the four right chords can make me cry

it has just dawned upon me that I will be leaving for thailand this friday morning.

SO LITTLE TIME LEFT!

Need to...
1) Pack
2) Buy stuff that I don't have
3) Reply letters
4) Meet grandma for lunch
5) Settle a million other things

ack...

posted by beckyboo @ 5:49 PM 0 comments

Oh yar hor...

It would seem that I have forgotten to release the answers to my little game I played a few weeks ago (see 7 nov). And indeed I have.

But cos I think it be so cool, here it is again


1. As far as I'm concerned, it don't get better than this
2. So make up your own ending
3. Yeah you can say what you want but it wont change my mind
4. I never worry, now that is a lie

5. I saw a black flag sticker on a cadillac
6. Too alarming now to talk about
7. But I'm down to one last breath
8. You can sew it up but you still see the tear

Chorus
9. Love's a hand-me down brew
10. She went and dyed her hair red
11. It's time for a few small repairs she said
12. Some things in this world you just cant change

Bridge:
13. The world is sleeping, I am numb
14. I cant help but ask myself how much I let the fear take the wheel and steer
15. then i find myself choking on all my contradictions

Answers

1.As far as I'm concerned, it don't get better than this
Butterfly by Crazytown
2. So make up your own ending (...and let me know just how you feel)
Blurry by Puddle of mudd
3. Yeah you can say what you want but it wont change my mind
Say what you want by Texas
4. I never worry, now that is a lie
Under the bridge by Red hot chilli peppers

5. I saw a black flag sticker on a cadillac
The boys of summer by The ataris
6. Too alarming now to talk about
My hero by Foo fighters
7. But I'm down to one last breath
One last breath by Creed
8. You can sew it up but you still see the tear
The sweetest thing by U2

9. Love's a hand-me down brew
Black coffee by Ella fitzgerald
10. She went and dyed her hair red (this was the toughest one i think)
Three marlenas by The wallflowers
11. It's time for a few small repairs she said
Sunny came home by Shawn Colvin
12. Some things in this world you just cant change
Bright lights by Matchbox twenty

13. The world is sleeping, I am numb
Brick by Ben folds five
14. I cant help but ask myself how much I let the fear take the wheel and steer
Drive by incubus
15. then i find myself choking on all my contradictions
Bathwater by No doubt

c'mon, say it... OH YAH HOR!

posted by beckyboo @ 5:09 PM 0 comments

sick.

I'm sick, and whiny, and i cant sleep, and no one is awake to shower me with love and attention. And i doubt they would even if they were awake. I feel hot, and cold, all at once. I can feel my limbs radiating an immense amount of heat, but my skin feels cold. I'm wearing a jacket in a non-aircon room but i still feel cold. and hot. My nose keeps running and I can hardly breathe. Every breath is labourious. I need to breathe, desperately, but each time my do it rasps against my dry throat. Surrounded by a mountain of used tissue. Kept tossing and turning and finally couldnt take it at 4am. it's now 6, and i can't get back to sleep. My head feels like it's in a vice, and somewhere someone is very slowly twisting the clamp.

Fever was at 39.1 degrees, though my forehead didnt feel very hot. Read and replied some emails from friends I havent heard from in a while and I felt better. Met jamie online and he prayed for me. As it stands, fever is now better at 38.7 degrees, feel less sick and tormented.

Thank you, God.

posted by beckyboo @ 5:59 AM 2 comments

I'm sorry darlings, another academic essay.
http://laingsociety.org/colloquia/polofdiagnosis/r.roberts1.htm

This one is about madness! Really interesting if you think about it. I mean, what determines madness? We all are a little bit crazy sometimes right? How should we treat mad people? You'd think the pyschiatrists of all people would know. But they don't. Even among them there's debate about how to diagnose it. This piece is under a section called the Politics of Diagnosis. And since i know nobody's gonna read the whole article, here are some "best of"s.

