifically for hip replacement surgery. Retractors are simple bended metal made from surgical steel, surgeon used them to separate tissues from bone. They have same basic shape and design concept, the differences are only the handle length and the tip. Our project goal is to improve the current retractors design to become modular - by having mechanisms to lengthen the handle, and to be able to detach and connect the tip. It's a straight-forward concept, but far from the easy neighborhood...We can go for a complicated design, might work, but simple is what we're aiming for. And an engineer would understand how hard it is to make a design to be the simplest..KISS (keep it simple stupid, as my Prof. puts it)..Apart from the hard work, I'm loving the whole project because I got to use my 4-year engineering knowledge, and finally put it into action. These are some examples of retractors:

Alright..back to the story...we arrived at the hospital around 930am, met with Dave (our advisor, an Engineer working for Zimmer). We were expected to be in the OR at 11am, but only able to get in around 12pm due to some technical misunderstandings...Regardless of that, we got ourselves a permanent badge, mind you, PERMANENT badge. Means we can go to any surgery at anytime we want..=P..I guess that happened by mistake. Two businessmen that came in before us for surgery observation only got a stick-on name tag. haha. The old lady at the counter must have been pitying us so much for having to wait for hours...=P

hours of waiting, paid off.. =p

The OR, looks so much like in the movie. I'm a big fan of House MD and ER myself, so I appreciated it very much. We were wearing scrubs, complete with the mask with plastic covering just in case blood splattered, and yeah, shoe covering, if we stepped on blood (eww..gory! =/). The patient was lying down on the surgery table when we got in, anesthesied. In the OR, there were the head surgeon, Dr. Christie (our so-called client), 2 other doctors (Dr. I guess..), 1 lady whose job to pass on the surgical tool to the surgeon, an anesthesiologist, 2-3 nurses to help finding surgical instruments, a guy who observed the video system, Dave, and us two. Poor guy on the surgery table..! =/

As for the surgery, it did not look anything like in the movie, especially this one! A lot of hammering, drilling, sawing..simply put, carpentry work! =P.. I guess that's how hip replacement surgery was supposed to be like. And the people around the patient, well, they were less dramatic than the ones in ER or House MD. They all worked peacefully and silently, each person knew what other person wanted, absolutely with no words uttered.. I was understood that they had worked as a team in every surgery, that made them understand each other to that level.

Throughout the surgery, Dr. Christie communicated with us - me and Naziha..he told us every step he was doing, and commented on the surgical tool when he used them, wherever he found flaws on them. Sometimes he pulled out a retractor used on the patient, showed it to us who had to stand 3 feet away from the surgery area, and told us how we can make the design better (and yeah, it was covered with blood..). And one time, a small part like a screw came off a tool, and fell down INTO the patient's wound. Then he said to us, "See this, girls...this is exactly why I don't want screws or small parts on the retractors.. ". that didn't happen everytime, and it happened that time when we were watching! well maybe he did it on purpose,in any way, that was super AWESOME =)

The surgery went on for about 4 hours...and we were standing most of the time, we sat when our hips were beginning to ache. (Imagine how the surgeons feel...) Well actually, there were some dilly dally during the operation - Dr. Christie had to go to the restroom, missing surgical instruments, misplaced stuff and what not. And a bad-tempered nurse was not helping at all. Make that two! =/. There were times where they argued, and bad-facing each other.. It was not all happy after all. We chit-chatted with the video guy, he said that that did not happened everytime however. But people will always be people.. be it in a normal office, even in a surgery room..

We managed to consult Dr. Christie before and after the surgery, showed us our design ideas so far..and he liked it. He and Dave suggested some ideas..we gave us ours..It was all in all a fruitful discussion.

We went back around 4pm. We missed Zohor because we were in the OR that time (astaghfirullah..=(..). But all in all, we gained a lot in one day! I was proud of myself for not to faint in the OR..hehe. And we got more design ideas, a PERMANENT badge...and yeah, a wonderful experience that only came once in a lifetime! =)..ALHAMDULILLAH...

"Mengapa anda belum bersedia untuk mati.."

