Apakah hebatnya jika
kupanjangkan umur kamu
tanpa kubantu kamu
bersedia untuk meninggal?
Almost the whole class gave an applause of satisfaction when the rheumatology lecturer ended his lecture which was full of good jokes and exam tips. When he left the lecture hall, half the class began to leave just as the next lecturer was coming in.
The next lecturer was Dr.Ednin Hamzah from Hospis Malaysia, who came to lecture us about palliative care.
It was a good lecture. Probably had it been given in Singapore, Hong Kong, or London, it would be a memorable lecture for a medical student. But unfortunately, almost all of my fellow colleagues are too shallow or indifferent to give a damn about the business of helping people die peacefully.
A tinge of self-righteousness here, but I think our fellow students are too KIASU as to even waste time on something that would not be tested in our exit examination. For them, what matter are the 11 criteria of SLE, the different causes for cyanosis, the steps to examine for 5th nerve palsy, and all that academic stuff that make them shine like a gold medallist. Palliative care? Don’t waste my time, please, I can almost hear them say.
In the hospital, I see many frustrated patients and parents. They are not getting well, long hospital stay, because our doctors do not know when to stop treating, and start palliating. We do not know how to explain our actions, just thinking that they are too stupid to understand the basis our clinical practice guidelines.
Unfortunately, the smart ones who will one day be consultants in my great hospital are the ones who left the palliative care lecture. Because the smart ones also happen to be the most kiasu.
Sorry, my dear coursemates, but that’s what I think some of you are - Kiasu and shallow!
my comment (plus and minus):
people could not stay for class is because all they wanted is to pass… no, i’ll revised that.. is to ace their final exam, or at least pass it with ease.
all this while, they are following their instinct, not their conscience,
or perhaps they believe that to follow their conscience IS to succumb to their instinct.
palliative class is a bore, at least, this class is, frankly (i do not practise hypocritism, nor am i implicating that tauke is practising it). you can’t just strike a person with an idea, a vision or an ultimate dream by a simple lecture, and words that doesn’t carry much weight.
weightage comes from experience,
weightage comes from practicality of matter,
weightage comes from realizing that someone dearest or yourself is living or perhaps dying the palliative way….
"only after the last meat had been hunted down, last fish had been caught off, the last drop of clean water and air had been taken in, only then one will realize that money can not be eaten"
i had been exposed to the established palliative care during my elective last year at tzu chi hospital, hua lien, taiwan.
the experience is one of its kind, and nothing can replace how much it made me realize the importance of palliative.
how one touches another person’s heart required great effort, endless perhaps, but one can never never ever ever ever give up, and sadly to say, labelling people negatively would never help. It would be just like critizing smokers as annoying and moron.
y makes things so difficult.
John: No, if you wanted it back, you got to ask me yourself. You got to act with your mind and conscience, not blindly following your instinct. That is the difference between you and him [pointing to the oinking boar that was caught after falling greedily into John's trap]
Charlie did asked him 3 times after a period of struggle, and J
watching one of the episodes in "Lost", there was this inspiring scene. All of people in this series are survivors of a plane crash in an exotic island. There was this guy, Charlie who was totally wasted, stoned and addicted to a pack of drug, which falls into the hand of another person, John Locke.
Charlie: give me back my drug.
John: I’ll give you back if you asked me 3 times.
Charlie: If you ain’t giving me back, you might as well throw it, whohn disappointingly gave Charlie back the drug. But Charlie, at that point, threw that drug into the burning fire, that light up the cave they are living in, (added by moi) and at the same time, lighting up his brand new life without drug.
it is similarly, in the spirit of challenging one’s capability of controlling our instinct that make us different from animal. We see to it that we are not the animals who are surviving the medical school (this seems to be a famous phrase -"surviving medical school"), we must be the doctors who earn every wisdom from medical school by our own effort and by our own commitment.
what the world need is for someone, or perhaps a group of somebody starting doing things practically and we’ll see how the rippling effect goes.
it’s time we walk the talk, or else, this will be just another blog entry in somewhere that deem to be repeated in the future as just another blog entry in somewhere else.
(bôr, b
r)
tr.v. bored, bor·ing, bores To make weary by being dull, repetitive, or tedious: The movie bored us.
n. One that is wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious.
n 1: Old World wild swine having a narrow body and prominent tusks from which most domestic swine come; introduced in United States 2: an uncastrated male hog