The charges against the legitimacy of the medical model begin with unanswered questions about the validity of the classification of mental disorders - several hundred of them now enshrined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA 1994). Here it is stated that mental illness "must not be an expectable response to a particular event". The clear problem is that this presupposes an extensive and detailed knowledge of how people 'ought' to respond to a wide variety of traumatic and distressing circumstances, the consequences of which could in principle be moderated by any number of permutations of possible personal characteristics and circumstances. To illustrate this, we might consider the outcome for someone following physical or sexual abuse in childhood (bearing in mind that this could take many different forms). Do we know how they will come to react given a knowledge of their gender, age, ethnicity, physical size, family position, social class, place of birth, prior or later feelings of being unloved, later career success/failure, educational success/failure, beliefs and fears about mental health/illness, the changing values, attitudes and beliefs predominating in a culture over a period of time, the lack of knowledge of other (dominant) cultures' 'ways of seeing', and how this lack of outside understanding interacts with existing psychological distress? Patently the answer is no. So, if we cannot determine what is an expectable response to a particular adverse event, we can be in no position to categorise behaviour in such a way that leads to pronouncements on the existence or otherwise of mental illness. Furthermore even if by some stroke of good fortune, we were in such a position to know what constitutes a normal response to distressing psychological phenomenon - something that could carry meaning only in the statistical sense of normal - then as Walker (1983, p100), reminds us
"If maladaptive behaviour in the same circumstance(s) is characteristic of a species then it is part of its 'normal' rather than abnormal psychology".

(becky: so if more and more people start being depressed, then depressed becomes normal and normal becomes stupidly happy for no reason)

Postpsychiatry is the latest neologism bequeathed to us from the world of post modernism. Like some of its linguistic relatives, it takes us to a paradoxical brave new world, where we struggle for meaning, enmeshed in a system of social relationships stripped bare of the struggle for power between oppressed and oppressor, paradoxical because the old inequalities of power remain - arguably in the most brutal form for more than half a century. We debate post-feminism in a world in which women vie to sell their bodies in the global multimedia sex and pornography market; post-industrialisation where inequalities in wealth and death are manufactured with celebrity endorsement, precision marketed and cheap (and dangerous) industrial production has allied itself, or should I say foisted itself, onto the majority of the planet which actually resides in the developing (underdeveloped) world.

(becky: true! alanis morrisette: Isn't it ironic)

Here, Laing recognised that the human condition, in whatever circumstances, is not reducible to a depersonalised natural scientific formulation. What he saw as 'outside the investigative competence of the natural sciences', included, as he later put it;
" love and hate, joy and sorrow, misery and happiness, pleasure and pain, right and wrong, purpose, meaning, hope, courage, despair, God, heaven and hell, damnation, enlightenment, wisdom, compassion, evil, envy, malice, generosity, camaraderie and everything, in fact, that makes life worth living." (Laing, 1982, p.18)

(becky: ya lor...)

We may locate such disturbance as a function of the meanings and power relationships which suffuse the lives of people whose existence is marginalised either indirectly by the organisation and institutions of society, or directly by the actions and interactions of others. For example, examination of the contents of auditory hallucinations reveals that these are frequently persecutory and abusive - revelatory not of brain disease, but of literal recorded experience - experience of sexual, physical and verbal abuse that is distressing and difficult to live with (Ellenson, 1986, Nayani and David, 1996, Birchwood et al., 2000). All of these things do occur in families as well as outside them. To deny this, is to deny the real world we live in. The article of faith in modern psychiatry which denies that families or other 'social systems' can, and do, drive people crazy'', is an act of collusion with the perpetrators of psychological damage, and an act of mystification on those driven to psychological extremes by them.

(becky: ya! blame society! as usual...)

Given the level of lifetime exposure to the propaganda products of the biomedical industry, it would be remarkable indeed, if at this moment in history, many mental health services users, past and present, had not already swallowed the biomedical party line of brain chemistry gone awry. Most have heard this mantra chanted regularly by their general practitioners and psychiatrists. It is disappointing, to say the least, that concepts of stigma, labelling or internalised oppression which might go some way toward explaining users' adherence to the traditional model, have not occurred to someone who situates their work within a critical psychological framework. Does Crossley believe then, that critics of the pornography industry for example, are incorrect when they assert that the women working within it are being exploited, simply because there are women who earn their living from it who deny this? It goes without question, that people on the receiving end of oppressive practices have much that is of value to teach us. However 'the inside view' may also at times be clouded by the detrimental effects of life at the sharp end, and the view from outside offer greater clarity. It must be a matter of judgement in each concrete situation where the greater wisdom lies, and not something to be decided solely on the basis of who is saying it.

(becky: evil biomedical industry!)

posted by beckyboo @ 4:55 AM 0 comments

This has got to be one of the shittiest days in my life. Quite literally.

