1fmalaysia clinic

* delayed entry

Day 3 of the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Tiger.

A ferocious year as described by the Chinese astrology expert, which certainly make most Chinese or those who chose to believe it to think twice before diving in on dangerous sports or activities.

I was told of this hypothesis about vulnerability of those who were born under the year of Monkey, as evident by my cousin sister’s femur fracture as the target board victim from a speeding buffoon on a bike and my 2^nd uncle’s ulnar fracture from a freaky slippery floor accident while he was on a bike.

Anyway, our southern neighbor Singapore was more than thrill to open the wide door of their formal gambling den in the spirit of the Tiger to prey on its visitor. Ironically, their government runs a vigorous campaign to fight compulsive gambling, yet they decided to open a casino with an open excuse of not wanting to trail behind in revenue in this aspect. Perhaps they just wanted a slice of cake from our Genting fatcake.

Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps not.

A night before, my mother-in-law stayed up whole night, rallying between her bed and the toilet sink. She was having epigastric discomfort which elevated to pain with accompanying sweating and possibly sympathetic symptoms followed by repeated vomiting. Initially she emptied her delightful chicken dinner and followed by yellowish gastric juices. She was under the radar for the whole night until in the morning when I found her rather weak and held her fist close to her upper abdomen. She had a long previous history of gastritis but was not committed enough for the gastro scope yet.

My dearest’s aunt who came back from Australia suggested a consultation from the 1Malaysia clinic nearby which she was taken aback when I told her the person in white w

ho had put a stet over her chest few days ago before she was given some medication for her cold and cough was neither a licensed doctor nor a trainee doctor, but a medical assistant.

Since I was around and the 1fMalaysia clinic was just few blocks away, I decided to bring my mother-in-law (MIL) in her 60s there, mainly to get a good medication for her highly likely gastritis attack and to rule out other possibly lethal condition, such as the most common heart attack and pancreatitis.

The clinic was very impressive. Bling bling. Full

y air-conditioned, glass front and all new furni

ture with a PPK or female attendant seated there.

The PPK popped the question to my MIL

.

“Ade ape makcik?” (What do you have, auntie?)

“Sakit perut.Gastric” (Stomachache. Gastric)

I kept quiet, resisting the urge to play the role of the patronizing son-in-law.

She got the number ‘2’.

Waited for 5minutes and we’re up.

There were only 2 more patients after us.

No wonder the short queue was thrilling most of the people who wrote in to local press to jack this 1fmalaysia clinic.

The short waiting minutes did not deprive my roving eyes. I noted the organization chart with names of few doctors who are nominally in charge of this clinic but physically not in the clinic.

I accompanied my MIL into the consultation room. The g

uy MA was seated comfortably there behind the posh desk with the laptop screen over his left showing of football formation with the title ‘Crystal Palace Formation Tactic’.

Another nurse was seated opposite him in another desk busy with some paperworks of her own, appeared working independently from one another.

As soon as my MIL seated down after a slow stride to chair, the MA posed the question in haste while his hands were busy scribbling on to the medical note.

“Auntie macam mana?”

“Sakit perut.”

”Auntie, tahun baru, makan banyak?”

“Tak.”

He immediately cut to the chase, put the stethoscope on my MIL’s right and left iliac fossa.

“Auntie, angin… banyak angin.”

“Sakit di sini.” My MIL was pointing to epigastic area. The MA couldn’t care less, wasn’t even looking, scribbling down name of medications.

original medical note of 1fmalaysia clinic

“Auntie, angin.”

“Ini menantu saya, loktor.”

The MA suddenly sat right up and appeared more attentive.

“Oh doktor dari mana?”

“Saya dari xx. Sini boleh buat ECG? Ada ranitidine?”

“Tak, sini klinik kecil saje. Kita hanya rawat symptomatic je.”

He turned to the big cabinet behind him with multiple compartments with multiple over the counter medication, and passed to me some Gelusil (antacid) pills.

“OK, tak pe. Thank you.”

By that piece of ‘thank you’, I thanked 1fmalaysia clinic for giving me a valuable lesson in realizing my stupidity in wasting time with such a fraud medical set up.

I travelled further down 2 kms to the emergency department of a district hospital which is bustling with people and was clearly understaffed. I sympathized with the nurses there who worked continuously like lab rats, but they kind enough to spare few minutes to do an ECG for my MIL. As for the rest, I clerked, set branula, prescribed, got the medication from the pharmacy and took blood to rule out pancreatitis. Improvement was evident a few minutes after I pushed some good old Ranitidine into my MIL’s vein, and she was all bright and shiny on regular Ranitidine tabs. As for my future plan, I would need to seek out any acquaintances of mine down south for an appointment in Surgical Outpatient in JB.

Now I would like to make several notably point about 1fmalaysia clinic.

Firstly, without a doubt, the clinic had given false reassurance and by all and any standard, is more of a killer than a healer.

The MA was there as a leader of the medical team, yet he was in a rush to get back to his ‘Crystal Palace’ team. He didn’t even care to ask some other questions, just to rule out heart attack which could present with epigastric pain. Of course, he could have argued my MIL recovered in the best case scenario, but who knows, how many had silently passed away at home and took the fast lane to mortuary.

No one can blame him, actually. Someone put him there, in spite of his inability to screen for warning signs, and unfortunately, his confident diagnosis of ‘angin’ gave a false reassurance which may lethally delayed proper treatment.

Traditionally, we're taught never to see the patient as a disease or a system of collection of various organs, but see the patient as a whole, the way of holistic medicine. But 1fmalaysia clinic serves efficiently as the health center for 'symptomatic' treatment, now the advance healthcare in Malaysia is moving 'forward' from seeing patient as a whole to seeing just symptoms.

My MIL asked me a question that I couldn’t answer. “Why was he putting his stethoscope at my lower abs when my pain is in the epigastric?”

I sighed in silent.

If my MIL wasn’t in her sixties, I would be calling it a sexual molestation.

And this would go on and on and on and on, till someone would come in for a check and balance for this idiocy.

Secondly, this is clearly public fund embezzlement. When all this real money can be used to upgrade the nearby district clinic, it was instead being used to pay for this air-conditioned joint serving a mediocre function.

Instead of lightening the workload of the hospy nearby, deployment of these 3 medical personnel in this 1fmalaysia clinic is a poor wastage of human resource.

The only benefit is serve the public is you just need to pay RM 1 for the RM20 over-the-counter medications for minor ailments.

Thirdly, the wave of political decisions for this ‘third world’ set up which swept swiftly across the country despite of strong professional bodies’ objections just proved that, either our country’s medical elders were too weak, too pussy, too apathetic or too corrupted to care, or our political leader is in a haste to set up a legacy, destined to gamble with the public funds and many innocent lives of the rakyat.

Nevertheless, I would like to end with a positive note.

All the accumulations and collections of medical misappropriation along with all the future cropped-up sodomy allegations will definitely be gold mines for my fellow friends practicing the art of Law.

Note to self: Prime Aedan to be a lawyer when he grows up.

P.S. please don't make any speculation as what the f between the 1 and malaysia stands for.