And how does that make you feel?

Assalamualaikum!

Just finished my 3rd week of Honours and already I am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to do. I really am trying not to stress but can I just say that looming deadlines are approaching ever so faster and I feel like crying because it feels like one of those nightmares where you're being chased and trying to run away but you're just not moving.

Unfortunately, I cannot escape this nightmare of a reality by simply waking up. This is the REAL WORLD. I have no choice but to tackle it all head on.

By the way, GAMSAT was last Saturday. I don't want to say too much about how it went right now but I am just praying that I do get the mark I need to get into my desired medical school insha Allah! 

Back to the Honours topic..

In one of the Honours workshops I attended, the presenter told us to write about how we feel at the moment. It seems I am not the writing by hand type anymore. My handwriting has become atrocious! But I am a fast typer ;) So I thought I would use the excuse of writing about my feelings to update my blog!

Maybe I can even talk a bit about my project and my thoughts on it. I don't think I'll be able to disclose any data on my actual project as it's confidential and all.. but hopefully I'll be able to perhaps skim the surface on it?

Okay, so for this post, I'm going to introduce my Honours project.

My project centers around the disease called leukaemia. Leukaemia, as some of you might know, is basically a cancer of the blood. More specifically, I am looking at acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). Although more adults have ALL, it is in fact the most common paediatric cancer and although the cure rate against this disease is reaching 90%, there are still some patients that are unresponsive to the treatment. A class of drugs used in the treatment is called glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoids are a type of steroidal hormone produced by your adrenal glands and their physiological functions are many. One of their roles in our body's management of cancer is the induction of apoptosis (cell death). It is this apoptosis that is important to suppress the growth of the cancer. It is heavily recorded in the literature about patients having resistance to the glucocorticoids themselves and I am going to study the mechanisms behind this resistance. 

So there you have it. I hope I didn't overwhelm you with how overwhelmed I am. 

But until my next post, be prepared for more posts about my Honours project woes and angsts. Hahahah. 

~Nurilen