Oh today began well enough, don't get me wrong. Met hazel for breakfast, worship was good, message was good, DTC was ok, lunch was ok, going out with hazel was good.

But when I got home, I found out the new maid packed up my room and I got REALLY angry. I seriously never felt so angry in either my entire life, or a really really long time. Didn't help that my mum smugly informed me upon seeing the shocked-speechless look on my face "Oh, I told the maid to do it; she did a good job." I hurriedly ushered my mum out of the room, and released the anger behind the closed door. I really felt like screaming and throwing things about. But I didn't. I HATE it when people touch my stuff! And now I'm having exams so all my notes and things are in a particular order and the maid just comes in and piles everything (I have A LOT of things) into one gigantic pile and puts it under the table or in a drawer or somewhere and I totally CANT FIND ANYTHING. I'm so frustrated and pissed off I can't take it anymore and I begin giving very controlled squeals of pure anger and frustration (I don't want to scream out loud). You think it's funny? Seriously, I was angry enough at that point to... you don't want to go there. Nothing is where it's supposed to be! I open my clothes cupboard and she's "cleaned" that up too!!! I JUST CANNOT TAKE IT!!! All the clothes that I wear regularly are now at the bottom or stowed away somewhere. If you saw how angry I was, I think you would be so scared. None of you have ever even seen me one tenth that angry before.

So although my exam is tomorrow, and i still have so much to cover, I start putting things back where I want them to be. And as I do it, I have to fight the urge to throw breakable stuff on the floor. PISSED OFF. Of course I don't manage to get ANY work done, and I'm incredibly frustrated and angry when I go downstairs for dinner.

But through the whole thing I don't let myself blow up in front of the maid, or anyone else. Seriously, she's new, and she's just doing her job. Like when she cuts fruits for me, and twice already I've told her not to cut the skin off, she STILL DOES. But thats a small thing. My room, the order that I have (though none of you can see the order in the mess), IT WAS VIOLATED AND I WAS FREAKING ANGRY. But not at the maid, just really pissed off that I couldnt find anything and I wasted time meant to be studying.

Right so I calm down and start to study right then I "waste" more time cleaning up my dog's wound. (moist ezcema, patch nearly the size of a CD where he licked his own fur and skin off). After that, he acts very clingy, and I have no idea why. so I think maybe I should go give him some food. And when I go downstairs, I realized he's crapped on the floor. Now my dog is a really well-trained dog, so I realise what happened, the maid didn't walk him the last two days. ARGH. Probably under my mum's instructions who refuses to believe me that she heard the vet wrong. (cos it's an open wound, he said not to leave him outside, so she thinks that includes walks. But obviously flies won't land on the wound while he's out for a walk right? and there's a human there to ensure it!?!?) So with a suddenly pissed-off again mood, I pick up the poo. SIGH, and make my dog some food and clean up after him. I'm thinking to myself, thankfully it's quite dry. BUT. As I go up the stairs to finally try and study, I turn and look at the sitting room, and what do I see but a BIG puddle of dog pee. At that point, I really had it, I just said heck, I already cleaned the crap, let the maid handle that tmr, I REALLY need to study now. But when I got up to my room, I felt so guilty, I went back down and got on my hands and knees and cleaned it up. You think it's very easy?!?! The smell is so much worse than the crap, and it's a liquid. Standard proceedure, soak it up with newspaper, go over once with kitchen towel, and lastly mop up. The newspaper stage is the worse cos it seeps through and gets on your hands and drips. By the time I'm done I'm so incredibly frustrated and angry and WRATHFUL. But I still hug my dog to let him know that I'm not actually angry at him. He can't help it, he hasnt toileted in days. I can't help it, I need to blog this down as an outlet. I have an EXAM tomorrow that I am no where near prepared for. But I'm so angry...

Actually now I just want to sit here and cry. I'm not angry anymore, just really really really frustrated.

Suckiest part of it all is actually that they are at camp now, where I should be. But here I am stuck with exams I'm not ready for and things where they shouldnt be and cleaning dog excrement.

I know this unusually angry me is not the real me but a stress-induced me. But i guess I'm coping, I could control my anger pretty well. Who am I kidding... I AM STRESSED OUT >_<

EXAMS (i don't want to get kicked out of USP), camp, sick dog (I love my dog and I'm as stressed as a mother with a sick child but nobody understands cos they think he's "just" a dog), driving lessons that I can't afford to pay for, tuition, not having time to spend with people (I realised recently how little I know about what is going on), the guilt, the pressure. EXAMS.

posted by beckyboo @ 1:10 AM 0 comments

Thank you.

