This month I spent a week in Kinmen. The trip was held by the Mainland Affairs Council. We visited a lot of military fortifications and battle museums. I also experienced my first paintball game and kayaking, and both were really fun activities. From this trip, I learnt a lot more about the history of Taiwan and the importance of Kinmen to Taiwan. The lack of high-rise buildings and crowds together with the beautiful weather reminded me of Lamma Island and Cheung Chau in Hong Kong. In conclusion, it was a nice chance for me to escape the crowds. Another incident in August was that I found a stray cat on the street, and luckily in Taiwan cats are also chipped just like dogs in Hong Kong, so that I managed to contact its owner in 3 days. And I feel that Hong Kong should also implement cat chipping that contains the info of the owner, because right now in Hong Kong even if the cat is chipped it doesn’t contain any of the owner’s info, it just allows the scanner to be able to detect the microchip in the cat.

－Ernest Yu

After a month of surgical internship, I started my autopsy internship, which also lasted for a month. The internship was mainly divided into two parts. The first part was a zoo autopsy, and the second part was a biopsy.

(from http://www.zoo.gov.tw/introduce/detail.aspx?id=2090)

Zoo autopsy refers to the dissection and pathological sections of dead animals in the zoo to determine the causes of their death. The senior students conducted the autopsy, while the interns were required to organize the data and made it into an oral report. I was in charge of a female Malay monkey. She had no abnormal symptoms before her death. A severe blood abdomen was found during the autopsy. After pathological sectioning, it was confirmed she died of internal bleeding caused by endometriosis.

On the other hand, biopsy refers to after taking tissue samples in a clinic, the samples will be sent to our school for pathological biopsy diagnosis. Similarly, interns were required to organize the data and made it into an oral report. My case study was a cat that was suspected of having a squamous cell carcinoma, and he was diagnosed as stage I squamous cell carcinoma after pathological sections.

During the previous course, I always thought pathological sections were very far away from me and as I did not have many opportunities, I didn’t pay much attention in class. However, after this internship, as I had to complete the report, I forced myself to look at each slide carefully and I started to find pathology sections are actually very interesting. After that, I opened my textbook and read it all over again. Maybe this is the point of internships.

－Yoki Chau