bonjour brightside

i just read carmen’s blog and came to know that she got her PR status approved! congrats babe! i find it so inspiring not merely because God has truly blessed her so abundantly, but because she was a woman of GREAT faith and declared God’s favour upon her life, even before she knew when she would receive it. it was then that i realised that i wanted lots of things (ie. not material items) like getting my elective application approved, getting a decently priced air ticket back home and all the other mundanities in my life that only i will care about- and i came to the realisation that i didn’t dare to ASK. why did i not dare to ask? i could come up with a million excuses for myself, but the answer here is plain and simple- i had little faith. and also because i thought that God would not bother about my petty requests. so i resigned myself to ‘fate’, believed that ‘whatever’s meant to be mine will be mine’ and ‘i’ll just have to wait’; but the truth is that i didn’t dare to ask, i didn’t even try. sure, i ‘wished’ for things, i ‘hoped’ for the best, but i never opened my mouth to say that ‘i want’. i guess this wake-up call couldn’t have come at a better time, especially now when i feel like i’m stuck in a rut.

i remember when i was 16 i lost my wallet (given to me by my bunch of close classmates) and my new nokia handphone (a 1-month old birthday present from my dad) and i was devastated. i’d never lost my wallet or phone ever, and i was crushed that i lost 2 birthday presents that had so much sentiment attached to them in one shot. the next day i got a card from my classmates and one of them wrote “God cares about the birds and the bees, and He cares about lost wallets too” so i prayed for my wallet or phone to be recovered, in the slightest glimmer of hope i still harboured. the next week i didn’t get my wallet or phone back- but i received the exact same wallet that i’d lost (my same classmates bought me a NEW wallet again) and i think what i really got out of this whole wallet-losing incident was that God does care about me, to have given me AMAZING friends who love me enough to go to all that trouble. i must say that i didn’t really think that i would get my wallet/phone back, but in a way i did! i guess they don’t call it faith if you can see it; faith is invisible, so is God. but we believe, and we hold on tight, and we declare His promises upon our lives, and we hope KNOW it will happen.

p.s. the grey’s anatomy finale was a heartbreaker. i know i use the term loosely, but this time i really mean it. every single episode tugs at my heartstrings but this one pwned them all.

i’m beginning to freak out. my presentation is due in 2 days and i haven’t even compiled my data, instead ive been happily procrastinating- watching tv, eating my kitchen down, typing random things into ebay to see what i find…. omg i’m doing everything but what i’m supposed to now. even now as you can see i’m blogging. what is wrong. with me!! anyway today i bought myself booties! like finally. ive been wanting them since a year and a half ago, but never found one that i really liked…. until today. i am feeling really happy that i will be well protected against the harsh wintry season this year. i got new suede gloves last week at a steal, and a trenchcoat early on in march. all i need now is a huge cream wool scarf that will envelop my neck and keep it toasty. ok i think i will go do some real work now.

p.s. does anyone think that grey’s anatomy is just getting better and better? it’s so good it’s breaking my heart.

#1

mrs P was morbidly obese. she couldn’t move much because she was so large, and her hefty weight put so much strain on her back that she had severe osteoarthritis of the spine, so she was always complaining of pain. we gave her all the pain meds that we thought were most appropriate for her, but she rejected them one by one saying she was ‘allergic’. she claimed she was ‘allergic’ to tramadol, oxycontin, morphine, endone etc… so we conceded that in that case, we couldn’t do much for her. she would complain of pain all day long, refuse her meds, refuse physiotherapy, refuse placement in a high-level care home… practically the kind of patient you wish you never had. she was labelled a ‘whinger’ and the doctors tried to get her out of hospital as quickly as possible, because she was overstaying and taking up a bed that should have been given to someone with a more acute illness. then mrs P’s daughter said that her mum was going ‘off’, and we sort of knew it but we didn’t really take her seriously, since she had always been medically stable. then mrs P took a turn for the worse and before we could do anything, she passed away this morning. i asked S why mrs P died. he said “i guess she probably had an infection somewhere that killed her slowly, but it wasn’t investigated thoroughly.” i know it’s not entirely our fault; her prognosis was bleak to begin with but i can’t help but feel like we killed her with our negligence. i am wracked with guilt. she told me that she would rather die first than be put in a nursing home- i guess sometimes when people are devoid of motivation to live, they kind of expire…

#2

mrs A re-presented to the emergency department with a 2 day history of confusion and nose bleeds, 3 days after she was discharged for an infective exacerbation of her airways disease and new-onset atrial fibrillation. we started her on warfarin then, an anticoagulant/blood thinner (ie. makes blood less likely to clot but also increases the risk of bleeding). obviously the nosebleeds had to do with the warfarin. her INR was 7.5!!! (normal INR is 1; the higher your INR the more likely you will bleed non-stop). she was really quite delirious and kept complaining about a headache, i told my consultant i was concerned she could have had a subdural haemorrhage, so we got a CT brain. when i looked at the CT scan i gasped. it was the kind of image that makes you go ‘oh my fucking stars’, and i haven’t seen those kind of CT scans since my neurosurg days. it was a massive monster of a tumour in her right temporal and frontal lobes, obviously it had been there for a while but the warfarin we gave her caused the tumour to bleed into her brain. it was grostesque. i f-ing hate brain tumours. we called neurosurg but they weren’t keen to operate on her since she might die on the table cos of her comorbidities like heart failure and airways disease. i had to accept the fact that we couldn’t do anything…. we called her husband and broke the news over the phone (which, btw, is a NO-NO) but we had no other choice. i asked M how mr A took the news, and she told me “he was in tears”. omg. my heart broke.