Assalamualaikum wrt..

Hari tu masa cuti summer kat Malaysia, diri berkesempatan menghadiri program STC (Summer Training Camp) Malaysia anjuran MISG (Malaysian Islamic Study Group US & Canada) yang dibuat di Kem Rimba Tamu di Batang Kali, Hulu Selangor. Program tu bertujuan mengeratkan ukhuwah antara pelajar yang bakal 'fly' ke US dengan pelajar US yang sudah pun berada di sana dan yang balik bercuti ke Malaysia....

Secara keseluruhan, program tersebut tercapai objektifnya. Walaupun personally, diri berpendapat modul yang digunakan agak tak bertepatan dengan 'intellect level' para perserta.. (dioranglah yang bijak bestari..bukan saye..). Kalau sape2 yang pernah dengar pasal KBM (Keindahan Bersama Mu), modul tulah yang digunakan. Modulnya bagus, sesuai untuk program motivasi sekolah, tapi mungkin tak kena dengan misi visi program ni kot.. wallahu'alam..

Kat sini diri nak kongsi sikit salah satu slot yang dibuat pada malam terakhir program tu.

Malam tu, dalam dewan, kitorang diberi sehelai kain hitam setiap sorang untuk menutup mata. Pastu lampu dipadamkan dan kitorang telah ditarik sorang demi sorang dan didudukkan secara jarak2 dari kawan masing-masing...kesian kat sape2 yang lemah semangat sikit tu..dalam fikiran waktu tu, 'ni mesti nak letak sorang2 kat tengah hutan or tepi sungai ni..omakk takutnyee..'.

Mujurlah sangkaan diri meleset..

Jadinya, nak dipendekkan cerita, malam tu kitorang telah diberi kesedaran mengenai hakikat 'MATI'. Untuk menjaga copyright modul KBM tersebut, diri tak ceritalah secara detail perjalanan slot malam tu. (ada yang kena saman kang..huhu). Secara peribadi, memang terkesanlah kat diri sendiri ni..dengan bunyi bunyian yang menakutkan dan siap bau asap kemenyan (ish, tercerita pulak), terputus kejap hati diri dengan kerisauan, masalah dan beban keduniaan. Waktu tu memang lidah dah basah dengan pelbagai kalimah ilahi je..

Lepas sesi bergelap gelapan dan menutup mata tu, kitorang telah didudukkan di dalam bulatan dan kemudian setiap seorang secara bergilir gilir di dalam bulatan perlu menjawab soalan cepumas yang diberikan...

"Mengapa Anda Belum Bersedia Untuk Mati"??

Saya belum bersedia untuk mati kerana:

"..saya masih belum tunaikan tanggungjawab terhadap ibu bapa.."

"..saya anak derhaka, degil dengan mak ayah.."

"..saya banyak dosa..solat fardhu pun kadang kadang tak cukup dan tak rasa bersalah pun tertinggal.."

"..tanggungjawab sebagai anak, ibu dan isteri (insyaAllah satu hari nanti), belum disempurnakan.."

...

Adalah antara jawapan yang diberikan.

Jawapan diri pulak:

"Saya belum bersedia untuk mati sebab saya masih rasa takut kepada mati.."

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Betul, kita tak tahu saat mana, tempat mana, umur berapa nyawa kita akan diragut Malaikat Maut...semuanya dah tercatat di Luh Mahfuz sejak azali..

dan realitinya, kita tengok dan kita sendiri saksikan mcamana orang2 yg kita kenal di sekeliling kita pergi macamtu je tanpa disangka2...

Bila jadi macamtu, timbul kesedaran kat diri...bila2 je Allah boleh tarik nyawa ni..sedang aku solat, sedang aku bermain, sedang aku melagho atau sedang aku membuat maksiat.....na'uzubillahi minzaalik =(

Tapi malangnya kesedaran ni tak lama, bukan? bila dah lama sikit, alpa semula, lalai semula....yaa ayyuhannas..ittaqullah!

