My sweet-heart

******




I am no longer alone at night...


.... yup got someone to keep me company!




She keeps me awake on most nights, when I don't think I could carry on with my late night activities.




She will always be there standing by to refresh my mind and cool down my senses.




Her mode of action could rush tons of adrenaline along my carotids into the circle of Willis.




Sometime she'll bring along her friends too.


Oh yeah...!



She is too sweat... I'm sure she is going to give me diabetes one day.

Thank you

Life is a sum of moments.

If by any chance Mr Alzheimer come knocking on my cerebral door during my life as an old man in my golden days. If he is kind enough to allow me to save a few memories for my safe keeping, before he wipes out the rest.

My choices would be obvious.

It is now no longer hard to choose from, for I now have my favourite.

The cactus from Cameron would be forever in it.

Let it rain

As I grow older and look back at all these years I left behind. I realise that it has been a one helluva journey. All the people whom I've met along the way, those that are kind enough to stop and share a moment of their life with me. They are all special in their own very unique ways. I'm certainly and truly blessed to have the opportunity of meeting all these wonderful souls.

Having said that, I am unsure whether I have extended the similar kind of warmth and kind gestures to them in return.

It reminds me of this song clip which I first saw at 14 years old. It was my favourite back then, and not surprisingly it still has its magic on me. I bet it has got something to do with Clapton's touch.

How appropriate it is that it kind of encapsulates how I feel as I turned 35 this month.

"I better stop now... MARGARETTTTT!! Woman have you seen my anti-sentimental pills???"

Losing it

What a bizarre on-call.

They all knew when to come in at the same time.

Like some kind of a conspiracy from the highest order.

I felt like some punk American GI queueing for that last rescue chopper in Saigon during the final retreat from the Vietcong onslaught.

Shit, if it had gotten any worse than that, I'm sure I could have come up with a song entitled "When all the common diseases present atypically..." YEAH! I could have won the Grammy's next to Jay-Z.

Medically speaking, if the diagnosis of your illness contains the word idiopathic as its prefix (eg. idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy), it means that the disease has an unknown aetiology. Or in simpler term, your doctor doesn't have a freaking clue what causes your disease.

I hope the word idiot was not coin by the same pre-historic Greeks scholars who came up with idiopathic. Then it may as well means that doctors who use the word idiopathic are a bunch of idiots.

Coz that would be absolutely bloody hilarious, and then I'd laugh at myself out loudly till I poop a bloody diarrhoea.

"No Janet... no, I don't mean it has blood in it. I'm pretty sure I don't have ulcerative colitis (yet)."

A lost hope

There are times when you thought you have made the right decision for your patients. Those who initially responded to the treatment plans you have prescribed, but later deteriorated right under your watch.

****

It was my last on-call before the new year. We were in an elevator on our way to the 3rd floor where the operating theatres were located. The patient was a lady of early 40's. She has bubbly personality and liked to talk to the staffs.

"I feel so tired and sleepy, I want to sleep just for a while." Her voice was weak and shaky. The fact that she was no longer chatty made me worry.

"No, not yet Kak, you have to stay awake. Open your eyes, stay with me" I held her right hand tightly as I stole a glance at the portable monitor displaying her low blood pressure. She looked pale from having lost some amount of blood. Earlier, she had undergone a procedure that went into complication. The blood transfusion was in progress as we wheeled her into Emergency OT 2.

"Okay Kak, you are going to have the surgery now." I whispered to her while manually ventilate her with oxygen. She nodded, giving me the sign that she was ready. I asked her to mengucap before I pushed in the intravenous sedative and induction agents.

With the Etomidate now flowing through her veins, her eyes were no longer focusing on me and she gently closed her eyelids.

The surgical team worked very hard to fix the problem. During the surgery she went into arrhythmia. The surgeons moved away from the table while we resuscitate and defibrillate her back into sinus rhythm.

Although the surgery was a success, she did not regain back her conscious. Over the next few days I watched her lying on the ICU bed connected to a ventilator, fighting for her life. Until one morning I came to work and found out that her bed had been occupied by a new patient. Her nurse told me that she had pass away late last night.

****

She had gone for nearly 5 years now, yet at times the thought of her linger in my mind. She never had the chance to say goodbye to her loved ones. The last person she saw before I put her into sleep, was not the image of her husband or her 2 young children...

... but a face of a stranger in which she put her hope and trust. Sometimes, I could not help but to feel that the stranger had let her down.


****