The man who drank too much

BEEP ! BEEP ! BEEP !

What aa... what's dat? Silent. Darkness.

BEEP! BEEP! That sound again....

whadda .. where am I .... oh it's the holy

pager -- #5658.

Reaching in the dark I almost knocked the phone over. Bugger.

"Yaa, who's thiiiss.. " My voice hoarsen due to gallon of Nestea's green tea.

"Hey u gotta come to ER stat! I got a guy here who almost drowned himself by drinking too much water, and i can't intubate him " a desperate female voice echoed on the other line.

I knew the voice, one of my close buddy in the emergency room got herself in a shitty position, and unless u're in a ER's toilet, that's never a good thing.

"Gimme 2 secs, I'll be der.... watever u do make sure u can ventilate him !" reminding her what she already knew.

A 100m dashed to the ER at 2am was never recognised as an extreme sport, i wonder why but 2 shakes of a lamb's tail later I arrived at the crime scene and only to find it as bloody as a battle-field.

"The tube just won't go in" Linda's voice shaken, i could almost see the agony of frustration in her light brown eyes.

BP 75/40....Pulse rate 30/m - someone yelled in the background

"Start CPR! 1 mg adrenaline & 1 mg atropine IV bolus" my voice widely awake now while positioning myself at the patient's head relieving Linda.

I snapped open the laryngoscope blade and shoved it into the man's throat, hunting for his vocal cord - but the view was obscured by a litre of his own frothy tracheal secretion.

"Suctionnn pleasse" PSSRRRRFTTTTTTT !!! The yonker suction made a screaming noise while suctioning a 1/4 litre of secretion resulting in a clear view of Mr Vocal cord.

Thank God it's a Cormack Lehane I and with a bit of magic from cricoid pressure that Linda gave.. steady steady... my right hand maneuvered the ETT tube and gently tuck it home beyond the cord.

"He's in V. tachy... no pulse" She yellled.

I grabbed the defib paddle, charged it to 150 Joule... "CHARGEED! CLEAR !"

*ZAPPPPP!!!* -- no response --

CPR continued with multiple boluses of adrenaline.

"He's in V. Fib". "CHARGED! CLEAR !"

-- no response --

"agaiin" No movement. Flatline.

It's been 40 mins. His pupils were fixed and dilated, no spontaneous breathing, BP unrecordable. Pulseless. We decided to call it.

"Time of death 02:44" .

Linda broke the bad news to the family.

Silent. Followed by anguished cries from his loved ones.

Apparently, this 30y old guy overdosed himself with illegal drugs 3 weeks ago resulted in liver and kidney failure. He was treated for 2 weeks and was discharged well a couple of days ago.

However, despite advice from his doc he overloaded himself with water up to a point where his recuperating kidneys can't take it anymore and he went into acute pulmonary oedema (wet lungs) as if he had jumped into a river and drowned himself.

The first attempt was not a cry for help after all.

*gambar hiasan*

Human & car.. any similarities?

"Ini bulan 8 awak punya next service 60,000 km, kene tukar itu timing belt $1700, campur itu drivebelt, spark plug airfilter, auto transaxle fluid dan brake fluid.. sume skali plus itu diskauuun ---- pit pit pit (pressing a calculator as big as my palm - takot salah kira kot) ... hmm u kena bayaa $2500"

"Waadafak" the green goblin inside my stomach shouted back at me.

It never crosses my uninquisitive mind that after 5 free services in
the past 2 years, the 1st car-service that i'm required to pay would
butt-slap me with a big 2.5 grand. What happen to foreplay... can't we start with something small like $200 - 300??

Grrr.. don't make me angry Mr car-service man, U don't like it when I'm angry. Hmm I wonder what would happen if docs would start be telling this to their patients.

"Hmm since now you have reached age 40 y-old, we need to change your Mitral valve, left kidney, right eyeball, and those are gonna cost you only $20,000 with our Raya promotion. Plus we'll throw in a nose-job for free"

Well you folks ever heard preventitive medicine?
The basic tenet is maintaining wellness, and maximising the quality of life during the ageing process.

It involves scheduled check up on healthy people, making sure that the 'brake fluid and oil filter' still in good shape and anticipate any future illness that may lurk around in near future. Rather than waiting for the car to break down and towed to garage for repair i.e a sick people brought in by ambulance for a heart failure, that by then it might be too late.

You throw in a combo of preventitive + rejuvenation medicine (e.g. Omega Three, CoEnzyme Q10 are sum of the proven supplements in fighting anti-oxidant and heart diseases).

Now those have the potential to be the next big thing that our private medical service has to offer to Malaysia's own baby-boom population.

You savvy matey?

Retrospective mode

1 st hour at work:
I'm starting to feel this mind-numbing throbbing sensation between my eyes. PHB aka post-holiday blues is at its worst, gotta get sum prozac to ease things out! Argh the pain -- killing me softly

Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are

2 KM approaching Karak toll, heading towards KL:

Black clouds ! Darn it i hate when it rain along this treacherous (doesn't quite fit in - but whadaheck) highway. In the background, Bono is almost at his top vocal form -- old age creeping on ya mate~!