I'm so glad that I made some friends in VCF. Going down to school to study, alone, would have been so much more depressing and damaging to my psyche. Eating lunch etc with them is also particularly relaxing and good. But I'm still so shy around them, and awkward. But they are nice people, accepting and welcoming, and have helped make my transition into uni social life that much easier. In general, I'm just thankful for all the friends I have around me, who have made life so much easier to cope with, with their encouragement and love. The difference between me now and me a few years ago is that now I know that there are people out there who love me. I used to think along the lines that no one would care if I died, I really believed that. Thank you, so much, for gracing my life with your friendship these past few months

In alphabetical order....

Abby, Agi, Anne, Ben, Ben, Catherine, Charmaine, Cherie, Damien, Daniel, Daniel, Enai, Esther, Fad, Gabs, Grace, Godwin, Hazel, Hwee min, Ivan, Jiaquan, Jeremiah, Jerry, Jonathan, Joel, Joy, Joyce, Keat, Kel, Kenny, Li juan, Luqman, Mandy, Mark, Mei ee, Neisha, Nian long, Pema, Qiu chan, Rachel, Serene, Sern yong, Shakeela, Shamantha, Shane, Shaun, Sherlyn, Sook meng, Teng hui, Terrence, Tian shun, Timo, V, Veron, Xiaoxuan, Xiuli

Some of you I actually don't know very well. But you left a mark, you made a difference. Some of you have known me since I was self-aware (hey v =), if you're reading this). Some of you I just met, my accquaintances, some of you are my best friends. Some of you are my lab partners, lecture mates, yep team mates, I see you guys around school. Some of you I don't get to see very often. Some of you, I've somehow managed to leave out of this list (it's not exhaustive). But I just want to let you know: I love you.

posted by beckyboo @ 1:52 AM 0 comments

Never have I destroyed something so good so quickly

I swear the new microwave is part of an evil insidous force. First of all, it doesn't behave like a normal microwave. The way mircowaves work right, is to heat up liquids, so your food gets cooked super fast, and the plate doesn't get as hot as the food, cos the plate doesn't contain moisture. But this freak of nature makes the plates freaking hot too! Because somehow it's also a griller and can also steam stuff. At least, so it (and my mum) claims.

Secondly, it even orders you about! I was trying to figure out how it worked and i pressed some button, and that thing instructed me to "STAND COVERED IN FOIL", which of course, I did not obey. Like I'm gonna take orders from that thing! It's supposed to take my orders!!! anyway, we didnt have enough foil.

But today was the final straw. It burnt my coffeebean brownie!!! I put my brownie in for ONE minute ok, just one minute, and it was SMOKING when I took it out, and it KEPT ON SMOKING for like the whole time I was trying to eat it! Coffeebean brownies are not known to be terribly moist, but when I took it out, it was burnt to a crisp. It was CRISPY. literally. It clinked on the plate like metal. Couldn't really tell how burnt it was, cos brownies are kinda all brown and black, but after attempting to eat about a third of it, it was just unbearable. The house still smells like something burnt.

CURSED EVIL MACHINE MASQURADING AS A MIRCOWAVE! I SEE THROUGH YOUR EVIL SCHEMES!!!

posted by beckyboo @ 3:32 AM 1 comments

Brace yourselves.
Complicated reading ahead. Took me quite a few readings to get a good grip of this text. But it's worth it! Fascinating stuff! Why can't my non-USP modules be this engaging...

Epistemological Crises, Dramatic Narrative, and The Philosophy of Science
Alasdair MacIntyre

