May 25, 2011

sombre week

from last week, in the span of a week plus, 3 extremely young souls left this world early. very early.

Today, having to review the chains of events leading to this deplorable state, the same recurrent melodies of harsh reminders and solemn grief talk played to the air. To the people involved, without a doubt, those tunes will be drilled deep, not only into their cochlea, but also driven sharp into their heart, and probably changed their affection towards maternal care. As for the others, it probably sounded like the classical background music in the mall, where everyone wanders in the most carefree manner. Their minds wander although physically well seated in the gloomy room today.

Something that I admire about my former head was his ability to form a policy that counter every crisis that popped out. Some would probably laugh it off as a knee jerk reaction, but i think the little thing that he did made the whole world of difference.

In the midst of the meeting, the electricity went out not once, but twice. Almost as if the demised ones were with us in the room, forbidding us to go on further the story-telling of the series of unfortunate events.

Two repairmen came and stood all proud and experienced, looking in from the opened door. Obviously, we're all fanning ourselves in that stuffy, semi-dark room, lest for the escaped sunshine from the evening sun seeping in.

And the elder one asked, "Tak de elektrik ke?"
I whispered aloud, bordering on rudeness and sarcasm, "You nampak ade elektrik ke?"

And they got back to work, getting the electricity back, only to have the black out back after 20mins after they left.

A lot of things are pretty obvious and do not really require any further elaboration.

Just yesterday, I managed to just asked them about diagnostic level for the modified glucose tolerance test to rule out gestational diabetes mellitus, and four out of four, all post-tagging, already almost 2 months in our department, couldn't tell me the right level. Something is terribly wrong not to know the most basic knowledge about the most common medical disorder in pregnancy. One even had the balls to show me the "reference range" stated in the result slip, refuting my claim of the level given by me.

A few weeks ago, it was worse. I was told that her detailed history revealed the patient had no menstrual problem at all, but somehow I had a sixth sense to reconfirm by asking the patient again. True enough, she was having heavy menses flow, and also passing out good size clots. When she heard the patient saying clots, she had the balls to repeatedly raised her tone to the patient - "Clots? Really got clots?" This already gone beyond the failure to recognize problems to falsifying or toning down the patient's problem.

Like I said, a lot of things are pretty obvious and do not REALLY require further elaboration.

To highlight where they get their balls from, would be an overstatement at this point of my career.

I kept my fingers crossed, hoping something must be ironed out, at some point of time.

Ironman

P.S.
I knew all along who had been reading my rantings.
It's in the fine gestures and body language.
Those fine details never fail to fascinate me.

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