Sports Medicine posting at Institut Sukan Negara, Bukit Jalil

I think it's better if I went by the format of what happened throughout the days since the posting is only a week long. But you learn so much, and it was quite fun, though it has to be said the only sport I enjoy participating in is sleeping, which I figure requires extreme stamina in order to be fully mastered.

Again, apparently UPM is the only medical school in Malaysia that offers this posting, according to Dr Jasmiza Khuzairi (a 3rd batch senior and also a sports medicine MO working at ISN). Sports medicine is pretty much what it says on the can, the practise of medicine pertaining to sports. No OTs or surgery here, kids, unless you're an orthopaedic surgeon wanting to sub-specialise in sports injuries, which incidentally is where Prof. Lim said the real money is! Nope, just intra-articular injections with hyaluronic acid (corticosteroid if we're lucky enough to see it) and a bunch of orthopaedic examinations to localise the athlete's problem.

The girls from group A2 with Datuk Lee Chong Wei

SO, here goes:

DAY 1: Prof Lim gives a lecture in the morning about acute and chronic sports injuries. Pretty much only three sticks in my head:

1. Muscles sTrain, Ligaments sPrain. Both mean the same thing, tears in muscles and ligament respectively. Beza t dengan p kena ingat ye. 
2. You use RICE as an acute management to sports injuries: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.
3. Strains and Sprains are of three grades: Grade 1 =  microtears, Grade 2 = partial tear, Grade 3 = complete tear.

That's pretty much all I learnt for that day. They had a blackout lasting for two days at ISN so I spent much of the time sleeping in the comfortable pseudo-bed in the rehabilitation gym next to physiotherapy while everyone else worked out. Why bother since we had physical conditioning in the evening? In any case, because of the blackout, we couldn't use the gym to meet the famous athletes, no sauna, no hydrotherapy, no nothing. Then physical conditioning with Ms Ooi Swee Gaik was hell on Earth. According to her, we were doing the easy version. We did warm ups, co-ordination, balancing (for joint stability), core training and stretching all of which are not easy for a bunch of nerds like us to do. All of us suffered from DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) until Wednesday. I could feel it in my bones, my muscles, my ligaments. Everything. Hurts. Even going up the stairs or laughing the next day became a painful Herculean task. Today's lesson: Don't wait for sports medicine posting to work out. Get your ass moving!

DAY2: Dr Victor came and did a clinic session with us and gave an intra-articular injection for someone famous whom I can't seem to remember. Which is odd, because I was alone with her in the clinic for awhile, and I introduced myself and asked her for her name and the sport she plays, and had to be embarrassed later on when I told her I skip the sports section in the news. She's apparently the best Malaysian female badminton player on record, recently retired. She must've thought I was a complete moron.

Dr Victor (who reminded me of this 5th year named Hafiz because he looked like a Mat Salleh with a pekat Malay accent) took us to Bilik Kenanga to discuss INFLAMMATION. You might be laughing now, but it was a struggle in that room for all of us to remember first year pathology on chemokines, inflammatory cells, cardinal signs involved in inflammation. We barely scraped through alive. Learn from our mistakes, learn your inflammation WELL!  It's so easy, so trivial yet so important in every single discipline you go in. I've never been in a posting where the cardinal signs of inflammation was not asked. We had a Physiotherapy session later with Pn Faiza who showed us a bit about electrotherapy and taping. Pretty cool all in all. I remember Yog telling everyone he saw Azlan in the gym, the half Scottish squash player who posed half naked in CLEO; yes that one, I remember. Lesson today: Know this country's athletes, and hafal inflammation sampai muntah darah.

DAY3: No more blackouts! Aircon works, gym available, sauna, massage room pun boleh masuk kot. Dr. Victor gave more lectures on Prolotherapy and Injections. Pretty long, I sort of spaced out while nodding appreciatively for a good 75% of it. Sorry, Dr Victor! Then we saw medical check-ups of Paralympic athletes and some sport injury cases. Apparently, in every event in Paralympics you've got 6 categories, those being visually impaired, mentally impaired, cerebral palsy, amputees, wheelchars, etc which we saw. I just thought, they were so brave and awesome to not give up and have the courage to represent Malaysia.

Went to the gym afterwards, and had an intense workout session, much thanks to the random coach who taught us how to use those gym equipments! Result: suffered from DOMS all over again until Friday! During the evening, we had a talk with Mr. Zawawi about athletic nurition. He was a person who reminded me of a Malay Shrek (in a good way, he was pretty packed, and bald), but nevertheless gave out very good information when he talked to us in an informal sort of approach about nutrition. Anyone could ask questions, and he would answer them. Generally, girls would just ask the best way to lose weight, guys were asking about the best way to gain muscle. So, tips: Eat multivitamins + multiminerals every day in the morning, exercise, skip dinner but NEVER breakfast if you want to lose weight, egg whites are good (this guys eats 2,3 papan of huge free-range eggs for 4,5 days!) eat small portions throughout the day 5,6 times daily and lastly, never trust someone except yourself to cook for you! Pretty tough requirements. On this day, our group also ate the buffet together, and my friends were pretty freaked out that my fingers turned cyanotic from the aircon. The athlete's cafe is pretty much akin to being in a freezer.  So lesson today is: Bring a sweater, people!

DAY 4: Dr Halim, a Sports Med specialist took us to his clinic, and we saw a bunch of athletes with sports injuries. To be honest, we haven't a clue as to how it all works, cos we haven't taken our Orthopaedics posting but I reckon it's all very useful someday. In the evening, we did fitness testing that day and found out how unfit we all were to no-one's suprise. Lactic acid curve and all that. Meh. The lesson today: Tererkan anatomy anda, physically and knowledge-wise.

DAY 5: We did a clinic session with Dr Jasmiza who is a really enthuthiastic teacher. Wonder if he has a blog to include in the side bar... There was only sports psychology lecture and exercises afterwards. In the exercises we did, we played concentration games which helped us understand the psyche of a competitive athlete and relaxation which pretty much means dozing off. Lesson of the day: Take time to relax and NEVER miss evaluation or your sports med classes because Prof Lim will make you repeat the posting within your holidays.

Reccomendation: I sincerely believe the two weeks of Introductory Orthopaedics is better off in third year more than 1 week of rheumatology and radiology, since it's concurrent with Sports medicine. Although.. Rheumatology seems pretty much to me like a cross between Orthopaedics and Internal Medicine.. Hm.. I dunno! Please let us do Sports Med in third year! Even though I loathe communal sports as a way of life, a system of belief, a perplexing useless part of popular zeitgeist, a barbaric remnant of the uncivilised world, I highly reccomend the posting to juniors. Sports can be fun, even to anti-socials who despise sports!

Nazirah, 3rdyr 2010/2011