The Little Happiness 小幸福

I met a man, my best friend. 

    Let's rewind from where we began. I remember, first time going out with him to Honey Lemon Cafe. He came with a Christmas gift - one set of "Thermos" brand lunch box. One of the dishes we ordered was mashed potato. We didn't finish it because there was lots of MSG in it!

    Even when I was already in a relationship with him, it took me a long time before I told myself, yes, he is the one! I prayed to God for a man after God's heart because I know that other good characters will come into the place following that. To my surprise, God blessed me more than what I asked for! 

    During early days, when I was still emotionally immature, I was the one who always threw a tantrum at him. However, every time, he will talk to me nicely. Now, he has the ability to sense the aura before my volcano exploded for no reason. Probably my PMS, haha. More communication between us improves our relationship and nowadays I have no chance to be angry because he handled it so well, pampered me just like how my mum did! 

    Last time, I can start a fight just by bringing up an issue "why is he paying all the meals". Why so chauvinistic?! However, as times go by, I drowned in this blessing; his provision. Happiness can be as simple as that. There was once he brought my cousins and I out to McD; he secretly slipped two pieces of RM100 note to me to pay for our meal. It proved that my initial thought of his chauvinism was wrong. He is ok with me (a lady) paying... but with his money. He is a man with strong principle but at the same time he will he always listened to me and included me in all the discussion. Throughout this journey, we also learnt to agree to disagree and we appreciate our differences.

    Understanding is very important in every relationship. My mum's initial worried that "a non medical background boyfriend will not be able to understand my hectic working life" is not an issue at all. I will said that he knows lots of medical stuff. He is willing to listen to all my stories and he picked up the medical jargon very fast. He can tell you what is intubation, CPR, caesarean section and etc.

    We have gone through lots of ups and downs together. There was once we knelt down before God to ask for His healing hands. Whatever that we have gone through, made both us appreciate each other even more and we clearly know that simple companion is a type of happiness too. Together we laughed, together we cried. 

    We always talked about our faith and dreams, we may plan but eventually God is the ultimate planner. We have to just submit ourselves to Him. We also shared our perspective on family, financial etc. It is magnificent when your partner shared the same vision and dream with yours!

25/12/2021

从前，他问我喜欢怎么样的钻戒，

我随口说了一句：简单就好。但香港戏里男主角求婚的戒子盒都是有灯的，好特别啊。

哈哈，真给你找到了。

谢谢你每一时，每一刻对我的细心。

谢谢你在平淡中，坚定的爱我。也不时的给我小惊喜。

你真正的在意，从来都是以行动表达出来。

爱情可以很简单，

这就是我所谓的“小幸福”。

我为此，感谢神！

Another good memory added!

Finally, yesterday was my last day of deployment in COVID medical ward 1. They parked all the stable O&G patients here. It was a great experience. I enjoyed working here. Having a team of very helpful and funny nurses, hardworking colleagues and a very awesome specialist. 

Nurses as usual, play an important role in a team. Most of the things they are willing to help you, such as blood taking, putting on CBD etc. One of the incident that I will never forget was: my nurses stayed back with me in the COVID ward to accompany a 6 years old kid, while waiting for the kid's uncle to come and fetch her. 3 of us tried our best to calm the kid, she was crying because her mum was transferred to a more acute ward. 

Next, I am working with a bunch of hardworking colleagues. Everyday, we will try to settle all our job lists as soon as possible. Having a good teamwork make the job much more easier. 

Lastly, I have a good, very motivating and cheerful boss. Dr Elora. She is very approachable, considerate and always readily available to help. Really grateful to work under her guidance. She cares a lot about her patients and we can always update her on the patients' condition, despite after office hours. It was indeed a blessing to work with a nice boss. 

This covid ward is closing down soon, the number of cases are reducing. Really hope that things will go back to near normal, soon.

the nurse accompanying the little girl

farewell luncheon with colleagues

                                                     

my last day in ward 1, thank you everyone

 

Life is as fragile as it can be

During my last oncall, I was so busy. I transferred out a total of 3 patients who deteriorated. In the end, one passed away, one remained in acute COVID ward and one went into the COVID ICU.

