Hospitalised again

While doing some accounting work at home yesterday, I received a text message from a client, ‘Mkck Fizah, mama masuk hospital.” It wasn’t the client herself who sent the message, but her son who’s looking after his mother at the ward. The client? Sofie, and the son, Saiful, the 14 year old boy who can easily pass off as a primary school kid.

It didn’t come as a surprise to me, really. Sofie was very frail-looking the last I visited her, and knowing her appointment would be this week, Sofie herself had expected to be warded after her appointment with the doctor.

The SMS came in only after 6 pm, so I decided to visit her only today. And thinking that parking would be easier after 2 pm, I figured I might as well visit after the afternoon visiting hours. I do have my special pass, so there shouldn’t be any problem going into the ward.

So after 2pm this afternoon, I left home and headed straight to the hospital… only to find out that parking was still not that easy to get, BUT it was indeed easier than in the mornings. At least I got to park at a designated parking area rather than having no choice but to park elsewhere and walk to the hospital like I usually had to do whenever I went for my clinic duties on Wednesday mornings.

Getting into the lifts shouldn’t have been a problem either at that time, but as part of my Kinabalu training programme, I am determined to use the stairs as much as possible. So yep, I decided to walk all the way up and managed to reach the 8th floor in 3 minutes.

Saiful had gone down to the canteen to buy some food, while Sofie was sleeping on her bed. I touched Sofie’s hands to check if she was really asleep or was just closing her eyes trying to sleep. She opened her eyes. Some young nurses were writing down some reports but when they saw me helping Sofie to sit, they immediately came to help. My hospital pass just had “Pas Khas” written on it (with my photo, name and IC number) without indicating my position or who I represent, so the nurses must have been extra cautious in case I was someone higher up in authority… :-)

Anyway, the doc had to immediately stop Sofie’s present HAART line, keep her off ARV for 3 months before deciding on which combination of ARV should be given for her to start her HAART again.

As I had expected, Saiful and his younger sister Ika had been missing school because while Saiful is looking after his mother at the hospital, Ika is too young to be staying on her own, and so she now stays at her aunt’s house nearer to Ipoh. Their schools are in another town where they live. Even if Sofie gets discharged, she’d be too weak to take care of herself, so she and the 2 kids will be staying at her sister’s house as well. Nearer to Ipoh and nearer to get to the hospital. I think I’ll figure out how to sort their problems later, when Sofie gets discharged.

Later tonight, Sofie’s sister called. She went to visit at the hospital and while Sofie was too embarrassed to ask me earlier, the sister asked if I could arrange to get a wheelchair for Sofie when she gets discharged. I told the sister I will arrange for it. To me it shouldn’t be a big problem. If I can’t get donors, we can always use our Clients Welfare Fund to buy one for her. But I updated this info on my facebook status, and within minutes I had 2 donors interested to sponsor a wheelchair or to at least to donate part of the cost.

That problem settled, next thing is to shop around for one… I need to see the different models and do some price comparison…