Dinner parties and work update

 Today I hosted a dinner party for some of the Singaporean international students and girls from church. I realized I didn't take any photos except for the ripple cake I made >.>" 

This reminds me of the video by Natalie Tran or communitychannel where she explains how we take photos of food over photos of people:

So for memories sake, Esther, Naomi, Ellen, Sabrina, Vanessa, Sam and Joanna came! I will not forget >_<! My lovely mother cooked us dinner and I made dessert. We played some games, but overall just ate till we popped and chatted :)

CGF also hosted a hotpot dinner at Elesthermi's house. I love dinner parties because it's so chill and creates a great atmosphere to chat. 

Moving on to a work update~ 

I've recently been trained in mammography, which is an imaging modality specific to breast radiography. When I was in university I studied it, but never wanted to do it.  Why? Because it's horrible as we need to compress our patient's sensitive parts. 

It's super up close and personal and honestly the hardest radiography as breasts come in all shapes and sizes. Even though I knew all these things, I've been shocked so much in the last month. Majority of patients are female (but men can get breast cancer too!) and most of them just automatically strip because they are used to getting mammograms. It took me a good while to get used to seeing half naked people (even though I've been exposed plenty during my student placements and internship). 

I was shocked by seriously how different everyone is @_@!!!
 And then when I actually started positioning my patients breasts, it was another massive learning experience. Everyone's breasts feel so different as well, lumpy breasts can be normal and different ethnicity and age definitely changes things.   

Anyway because of all the different shapes and sizes, it's taking me a long time to get used to it. I feel like I'm trapping my patients in a modern torture machine and find myself constantly saying "sorry, sorry" as I compress their breasts.  This is the machine that I use:

What is surprising though is that I actually enjoy doing mammography. I enjoy helping these women through this process of dealing with breast cancer. Many are super fearful about getting a mammogram and when I hear feedback that it wasn't as bad as they expected, I feel like I've done a good job in helping them.

I once imaged a mother and daughter on the same day. The daughter had her imaging in the morning and in the afternoon her mother came. At the time I didn't know they were mother and daughter, but when the mother talked to me, she said her daughter told her I did a good job. It was a proud moment in my working life so far.

I thank God for this opportunity at work to continue expanding my knowledge, interpersonal and clinical skills. I get to work in a breast specialist hospital and there is plenty to learn about biopsies and procedures.  Mammography will continue to be a massive learning challenge this year, but I have such great people to support me and my boss is the greatest.