Hope

The old man called out her name. Yet he received no reply. The woman he married to for the past 40 years lied silently while her lungs were connected to a a breathing machine. He stood steadfast beside her for hours... waiting for some kind of miracle that she will return back to him as it was before.

She suffered from severe cardiac failure secondary to heart attack in front of him 2 days ago. With all the strength left in his frail frame, he carried her collapsed body out to their front yard and drove her to hospital.

***

I wish miracle would happen more often these days especially to those good people. For all we know it could have taken the last bus to Santa Fe. Andy Dufresne once said "Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies".

As ironic as it is... I agree with the first part.

Andá a joderte

Last week a patient of a Caribbean origin landed in our ward with a blood disorder (which country shall not be named coz apart from dr - patient confidentiality, his country also has long range nuclear ballistic capability).


During the course of his treatment he had multiple visits from his country's ambassador. Which shows how genuine their concern over their fellow countrymen' wellbeing.


Maybe it just me, but i felt that with the ambassador's daily visit, things got speed up a little - with a bone marrow aspiration done in less than 24 hour. Which I must confess I haven't seen that happen with the other ordinary Malaysian patients (malu... malu).


This guy however know zilch of English coz they were once conquered by Spanish. Luckily their embassy could provide us with a translator.


Which was hilarious at times coz me being a highly imaginative person felt like being in a RTM 4pm Spanish telenovela with my name tag says Dr Drake Ramore...

...uttering "Te quiero con todo mi corazon"

(with dramatic facial expression).

Patient in bed 6

The old man waited for his children to pick him up from the ward, they had promised him yesterday. It's already half past 6pm and yet there were still no signs of them... and he waited.

At that time he reminded me of my own dad...

Step one you say we need to talk

He walks you say sit down it's just a talk

He smiles politely back at you

You stare politely right on through

Some sort of window to your right
As he goes left and you stay right

Between the lines of fear and blame

You begin to wonder why you came

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend

Somewhere along in the bitterness

And I would have stayed up with you all night

Had I known how to save a life

Let him know that you know best
Cause after all you do know best
Try to slip past his defense
Without granting innocence
Lay down a list of what is wrong
The things you've told him all along
And pray to God he hears you

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night

Had I known how to save a life

Lost soul

"1 mississippi 2 mississippi 3 mississippi..."

I'm looking down on a 26 year old chinese lady whose heart just arrested 30 minutes ago on a Chinese New Year morning.

She got admitted via the A&E the night before with breathlessness, diagnosis of pneumonia was made and she was treated accordingly.

Her breathing became more laboured in the wee small hour of the following morning and the high flow mask device just couldn't cope up with her deteriorating lung function.

" 20 mississippi 21 mississippi.. i need more adrenaline!..." a sense of agony & frustration fills my voice..

She was supposed to attend the CNY's reunion family dinner that night...Alas, she ended up collapsed and intubated, it can't get any more tragic than this.

"Let's call it... time of death 0900." Our futile resuscitation attempt lasted almost an hour.

A message to my dear future young doctors out there... learn your arterial blood gas good. As the frontliners in our public hospital settings you will be doing on calls at night --- and trust me that between 2 and 6am in the morning what you know could save or lose your patients' lives. 'nough said.

Living dangerously

This month was quite a shocker to my system, where I had to go to the hospital for full 2 weeks including the long CNY holiday without any dayoff. By the end of it, I was mentally & physically exhausted, became irritable and unable to concentrate.

So I told my boss I need some day off, immediately hit the jackpot and became bummer for couple of days, whereby I discovered a superpower ability of staring at those ever changing clouds for hours totally ignoring the carbon monoxide-polluted KLCC-air till kingdom come.

On another note, a friend gave me a belated bufday gift... a wickedly cool body hugging shirt, which in my '30 year-old body' case would be a 'tummy-hugging' style. I'd probably wear it to my ward round and risk some of the old lady there heart attack. Fuyoh!

Reality bites

I rarely go shopping at pasar tani ever since I came back from atas laut 5 years ago. Hey don't get me wrong.. I absolutely love it , cumer the 'fresh' scent of fish etc etc sometime sting my nose. What an embarassing thing to say! Considering that I used to work at pasar malam for 3 - 4 years during my highschool days. Seems like this 'mat salleh celup' is stuggling conforming to his root... tak malu betoi!

They stole quick glance at each other several times - how sweet.

So strolling at Penchala pasar tani today is seriously doing some good to my internal homeostasis - balancing my disturbed 'chi' from too many shopping @ pavillion/the gardens. A different walk of life.

To digress, not all kids would have an easy years growing up.. it's a tough world out there - Palestine, rural places in Bangladesh and India to name a few. Kids working as labour in cotton factories or begging on rural streets, you know stuff we read in Time mags while sipping our nice hot mocha @ starbucks.

For example what would this young boy could acquire during his formative childhood years if he's literally picking up shoes from the box and arranging them on that table under the hot scorching sun... he could easily be around 4 - 5 years old.

When i did it I was like 16 - 18 years old. So that was character building if not anything else. I mean forget about National service.. although i don't mind lay my hands on those M16. Huh! Men, we easily distracted eh!

30' something

Just had my birthday last week, a plain simple one - nothing fancy, no cakes or balloon etc etc.

It makes me to think lately that in life sometime you're allowed to do certain thing only once in your lifetime. Life is not a dinner buffet and you'll not allowed for second helping.

So be certain that what you're going for is what you really want in this life.



On another note, I watched a DVD last night called '2 days in Paris' written/directed by Julie Delpy, the same French chick in 'before sunrise/sunset' (http://drfrappucino.blogspot.com/2006/11/before-we-were-young.html).

This film in a way could be the alternate version of the 'sunrise' movie.. the one if Celine had met Jesse in Vienna 6 months later and end up being lovers.

Movie quote ".. this is almost basic... i don't even know you'