There is perhaps a possible world in which 'empiricism' would have become the name of a mental illness, while 'paranoia' would be the name of a well-accredited theory of knowledge. For in this world empiricists would be consistent and unrelenting - unlike Hume - and they would thus lack any means to order their experience of other people or of nature. Even a knowledge of formal logic would not help them; for until they knew how to order their experiences they would possess neither sentences to formalize nor reasons for choosing one way of formalizing them rather than another. Their world would indeed be reduced to that chaos which Bettleheim perceives in the child at the beginning of the oedipal phase. Empiricism would lead not to sophistication, but to regression. Paranoia by contrast would provide considerable resouces for living in the world. The empiricist maxims 'Believe only what can be based upon sense-experience' or Occam's razor, would leave us bereft of all generalizations and therefore of all attitudes towards the future (or the past). They would isolate us in a contentless present. But the paranoid maxims 'Interpret everything which happens as an outcome of envious malice' and 'Everyone and everything will let you down' receive continuous confirmation for those who adopt them. Hume cannot answer the question: "What beings surround me?" But Kafka knew the answer to this very well: "In fact the clock has certain personal relationships to me, like many things in the room, save that now, particularly since I gave notice - or rather since I was given notice...- they seem to be beginning to turn their backs on me, above all the calendar.... Larely it is as if it had been metamorphosed. Either it is absolutely uncommunicative - forexample, you want its advice, you go up to it, but the only thing it says is 'Feast of the Reformation' - which probably has a deeper signigicance, but who can discover it? - or, on the contrary, it is nastily ironic."
So in this possible world they will speak of Hume's Disease and of Kafka's Theory of Knowledge. Yet is this possible world so different from that which we inhabit? What leads us to segregate at least some types of mental illness from ordinary, sane behaviour is that they presuppose and embody ways of interpreting the natural and social world which are radically discordant with our customary and, as we take it, justified modes of interpretation. That is, certain types of mental illness seem to presuppose rival theories of knowledge. Conversely every theory of knoledge offers us schemata for accepting some interpretations of the natural and social world rather than others. As Hamlet discovered earlier, the categories of psychiatry and of epistemology must be to some extent interdefinable.

-------------------------------------------------
Ok, back to my essay now. Deadline flying towards me! Its hard work, but I chose 3 super-interesting texts! MacIntyre (what you read was just an extract... can you imagine), the article by Harvey Sacks (I featured it some time ago...) and... The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery!!! What kind of an essay am i writing?!?! Haha... I don't know either, my essays seem to take a life of their own right after i finish writing the first sentence. okok... I'd better get going.

posted by beckyboo @ 4:01 PM 1 comments

Today I feel lyrical.

In the mood to write some mind-blowing, gut-punching, heart-wrenching, tear-welling poetry. But no inspiration. So prose it shall be. Prose is my friend, the very medium of my soul, turning me inside out so you know who I think I am. Without prose my life would be a vacuum, I would be a lonely planet floating in emptiness aimlessly through the milenia, unaffected as your star becomes a supernova and dies, no way of making my presence felt, no sound or light travelling through my universe.

Words. Words like Friend. Memories. Sunlight filtering through the leaves in gold and green. Transcendence. Ephemeral. Horizon. Tenderness. Sigh. Sipping coffee under the covers while it rains outside. Seeing your own reflection in the glass as you gaze outside at the wet wet world which has paused, suddenly dropped all it's activity and bustle. The damp birds sulking on the telephone lines. The drop of cool water rolling off a palm leaf. Your breath fogging up the window panes. A good book. Good music.

I move slowly through the room drawn to the window, wading through the air thick with time, limbs langourous like honey dripping out of the comb. Then I settle at the point of least resistance and occupy the shape of my container.

Limp. Languid. Langourous.
The world shedding it's pretention.

I may be slow. But don't you think you see so much more that way?

posted by beckyboo @ 10:05 PM 1 comments

Extract from my letter to Esther

I simply cannot come to terms with the fact that exams are starting. I can hardly believe the first week of school is over even. You know how some people seem to slip into uni life so easily? like they've been waiting their whole lives for it and its the most natural thing? Well, im just the opposite. Everything is a struggle... still feel very much like an alien on campus. It's not so much not having friends and all, but its just that the whole idea of uni life itself, the school, the surroundings, feels like a whole other planet. It's not lonely, but sure is surreal.

yep, that's what school is like for me. anyone out there feel the same way?

Last day of term today. But i'm still in denial.

posted by beckyboo @ 2:03 AM 2 comments

Either no one reads my blog anymore, or my game was just too hard to play, or i have no friends in all the world (no no, no emotional blackmail here).

Haha, I've been having an awesome extended weekend. Sorta.