Dan pada pendapat diri sendiri, diri tak rasa bersedia untuk mati selagi diri masih rasa takut untuk mati...dan takut mati tu kenapa? sebab takut amalan tak cukup, takut hidup tak diredhai Allah, takut sebab tak sempat minta ampun kat mak ayah...dan destinasi seterusnya cukup jelas untuk orang2 yg semacam ni kan? takut kan kan kan?

Jadinya sebab kita tak tahu pun hari mana waktu bila nyawa ni akan ditarik, tugas kita bermula saat ini adalah untk hilangkan rasa takut utk mati tu dengan cara mengatasi sebab2 datang rasa tkut tu.....let us all be a good Muslim/ah!

This is a friend of a friend, who was diagnosed with blood cancer...

his blog - http://masafzal.blogspot.com/

May Allah grant this brother continuous strength in this dunya and happiness in the hereafter...

Semoga kita semua berakhir dengan kesudahan yang baik (husnul khaatimah...). AMEEN!

p/s: mari kita sedekahkan Al-Fatihah kepada kaum keluarga kita yg telah pergi mengadap Allah, sahabat handai dan orang sekeliling kita yang kita kenal...semoga roh mereka ditempatkan di kalangan orang2 yang beriman..AL FATIHAH!

Of Sociology...or just some sentences from it =/

Assalamualaikum wrt wbt...

It was such a tiring day.. (people who read older posts would notice this sentence came almost frequently..=P). Math probability quiz that I remembered only 5 minutes before it started, senior design progress oral report (it went bad..), swimming for a time-out, and then an ad-hoc senior design meeting late in the evening. It was hours too late that I was informed we're gonna have another meeting with our senior design advisor tomorrow morning..and I have one complicated CAD drawing due prior to that meeting...[sigh..]

Anyways, my intention was not to bore people about how my day went by...it was simply something else =)

I was reading Sociology 101 text book this morning while working at the reeve front desk. Flipping page by page, skimming word by word, I'm almost ready to doze off.. Suddenly, I came across a sentence or two from the textbook, that I found interesting and I would like to share..

"...Everywhere you look you see things that exist apart from other things---reality consists of parts and pieces. Moreover, at any given moment, you ignore most of what is within your field of vision and block out most sounds within hearing range. Only by selecting what to see and what to hear can we see or hear anything---to see and hear "everything" would overload our senses to the point that we would hear and see nothing. This alerts us to the most fundamental scientific activity: to isolate and define those portions of reality to be studied and explained..."

- Sociology, Rodney Stark, 10th edition

Besides the good wording, I think what is said made a total sense...

In terms of being a student, you have to choose what you wanna to hear, what you wanna to see, and what you wanna do...therefore comes the magic word 'PRIORITIZE'..

A college student who fails to prioritize, losses the valuable time he/she could use to do something more crucial, into doing nothing at all....Or looking at the other extreme, one could do too much tasks, ex: taking more credit hours in semester etc.. Being productive is undeniably good, but being too productive by disregarding one's limit and capacity will lead to 'pancit'ness..thus came the word 'SLACKING' It is only too late that one realizes that the hard work and toil are just fruitless uphill battles......sad..

On the other hand, looking at an Islamic point of view, we cannot select the things in religion that we wanna see or what we wanna hear only.. These 'things' include fiqh issues, quran and hadith, ibaadah etc..

For example, when we're stuck in something that we don't know whether it's haraam or not, we cannot go and seek fatwas that permits it and ignore the others..true, there are khilaafs (perselisihan pendapat) in some issues, but we can't go 'shopping for fatwas' that suits our wants and desires without considering the opinions of other schools of thought that might have stronger proofs...this is just pure ignorance..

Other example would be about quranic verses and hadith..we cannot take just a small chunk of quran verses and leave the other chunk to proof something..most of the time, to get the meaning of an ayat, we have to read the ayat before and the ayat after, sometimes we have to look at other surahs...this is the problem which I've seen happening a lot the with the non-Muslim during interfaith discussions..they argue some issues or teachings in Islam that they found as offensive, used a small chunk of Quranic and hadith verses that sounds like supporting the issue, and blame Islam as a religion that promotes violence.. It's like taking chunks of jigsaw puzzles and leave the rest of it. Can we see the big picture of the puzzle if we do this?

