Friday, June 5, 2009

Air mata

Dear blog, u know what....I have a confession to make.I cried this week!

It happened 2 days ago during bedside teaching with prof.I had a patient who had stroke 2 days ago.She is a 43 yr old Indonesian lady, came to Malaysia about 6 months ago utk mencari rezeki yg halal,workin as babysitter.But she developed stroke and now is paralyzed on her right side.Everything went ok, but soon after I performed neuroligical examination of the lower limb on her in front of prof and my colleagues, she suddenly grab my prof's arm and start to say things like, 'Tuan dokter, tolong obati saya.Saya tak mahu jadi begini.Tolong.Tolong.Tolongg..." Allah...dats when my lacrimal gland starts to produce tears.Ok.I was like wtf, stop crying silly!(umm..I was saying silly to myself n not to d patient)Anyway,its not like tears running down the cheek.Its more like 'air mata bergenang-genang di kelopak mata"I can see that my colleagues are experiencing the same thing.We tahan.Try to look professional.But again, we are also human beings and the emotion sort of transcends right into our hearts.
Similar things happened towards another patient.It occurs the same day.She is a middle-aged Malay lady, came in with intermittent vertigo(dizziness).It was rather an interesting case because she had cerebellar signs such as nystagmus, intentional tremor,ataxia,dysdiadochokinesis etc. Again, after Hanan performed physical examination to elicit cereballar signs on her, she started to say ," Tuan dokter, ni can... can... cancer ker?"...and she started crying.I really admire the way how prof handled and tackled these emotional moments.He motivates patient.He tell them to think positive and be optimistic.By the way, we dont think its cancer because the history does not suggest that it is.Moreover, the cerebellar signs are not vivid.Even if it is a CP(Cerebello-pontine) angle tumour, the ENT surgeon can easily remove them.
It break our hearts to be in this situation.Its hard to be optimistic when you know that the disease such as stroke do not have a good prognosis.There is nothing much we can offer!Once kena stroke, poof... its hard to predict.The only thing to do is to motivate patient,telling them that they cannot lose hope.Patient come to us because they trust us.They hope that, with the help of Allah and to our utmost capabilities ....we can cure them.Ok.This is dilemma right there.I better stop now.Nak pegi dinner......

p/s: My long case clinical exam for internal medicine is on this Monday(3 hari lagi!)at 2.30pm.Doakan ye.... =)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

My god, i miss the most important moment !

Anonymous said...

reflects how much medicine affects our outlook of life

N a b i L said...

Medicine do change our perception towards life.We see life at many different angle.We become more thankful with wht we have.Of what god has given us.We appreciate life more.We became more humble.God is great