Sunday went for dinner at Agi's and Ivan's. Ingested a copious amount of Agi's cooking and good fellowship, laughter and friendship. Ivan was stunned at the amount me and serene could eat. Stayed over at Serene's and watched the Virgin Suicides. In French. Why? cos we had the DVD and cos everything sounds cooler in French. Went for a leisurely breakfast the next day, leisurely arrived in school (after travelling for less than the usual one and a half hours). Lecture was really short. Fell asleep in the library when I was trying to study. Met serene and daniel at UCC, cabbed down to Daniel's place. Had dinner with daniel and mei ee. HAGEN DAAZ MACADAMIA BRITTLE AND STRAWBERRY CHEESECAKE!!!! after no less than 7 chicken wings (mei ee made 24 chicken wings for the 4 of us!) and dinner. After Agi's potato soup, baked pasta, and savoury chicken pancake last night. Hohoho. I can be santa this year.

Serene's staying over today! Exchange programme! Or as Serene says, becky marathon. Haha... And im supposed to be studying, or at least doing my lab report.

But this is the life. Enjoyable beyond words. =) Food, friends and fellowship. Caution: Fatal to monday blues, depression, and all general moodiness. (not to mention extremely harmful to supermodel aspirations)

posted by beckyboo @ 2:07 AM 4 comments

Lets play a game

It's called "name the artist and song title". I like games like this! =) Only problem is, nobody else does, so I have no to play with. So i subject poor blog readers to it and hope for a response! Remember, no cheating! I warn you, its not easy! I think it's impossible for anyone to get it all right.

Becky's song made up entirely of stolen lyrics
Verse 1
1. As far as I'm concerned, it don't get better than this
2. So make up your own ending
3. Yeah you can say what you want but it wont change my mind
4. I never worry, now that is a lie
Verse 2
5. I saw a black flag sticker on a cadillac
6. Too alarming now to talk about
7. But I'm down to one last breath
8. You can sew it up but you still see the tear

Chorus
9. Love's a hand-me down brew
10. She went and dyed her hair red
11. It's time for a few small repairs she said
12. Some things in this world you just cant change

Bridge:
13. The world is sleeping, I am numb
14. I cant help but ask myself how much I let the fear
take the wheel and steer
15. then i find myself choking on all my contradictions

WOAH! that was tough just to think of and make into a song!!! good luck!

posted by beckyboo @ 1:12 AM 3 comments

daddy makes me laugh =)

He woke me up this morning to go buy groceries and eat breakfast. As usual my reply was "uugnh" and then I rolled over and went back to sleep. My dog was in my room and in my semi-conscious state I heard my dad inciting the dog to wake me up. He then took a soft toy dog from my bed (enai knows how many soft toys I have on my bed), then walked it around on the floor, making dog noises, then made it jump up and attack russiepoo! Hahaha!!! Of course I woke up after that.

That doggie was given to me by jonkor on my 15th birthday. I still remember. I miss jonkor.

I was happy today for no apparent reason, just a quiet exuberance, eating breakfast with me dad. A contentedness and happiness that I havent felt in a long time. Think it was the way dad woke me up. How I wake up really determines my mood for the rest of the day, although everyone I've tried to explain that to doesnt believe me. So sad. But I believe me!

Thinking about what mandy said about wanting a guy like her dad. Me being the ultimate daddy's girl, it's very true for me too. Although I don't really spend much of my time thinking about guys anyway. I remember some friends being horrified at the prospect of ending up marrying someone like their dads! Haha, kinda funny to think about it.

Anyway, dad's calling me to go down for lunch now, and we got a new maid, and lot's of things are happening all around. Off I go!

posted by beckyboo @ 1:41 PM 3 comments

Phew!

Finally handed in my Islam essay yesterday, immense relief! I'm not proud of my work at all, rather shoddy, I wouldnt think it worth my time if I were the prof. Normally I'd be kinda upset with turning in such blah work, but the relief of having gotten it over and done with is overwhelming! The essay was hanging over me like a dread cloud all week. I'd turn on my computer, stare blankly at the screen, that | thing blinking away, write a line, get distracted by some research on the net, delete the line, write another line and so on. A futile, repetitive, tedious, time-consuming, exceedingly painful, non-productive cycle. But it's finally over!

Still got ALOT of work to do, work that I was supposed to do this week but put off in light of the urgent deadline. Gonna fail organic chem, they went through the answers and i like got everything wrong, even the bits i thought were ok. SIGH.

But I had a rather good day today, and i've had so many things to blog about but just no time that today youre gonna get some verblog diarrhea. (is that how you spell it? you know my spelling is bad...)