Sometimes they take Quranic verses literally, not being aware that Quran uses classical Arabic that has very deep and beautiful meaning in each words....this is why we are not recommended to read the translation (terjemahan) only to deduce something from the Quran, but to read and understand the exegesis/interpretation (tafsir) as well..

-----

These are what I come up with when reading a small chunk of the paragraph from the 'interesting' Sociology book..

Wait, did I just ignore the knowledge that the book wants to educate me..and wanders around thinking about something else..? =/

Oh well, verily, Allah knows the best....

Back to work!

I feel loved..=)

Assalamualaikum wrt wbt..

Lama dah tak rasa sebahagia ni...=)

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Tempoh hari aku menyatakan hasrat hati kepada ayah, aku nak beli laptop baru..

Harini aku minta pendapat ayah mengenai laptop pilihan aku..ayah memang terer bab-bab komputer ni..

"..bagus...resolusi mantap, gambar cantik..", kata ayah. "Belilah...."

Tapi aku cakap kat ayah aku tak boleh beli lagi..'tadop pitih' bak kata orang kelantan..poket kering lepas balik dari Canada..=p

Terus ayah offer nak sumbang duit untuk beli laptop tu...

"..hmm..tak payah la yah..adek boleh kumpul duit..biasiswa masuk hujung bulan, minggu depan gaji pun masuk..", aku balas cepat-cepat.

Tak pernah aku guna atau minta duit dari mak ayah sejak aku dapat biasiswa bulanan dari MARA.. Dah lama aku bertekad tak nak mintak duit dari mak ayah kalau aku mampu kumpul sendiri...tambah pulak aku bekerja sambilan..mampu je nak menyimpan sampai cukup...

"...Ayah rasa ayah boleh bagi sikit...macamana cara nak hantar?..", ayah balas. Nada macam tak boleh diprovokasi lagi.

Malam ni je dah dua tiga kali ayah call. Nak memastikan nombor aku berfungsi dan lain-lain..nak pastikan duit yang dikirim nanti sampai ke tangan aku.

"Tengahari nanti ayah transfer..OKlah, ayah ada mesyuarat dengan GPK..".

Sebak tiba-tiba.

Bukannya aku tak tahu tahap sibuk ayah kalau dia kat sekolah. Mak selalu cakap, 'ayah adek tu ngalahkan perdana menteri busynya!'.. Busy-busy ayah pun concern lagi pasal anak dara dia yang jauh ni..oh man..terharunyeeee...=(

Tak tahu kenapa aku rasa bahagia sangat. Betul-betul rasa loved. Padahal orang lain selalu je kan mak ayah kirim duit. (jakun ke aku ni? =P)

Mungkin dari kecik lagi aku dah hidup berdikari kot, jarang mintak tolong apa-apa dari famili, terutama mak ayah. Apa-apa semua kalau boleh resolve sendiri, resolve sendiri. Mak pun cakap, dia 'kehilangan' aku sewaktu aku 8 tahun..time really flies..dah besar-besar gini, bila mak ayah offer nak bantu apa2, even bagi nasihat pun..mesti menitik air mata ni...

"...kau kena bagi diorang feel diorg cam still responsible kat kau, cam kau still perlukan diorg, its a great feeling you knoww..", kata seorang kawan.

Betul kot...

Sorry mak, ayah...adek membesar terlalu cepat...

=((

"Ya Allah! Ampunilah bagiku segala dosaku dan juga dosa dua ibu bapaku dan kasihanilah mereka keduanya sebagaimana mereka memelihara dan mendidikku di masa kecil." ----> (DAN BESAR!)

RIS Canada... (6)

Assalamualaikum wrt..

Some note-sharing from one of the class in RIS Knowledge Retreat..

From Dr. Abdal Hakim Jackson

about KNOWLEDGE

- Some of us tend to worship knowledge. We treat knowledge a GOAL rather than the MEANS/TOOLS to live in particular way of life..

- Knowledge is MEANS to an END to Allah’s pleasure.

