Sunday, November 04, 2007

Just as i had written half a page, got DC. Arhh, shall cut it short.
Basically I did manage to have a breather at work last week. my two "babies" were out. The 5000 copies of service booklets were printed and delivered to us on Monday. The doctors seems to like them. The website is also up"live" on Wednesday, and people can actually view it from their homes. Ok, my fellow colleague and I are on target.

Expect to be busy towards the end of this week...


An encounter last week at the corridor of the main hospital building brought back memory of how my newly-joined colleague once asked me:

" Hey,wun u feel depress when u happened to passed by all these sick, injured patients."

This colleague and I both did not come from the health care industry. Though we do not work on the ground, and our office is not located at the main hospital buildings, we do need to pass by the clinics / wards at least once a day. And I have my fair encounters of seeing seriously injured patients on stretchers, and not to mention the"lucky encounters" I had on seeing porters pushing dead bodies to mortuary.

What did left me quite shocked was that once i saw a patient with the scalp still intact but i looked as if half of the head was sunken. My colleague told me that it is becos he doesn't has a skull....
Well, somehow I had become 'used" to seeing all these scenes and was not too affected by them.

Back to track. I was walking along the corridor of the main building and walked passed quite a few patients and visitors. After I was walked abt 10m past an old woman who was walking quite slowly (memory was quite vague though) , I saw this woman in her 30s right in front of me, shouting loudly at the old lady (perhaps her mum or mother-in-law) in hokkien:

"oei, gia sa lah liao!"
(for the benefit of those who dun understand the hokkien pinyin i had typed, it means : "Oei , u walked the wrong way!"

her voice was so loud that everyone walking in the corridor stopped in their tracks to see what 's the commotion.

As I was wearing my staff pass, I din turned to take a look but continue walking. It seems like the old Lady perhaps choose to ignore her after being humiliated, as I heard the woman screaming again


"gia sa lah liao. buay yao tia ah!" ( Told u u'd walked the wrong way, u dun uderstand!"

From the expressions I saw of the other people whom I had walked passed them, I could see they were feeling rather pitiful for the old lady and disgusted at the woman's behaviour.


I left me quite affected for a few hours. Thinking how could someone humiliate their mother/mother-in-law in this way. This is like a case of abuse. Dun understand that if an old lady need to visit the hospital, and obviously have problems walking. why did the woman as her relative did not walk along with her. Yet screaming at the top of her voice for walking the wrong way. It seems like she find it a chore to accompany her to see her doctor and chose to vent her anger by humiliating her (the old lady).

Perhaps she did not realised that she humiliate herself too...


Till now, her screams of "gia sa lah liao. buay yao tia ah!" still echoes in my mind.... I can't imagine how the old lady is being treated daily...

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