When I went for my pre-thailand medical checkup, they asked me if I had a history of mental illness before prescribing malaria pills. Rather puzzled me. So I went to check the pills up on the net, and they turn out to have NASTY side effects.

Firstly, what it is, as gleaned from the back of the box:
1 compr. = 250mg mefloquin
sub forma 274,09 mg mefloquin.
hydrochloric.

(no idea what it means. go ask a pharmacist, i'm just a year one life science student! a know-nothing in the scientific world! But here are some smart people doing research...)

Björkman, A. 1989. Acute psychosis following mefloquine prophylaxis. Lancet 2(8667):865

Patchen, L.C., et al. 1989. Neurologic reactions after a theraputic dose of mefloquine. New England Medical Journal 321(20):1415-1416.

Rodor, F., et al. 1990. [Recurrent psychiatric manifestations during malaria prevention with mefloquine. A case report] (in French). Therapie 45(5):433-434.
ABSTRACT: The authors report the case of a 22 years old woman without psychiatric antecedent who started a prophylaxis with mefloquine for a journey in a chloroquino resistant area. The first tablet induced an acute psychiatric syndrome which lasted five days; the second tablet induced the recidive of the psychiatric data and a suicide attempt by drowning.

Weinke, T., et al. 1991. Neuropsychiatric side effects after the use of mefloquine. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 45(1):86-91.
ABSTRACT: This study describes neuropsychiatric side effects in patients after treatment with mefloquine. Reactions consisted mainly of seizures, acute psychoses, anxiety neurosis, and major disturbances of sleep-wake rhythm. Side effects occurred after both therapeutic and prophylactic intake and were graded from moderate to severe. In a risk analysis of neuropsychiatric side effects in Germany, it is estimated that one of 8,000 mefloquine users suffers from such reactions. The incidence calculation revealed that one of 215 therapeutic users had reactions, compared with one of 13,000 in the prophylaxis group, making the risk of neuropsychiatric reactions after mefloquine treatment 60 times higher than after prophylaxis. Therefore, certain limitations for malaria prophylaxis and treatment with mefloquine are recommended.

Sowumi, A. 1994. Acute psychosis after mefloquine: a case report. East Afrian Medical Journal 71(12):818-819.
ABSTRACT: A self-limiting psychosis characterized by visual and auditory hallucinations and isomnia occurred in a 17-year old male after mefloquine administration for presumed chloroquine resistant falciparum malaria. The attending physician failed to recognise the association between mefloquine and psychosis.

Clarke, Paul. 1996. Temporarily disabling neuropsychiatric side effects after taking the anti-malarial drug mefloquine (lariam) are more common than previously thought. British Medical Journal 313(7056), 31 August 1996.

Watt-Smith, S., et al. 2001. Mefloquine-induced trigeminal sensory neuropathy. Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, and Endodontics 92(2):163-165.
ABSTRACT: Trigeminal sensory neuropathy is an important finding, often indicative of trauma but sometimes related to neoplasia, infections, demyelinating conditions, connective tissue disorders, other disorders, or, occasionally, drugs. This paper reports on a patient with sudden-onset trigeminal sensory neuropathy of the lip that proved to be drug-induced, secondary to the antimalarial drug mefloquine. This appears to be the first report of sensory impairment in the orofacial region from exposure to mefloquine.

Dow, G.S., T.H. Hudson, M. Vahey, and M.L. Koenig. 2003. The acute neurotoxicity of mefloquine may be mediated through a disruption of calcium homeostasis and ER function in vitro. Malaria Journal 2 (1):14.
ABSTRACT CONCLUSIONS: Mefloquine was found to disrupt neuronal calcium homeostasis and induce an ER stress response at physiologically relevant concentrations, effects that may contribute, at least in part, to the neurotoxicity of the drug in vitro.

and much much more! you're gonna think im nerdy, but I like reading abstracts and scientific publications. If I ever become a research scientist, i'm gonna have to write some of my own. Interesting to see how they conducted research and try (in my own limited way with my own limited understanding) to evaluate their results. As it turns out, this pyschosis thing affects females with a BMI of less than 20 more severely than other groups. Well then, I'm safe! Benefits of being tubby surface for once. How it works? I'm not too sure, but apparently the side effects arise from some neurotoxic effects, possibily by affecting calcium levels, as suggested by the last reference. Which would be quite consistent (i think) with the results in the previous research which show that connective tissue was affected. Need to go find out more...

posted by beckyboo @ 11:58 AM 5 comments