One of the uncle, before he was transferred out, he quickly called his assistant and sold all his stocks. He then gave a last call to all his children. Unfortunately, all of them were not in Sibu. 

Another middle age uncle, his condition was the worst. His daughter, who was tested positive followed him to the acute ward. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it through. I got the news in the next morning that, he passed away.

Lastly, an aunty with a 6 years old daughter. The aunty's condition deteriorated too in the ward. We sent her off, leaving the daughter behind, whom will followed her uncle back home to continue home quarantine. The daughter cried so badly, she wanted to go back with her mum. It was a very heart breaking moment. My nurses and I, we accompanied her in the COVID ward. All of us, including other COVID patients felt sad seeing her, kept comforting her. She is 6 years old, she knows what happened. 

Life is as fragile as it can be. This COVID-19 is bad, you never know how fast it can "eat" you. That is why sometimes I will take an effort to help the COVID patients to video call their kids, you never know when is the last goodbye. Therefore, please continue to take care out there, peeps!

Lonely Death due to COVID-19

Day 4: Yesterday, the son of Madam L called the hospital and asked me how's the mother's condition. I told him that she is not doing well. The next day when I went to work, I got to know that Madam L passed away already at 9pm the night before. It was quite a lonely death, whereby the family cannot go in and see her, be with her at her very last few hours in this world.

Oncall: We have one new patient, Madam T, 78 years old with underlying hypertension, dyslipidemia (high cholesterol) and diabetes mellitus. She contracted the COVID-19 infection from her husband. He was admitted to another COVID ward, his condition was more severe. Inside my ward, she refused all the oxygen support. She was very aggressive, she told us that she would rather die than getting the oxygen supplication. During my oncall, I went in to see the patient, she is already unconscious by that time. Managed to talk to her that, "Jesus is son of God, He died for your sin, He can save you. Trust him and you will be saved." 

    12 hours later, at around 6am, I was informed by the nurse that she passed away. I pronounced death to her family members over the phone and signed her death certificate. It is an indescribable feeling, people just left, one by one due to COVID-19. The day I was oncall, there was 11 deaths due to COVID in the hospital, and another 3 brought in dead, tested COVID positive too.

COVID-19 Deployment

This is my second time deployment to handle COVID-19 patients. Last time I was deployed to low risk quarantine centre. However, this time around, I requested to go to the COVID ward, a COVID ward where they also parked the pregnant ladies there. 

Day 1

I went into the COVID ward to review patients. After settling all my jobs, initially I plan to pray for a baby, because she kept crying non stop. Pity the mother. However, in the end I invited other patients to come and we prayed together. They were mostly Iban but I prayed in English. A bit headache when I was too long inside, probably it was too hot. When doffing, my whole attire were wet, water drippling when I squeezed it. It was all wet!

Met my specialist in-charged today. She was very cheerful, nice and very approachable person. Thank God for giving me a good superior.

Day 2

Today, again it is my turn to don in (means I need to wear full PPE and enter COVID ward to see patients). After everything settled, I "beh tahan" with the heat already, want to leave immediately. However, I still walked to the back cubicle and asked, if the patients yesterday, still need prayers or not. To my surprise, this is the reply from one of the patient: "Dr, saya nak minta tolong kamu berdoa untuk saya dan anak lagi, tapi tadi saya nampak Dr busy, tak jadi saya minta tolong Dr." I smiled, invited the rest of the patients who wanted to join us and we prayed together.

The 690g Baby

     There is no emergency in a pandemic. I am covering COVID-19 in pregnancy for this one whole week. Yesterday we had one pregnant lady, 26 weeker who went into labour in our COVID-19 antenatal isolation room. She was initially admitted for leaking liqour with no contraction pain. Yesterday morning, she complained of strong contraction pain and she was attended immediately by my nurse after wearing her full PPE. At the same time, the nurse had called me for help. Upon attending by my nurse, noted that the "opening" was already full and patient was ready for bearing down. After wearing my full PPE, as soon as I arrived in the antenatal isolation ward, the baby was just been delivered. After cord clamp, I immediately brought the baby to the warmer.