See the stone set in your eyes

See the thorn twist in your side

I wait for you

Sleight of hand and twist of fate

On a bed of nails she makes me wait

And I wait without you
With or without you

With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore

You give it all but I want more
And I'm waiting for you

What a beautiful world...

3 days ago @ beach:

I could almost see the naked ocean breeze blowing gently on my face, the sun almost dissappearing somewhere beneath the endless purplish horizon. This holiday is coming to its end, one could always wish it wouldn't. If i could only summoned my remaining energy to lift up my feet toward the beach and dive into the cold water for the last time... well there I say one more for the road.

Sayonara Cherating!

Patriot games

Phew! NO SWAMP. I also found out that I could still beat the crap out of sum 25'sters in jogging 2km under 18 mins. Not bad for a couch 'pringles' potato eh!

The place was nice, lots of cool landscape and for a city dude like me, i consider the basic facilities were waaay above average (unlike sum stories i heard).

This is where the fox screamed during 'flying-fox'

I was wrong. Those BTN people were not there to brainwash us toward any political party's interest. We were given real facts about the bad old days on how hard it was for Tunku and the others in gaining our independence.

We were colonized for 446 years + 7 days. From the days when atok-nenek moyang of Christiano Ronaldo, van der Westhuizen, Beckham & the Japs invaded our shores, our nation had suffered tremendously, oppressed and robbed of her freedom.

The participants were reminded about the importance of Unity and partnership and the origin of Social contract that begets our national constitution. How Tunku, T.C Loke and T. Sambathan formed amazing partnership in claming the ultimate victory for our nation from the brits (unlike the way of the indons vs the Dutch).

The truth is the Malays, Chinese & Indians will always co-exist in this country. Malaysia is for us to share with & live together. The new generation has simply forgotten about this while enjoying Beyonce's "to the left2" and shake their bon-bon showing some crack and their midriff. I know I had (although not the latter bit.. shucks!)

I'll be eastward bound tomorrow morning. And while I'm at it, patriotism is in the air.

PS: Strange.. we all thought our group facilitator looked exactly like Tun Abdul Razak.. how appropriate.

have a break

"Could i cross the green mucky swamp?"

Well I'd know the answer within the next five days.

Never thought I'm going back to BTN at this age.The truth is I'm looking forward for this break, getting away from the ICU for a while feels like charging the old battery. Hell it even feels like buying a new one - sniff ** Hmm well the best part is I'm getting another couple of days break after that, who knows.. Cherating awaits?

Aiyaa! Get off my back will ya

Lepas geram session. Silly things people do that gets to you, like those people who think they can boss you around.

Sadly enuf the person who did the on-call/on-leave roster do not have the slightest clue on how to give priorities. Imagine a colleague of mine got her 'leave' approved so that she can get away on a snorkling trip. Eventhough i applied for it first in order to prepare for an interview/test ---> mine was rejected. How shitty is dat!Thank God someone else is doing the roster now.

Last nite... an orthopod dude wanna do an emergency case @ 4am and have the nerve to tell me that i should give the BIUS his way, simply bcoz he think he can do the procedure in 5 mins.

"Wei... ko bagi hold mask jer, i can get the nail out in 5 mins, check out d xray, it's very easy to find one"

Luckily i gave spinal-block coz it took him almost 1 bloody hour to finish it.

"How do you like them apples?".

Mind your language!

Have u ever felt like you have dissapointed yourself in this quest of living this life to the fullest. Much alike that sambal belacan u wished u didn't eat coz now it left you with foul breath. Yaiks! I'm amazed at how many times i have let down myself at this stage of life. So much to be done yet so little time.

Hah! Btw my new resolution would be 1) to be fit (stamina & endurance so to speak, hence i'll start jog this week 2) to speak more in english. Hey that has been my goal since form 4 -- huhuh i'm a late bloomer u see

Bugger! i find it very de-motivating when people (esp malay kids where i used to grow up in east coast) gave out remarks like "Piraaa..mabuk cakap BI konoon!". Maybe that's why i'm still lacking the confidence to speak BI esp @ public speaking.. talk about lecturing in front of hall-packed with audience. Hahah! Laughing at myself.

I dunno whether my chinese/indian buddies faced the same obstacle when the were kid.
Maybe not.. dat's why most of them able to grasp the core of the language and hence the knowledge that comes with it.. be it science & economy/business. Hey guys! we haven't got that 30% share of that economic pie.. so much for NEP ya.

Heck i'm jealous at the older malay generation, Tun Razak, Tun Haniff, Dr M, Musa Hitam, Tunku, Tun Ismail; they're all fluent in BI and look at what the Language/education policy that generation left us with (well not the names i fore-mentioned)... now i can't even write a bloody-good formal english letter. Oh! Oh! most of our politicians speak in english at home to their kids and many of them have their kids educated in UK etc... so their kids are safe huh. Last but not least kids in Damansara/hartamas/mont kiara would be ok too ya, but how about their second cousins who live in Felda Jengka or Padang Lebar would fare in that department.

So much for my new year resolution..