Here we go again..

Hardly a week can go by without some silly medical misadventure happening. This retained ureteric stent fiasco reflects the usual my story, your story and the truth scenario.
I find it quite ridiculous that a patient, agreeing to go for surgery without knowing what is going to be done onto her own body, but having said that I'm not that surprised.
In my own practice, it's not unusual to see someone who say they don't understand or know what operation they had in the past.Especially in public hospital setup with overworked doctors and nurses.

The other side of the coin is the surgeon who would ask the most junior doctor to shove the consent form in front of the patient for signature.

The truth is probably a mixture of both.

All these, made worse by stupid sensational reporting from a 'mainstream' newspaper masquerading as a supermarket tabloid.

Writer's block

Funny. I always had something to say. All the time. Even when nobody wants me to say anything.
Log in today and I realised that I have nothing to say.

Not even about Altantuya, nor the selling of MU, the abuse of Indonesian maids (without them, I can't live), the dirty PLKN canteen nor about Real Madrid winning La Liga on Beckham's last season ( no, I'm not a ManU man, in fact I'm an ABU man).
I can't even think of anything to write about the flood in KL nor about the SMART tunnel.Poor chap who manages SMART tunnel, even though he said that the tunnel is not ready yet, still he was given brickbats!! C'mon guys be reasonable..

Then I remember the Raja Petra's ominous warning.Hope that I don't have anything to write about, tomorrow.

Down and out..

Terrible day yesterday..In fact any day like that is terrible. One of my close friend passed away suddenly, probably due to a heart attack the night before.He was one week away from 40 years old..This is the time when you think life is not fair..with 3 young daughters and when life is just about to take shape.He was not a smoker, played soccer for school etc. In fact he had chest pain after playing badminton and still he managed to joke that he'd had it if it was a heart attack.Unfortunately it was.
Arrived DOA in a local hospital.

And for the whole day yesterday, I had that vague chest and epigastric discomfort.

Hugged all my kids last night.At least I can still do that.

Cuti Cuti Malaysia

Didn't get much time to blog over last week or so. Promised my kids to take them to the National Zoo, which I haven't been to myself for the past 30 years. Guess what, nothing has changed!!! I think Taiping Zoo is so much better..
Anyway, I don't know things about fundings etc. I'm sure it's costly to run a zoo. Somehow I can't find that spark or oomph in our National Zoo, to make it a really memorable visit.
Maybe it is a memorable visit for my kids, I'll ask them..At least they can write about it in their
essay, which I'm sure they'll be asked to do after the holidays.

Well, another medical fiasco this week. 4 different hospitals private and public, turned away ( or tried to), a patient with gunshot wound. I think our ethics have gone to the dogs..(apologies to all the dogs). Whatever happened to the desire to treat the sick, god..
At least DG made sense this time in ticking them off..Anyway, as usual, there could be more to it than meets the eye.

Travelling during school holidays can be challenging in many ways. You have to cope with the constant in-car yelling,jumping and crying.Not to mention the I want to go to the toilet routine..That is ok, what I really get pissed about is the ignoramus on wheels. Somehow, someone forgot to teach some drivers some etiquette.
By the way, I think we need a sort of 'slow' trap too on the road to complement the 'speed' traps.I think countless accidents are caused by really slow drivers, driving at 40 km/h with vast expanse of empty road right down to the horizon.

Anyway got home safely, and a home is a home even though the gate is rusty, grass is growing wild and the paint job is 'fungus green'.

Black sheep

I saw the report in The Star about the death of a poor lady who had an accident while fleeing KJ's henchmen aka Mat Rempits, or was it just a few hoodlums who happen to ride bikes..

Whilst her death was a tragedy and can even be criminal in nature, the aftermath, in a blame game, dragged some doctors and/or hospital through mud. It became a he says, she says kind of thing until it has to be investigated.

Read it here.

As it turned out the hospital/doctors there did the right thing but it was too late..the wolves were let out and it can be seen that some of them are doctors too.

Talk about " I have seen the enemy, he is us" kind of moment.

Instead of looking at the big picture, some poor doctors ( I presumed government's) would start laying into their private counterpart and start painting every hospital and doctors with the same broad brush of greed.I suppose they just stopped short of calling them greedy capitalist pig..

Before all the Dr. Guavarras and Castros started to complain about the evil thing called money and how we should just live on goodwill, I will explain a thing or two.

There are 2 main parts in a private hospital bills, one is the professional fees where we get paid for work that we actually perform. (Some doctors would probably consider saying "Hi, how are you" as work e.g. neurologists maybe, in checking speech and higher mentation, but I don't).

Second is the hospital bills ie disposable items,drugs,services from nurses,physiotherapy (like what Datuk Kalimullah had during NSTP's AGM), Xrays etc.There are actually costs involved in buying these things to be provided to patients..If you guys didn't mugged so hard in medical schools to get the CGPA of 4.0, you might realise that costs need money aka dough,fulus or duit.

So, pray tell our 'poor doctors', who is going to cover these costs? It is not free in the governments' hospital either.You and me paid for that via our yearly tax..which is quite likely that I paid more than you do..If you say waive it then, in no time private hospitals will be as profitable as Proton and we can sit tight for Naza to come and buys us for RM1.

Only in the case of private hospitals it will be Temasek Group via Pantai, or maybe KPJ..

I have done often in the past, did it today and I'm sure I'll do it again in the future, in waiving my professional fees if the situation warrants it. I doubt I'll do it for Mr Ananda Krishnan should our path cross (he ain't giving me free Astro and Maxis too) but I will do that for you since we are within the same brotherhood.So I don't need you badmouthing me, like I need a proverbial hole in the head!

Next time you guys hear stories about greedy doctors and hospitals.Don't jump on the bandwagon, sit back and figure out the truth because I said way up there.There's always a gap between your story,mine and the truth.