    Baby was limped and floppy. Being the only doctor inside, I resuscitated the baby while awaiting for the Paediatric team to arrive. Just for info, all of us went through neonatal resuscitation training when we were a houseman in Paediatric posting. For me, it was 5 years ago. The baby was so tiny, size of my two palms. Later on, I learnt that the baby was 690g only.

     It was a big relieved when I saw the paediatric consultant arrived outside the isolation area. While presenting the case to her, she asked me to continue bagging first. The resuscitation was later took over by the Paeds medical officer. By that time, the baby's condition had already improved. She apologized to me for the delay and told me that she had already rushed here. I told her that it is ok, I understand that all of us need to wear the full PPE first and that took up some times.

    This is one of the situation where there is no emergency in a pandemic. We can't do everything immediately. So when we call for help, deep inside our heart we know that the help will only arrive in a while. We are being told to protect ourselves first before saving the patients. Do not rush into the isolation wards without a full PPE. 

    Usually when we call for help from paediatric team's help, they will arrive as soon as possible. They will run for the baby's life. Within a few seconds, u will see them appeared in front of you. However, not in this pandemic. No one could have thought that the patient will deliver the baby so fast in view of she has no contraction pain. 

    I was taken aback by the incident. However, after doing some reflection with my nurses, I told them, we had already done our best. I thanked them for the teamworks. The baby is extremely premature. Hopefully, the baby will survive well with the least health issue in future.  

2 months Deployment in COVID medical

 Have been wanting to write this post for quite some times. I was deployed to PKRC (Quarantine and Low-Risk Treatment Centre for COVID-19). I went there during the peak season of COVID-19.

Started off my first day there, been scolded by a couple. The wife broke down emotionally due to long duration of quarantine. She refused to listen to our explanation. Despite all the drama, we still couldn\"t grant her request for home quarantine at that point of time. 

There was once a lady with COVID-19, admitted here. She requested to see her mum for one last time. However, she was not allowed to do so because:
(1) She herself is a COVID patient, need to be quarantined. 

(2) Her mum passed away due to COVID, hence, no one is allow to go near her in the mortuary there, only the men in full PPE handling the corpse. 

After discussed with my team leader, the most we can offer her is to allow her to go to the gate there when the hearse passed by. The whole scene was a heartbreaking one. After seeing her mum off to cemetery from far, she called me and thanked me. She thanked me for the arrangement. Honestly I felt bad for not being able to allow her to go near her mum. Little did I know that, she was grateful to us for letting her to the gate and sent her mum off for the last time.

Been there for 2 months, I also encountered a patient with suicidal attempt. I am grateful to work with a group of very approachable physicians for consultation. Not to forget also to the great team in ILKKM (PKRC where I was stationed). They are the nurses, medical assistant, PPK etc. The teamwork by them make my life there better. 

Blessing: 3 layered tea by a Paeds MO, sushi by a MA.

thank you :)

COVID-19, still a long way to go

I have been deployed to medical COVID for a month already. 

Yesterday I got to know that one of my colleague\"s kids were tested positive. Both her kids are still young, one of them just a few months old, yet, he needs to go through all this hassle. 

She texted me last night, once she got to know that both her kids were tested positive. She was so worried. She told me, she was so worried about her kids. She just hoped that her kids will be fine. She is now in the canopies, COVID zone outside our hospital. And it is raining with storms outside. It should be very cold. I am thinking about the kids and the elderly. I pray that everything goes well with her and her kids. I know that another 4 family members of her were tested positive too.

We know that, India is now in a crisis. Burning of corpses, people gasping for oxygen, patients lying outside the hospital waiting for treatment. How about the healtcare workers. It is not easy for them.

Still a long way to go, before we can finally hear, "COVID-19 is finally gone." We don\"t know when. Looking at the current situation in Sarawak now, there is only a tinge of hope. By now, people should have some insights.

picture taken last month