- “…the point of knowledge is action with accordance to it..”. Which means, when we have the knowledge on something, we have to have act upon it..and also, we need to act on something that we have the knowledge only, don't 'taklid buta'..

- “…knowledge is not sufficient alone, you need wisdom and insight..”

o Rasulullah SAW had WISDOM. He answered different question to different people according to their needs. In a hadith:

A man came to the Messenger of Allah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, and said, "Messenger of Allah, teach me some words which I can live by. Do not make them too much for me, lest I forget." The Messenger of Allah, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, said, "Do not be angry." [Abu Daud]

Some scholars say that the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, knew that the man who asked him used to get angry often and that is why the Prophet, sallallahu ‘alayhi wasallam, gave him that particular advice.

o Knowledge without wisdom can hurt us – we cannot separate interest from principle

- We have to have wisdom and insight to apply the religion to the world we live in. Islam is syumul and is applicable at all time and at different places. Islam doesn't change with time and doesn't need to be changed.

- “…scholars who did not apply the knowledge is like a candle, leads way to others but burnt itself down..”

- Ignorance is better than the knowledge that leads to negligence to Allah SWT.

- “…knowledge has to be accompanied with God-fear..”. Knowledge has to be bounded with taqwa to Allah SWT. Else, we will be misusing the knowledge to something that is destructible to the world and religion.

- The concept of fear to Allah is not only because we fear of His punishment but also what our false action is going to affect our relationship with Allah. – Allah is our sustainer and provides us guidance..we don’t want Allah to leave us in the darkness by affecting our relationship with HIM..

- Knowledge can be used in the right way to gain worldly wealth. There’s nothing wrong with acquiring wealth. In fact, a lot of the companions during Rasulullah SAW's time were wealthy e.g. Siti Khadijah, Abu Bakar, Saidina Uthman. We have to be wealthy physically (money) AND also in heart (iman).

RIS Canada... (5)

Alhamdulillah hi rabbil 'alamin...

All's well that ends well..

Semuanya dah selamat sampai ke rumah masing2..kami di Vandy, Aisyah di Pittsburgh..Lepas drop Aisyah kat Pitssburgh, kami bertiga bertolak ke Vandy..sampai agak lewat jugak since jalan berais dan traffic jam sebab bad weather...bertolak dari Pitts pukul 7pm, sampai Vandy 6am..apa2 pun, alhamdulillah everything went well..

berlatarbelakangkan Niagara Falls..Cantik sangat2 subhanAllah!

To Alia, Nik, Aisyah, Jiha and Zed..Thanks for the great times and ukhuwah guys! We've been through A LOT together even though 2 weeks je.. Mintak ampun salah silap..mintak halal makan minum yerk....

InsyaAllah notes akan dikongsi sikit demi sedikit kat sini...

Ukhuwah itu indah jika bertemu berpisah kerana Allah SWT...

InsyaAllah jika tiada takdir ketemu didunia, kita ketemu di syurga..=)

AMEEN..

RIS Canada... (4)

Assalamualaikum wrt wbt..

Some words to share for today..

(notes from 'Reflections from the Quran' by Imam Zaid Shakir)

What does it mean by 'syayateen attacking us from the front'? How do they attack the son of Adam as such? There are 4 ways:

1) "I will cause them to doubt in the hereafter"

2) "I will make them overly craving for the world"

3) "I will confuse then in religious issues"

4) "I will make sins appealing to them"

Imam Zaid Shakir also said that:

The syaitan is not commanding us to do bad deeds..they CAN'T command us to do anything..only Allah has the power to command. The only thing the syaitan can do is that to whisper and suggest us to do the bad deeds..and if we follow their whispering and actually commit the acts, THEN they had commanded us...

take was was (doubts) for example...syaitan loves to put doubts in our hearts and minds.."have I make wudu'?", "Have I lock the door?", "Did I just forget to do tahiyyat?" etc etc... if this happened:

1) Do zikir - remembrance of Allah, seek refuge in Allah from the syaitan...

2) Recite quran

3) Always be around the believers..