parents: who are they?

Trails of pilocarpine:

at last, back into UM again.. errrhmm… again… Orientation started, being swarmed by freshies, busy like hell in A&E, no guidance yet as Dr in charge still at holiday…

First day at A&E, and I’m on call, stayed till 2am, first time in my life, learnt to do gastric lavage, tasted the charcoal with my finger tip… did an arterial sampling from the femoral artery… participated actively assisting an intubation…

Who are the people that we identified as parents? The one who carries us so burdensomely over the 9 months? The one who wraps us up in the most precious way when we come to this world? The one who bears the duties as our protector, our healer, our educator all the time? The one we hang onto dearly during our childhood? The one we are ashamed of being with at our activities or outing during our teenage hours? The one who we sees as the big nagging machine as young adults? The one who is delirious, childish needs us around to give them diapers & help of ambulation when we are adults?

Last night, an uncle comes in to resuscitation. He was suffering and had multiple problems - his sons knew it… and they were complaining about it, rather than keeping the good spirit of taking good care of that uncle.

One nurse commented "1 bapa boleh jaga 10 anak, 10 anak tak boleh jaga 1 bapa".

First few years of life = last few years of life

1. we’re fragile, easily susceptible to disease & injury
2. we’d incontinence, too - faecal & urinary, at least before 1 1/2 years old.
3. we’re started off with innocent babbling & crying loudly during nighttime.
4. we had strange behaviour at times… correction… most of the times…
5. we needed more care & support from our loved ones more than anyone else.

The only difference is when we are small, we are on our way to accept life, (parents are always with us) and when we are old, we are on our way to accept death.

Who are we to judge our parents?

special thanx: the nurse at A&E