Today’s clinic duty in Taiping

My next clinic duty in Taiping is supposed to be in early July. However, both the volunteers who are supposed to be on duty today couldn’t make it as they had to be elsewhere, and so they sought my help to switch duties with them.

And so I was in Taiping Hospital again this morning. I no longer worry about finding parking in Taiping Hospital ever since their multi-storey parking was opened to public. No luck getting parking space on the first 4 levels usually, but so far I haven’t had any problems parking my car at level 5. If you’re worried about having to walk down (and later up) the staircases for 5 or 6 floors, there’s a lift provided. As usual, I walked past the lift lobby, heading straight to the stairs. A security guard who was doing her rounds, called me and said, “Kak! Kak! Situ ada lif!” She probably thought I didn’t know there was a lift. I, on the other hand, opted for the exercise.

Anyway, the moment I got to the HIV clinic, I saw a patient just outside the room, on a stretcher. I figured that could be one of the cases to be referred to me. I checked with the nurse, and she told me there were very few appointments today, mostly old cases. The only case I may want to see she said, was the lady on the stretcher I saw outside.

But since our make-shift counselling room is the praying room just across the doctor’s room, and the lady was on a stretcher, there was no way for me to bring the lady into the praying room to talk to her there. I had no choice but to talk to her outside, with people passing by from time to time.

Of course I made sure I didn’t mention HIV and AIDS in my conversation. Even when I needed to ask, I’d just say “sakit ni” and she’d understand.

She was brought to Taiping in an ambulance from a district hospital where she was warded. According to her, her husband, who also has HIV, used to work as a bus driver, but now works as a rubber tapper to support the family. She herself used to open a food stall for some extra income for the family, but stopped doing so ever since she became too weak to work.

With 3 school-going children, all in secondary school, I’m sure it’s not easy for the family especially now that both parents are not well. I promised her we’d try to help out with the children’s education expenses. I told her I needed copies of some documents and she could either post them to me, or she can bring them along during her next appointment and pass them to the volunteer on duty.

Let’s see how it goes…

Another house visit

During my clinic duty last week, other than the 2 cases referred to me during clinic hours, the staff nurse also sought my help to follow up on another case needing attention.

You see, we only send volunteers to help out at the ID clinic of Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun Ipoh on Mondays. While the ID clinic usually sets up the appointments for new cases on Mondays, sometimes there may be a few new cases scheduled for appointment on other days when none of our volunteers are at the hospital.

So there was this particular case of an Indonesian lady married to a Malaysian. Husband passed away recently, and she has a 3 year old daughter (who has been confirmed negative). With no specific income of her own, the staff nurse thought the lady would need some assistance.

After calling the lady immediately after my clinic duty was over, and getting the go ahead from the lady to visit her at home, I went to visit her last Wednesday. Her address however, was not listed in my GPS, and I couldn’t find it on google maps either. So the next option was to ask her for nearby landmarks, and I’d call her once I reached the said landmark.

As it turned out, her house was not that far from the given landmark, and when I called her from the said landmark, the directions she gave was quite clear. In fact, she came out of her house to wait by the roadside and asked me to look for her. Well no, I had never met her before that, but it wasn’t so difficult trying to figure that out…. just look for someone holding a handphone and looking like she’s looking out for someone trying to look out for her.

The lady, Elvira, is at least lucky enough that she doesn’t have to pay any house rental. She and her daughter stays at her late husband’s family home. Both parents-in-law had passed away, and the husband’s siblings are all staying elsewhere. So they let her stay at the family house.

But she still has to pay for utilities… and not forgetting food, of course! Thank goodness her eldest sis-in-law, who doesn’t have children of her own, does help out giving her about RM200 per month.

Still, RM200 is not much. But guess what? Unlike some other cases that I’ve handled before, when clients usually complain about not having enough of this and that, Elvira doesn’t complain. She is thankful with what she has. In fact, she feels it will be better for her daughter to grow up here rather than bringing her back home to her hometown back in Indonesia where life is harder.

And probably because of her positive attitude as well, even her neighbours help them out, always giving them food from time to time.

Of course I am not saying that Elvira doesn’t need our help at all. In fact when I went to visit, I brought her some groceries as well. It’s just that at least I don’t really have to worry about Elvira and her daughter not having anything to eat at home. We will still probably send her some groceries from time to time, but more importantly, once her daughter starts going to school, we can surely step in to help out with the girl’s education expenses.

The usual routine

It has been more than a month since I last updated my blog. Not that I have stopped doing my voluntary work, but I guess things were beginning to get routine that I didn’t really have anything new to update.

Things went on as usual… clinic duties in Ipoh and Taiping. Making sure the education sponsorship money is disbursed to the respective families on time… updating the sponsorship account… attending meetings… you get the drift.

I have to admit I don’t do house visits as often as I used to. Firstly, because I seldom get new clients anymore (I already have more than enough clients so my fellow volunteers don’t assign me to new clients unless they really have to). Secondly, our policy is to help our clients become independent. So, my style is, while I do visit the needy clients quite often during the initial stages, once I feel they can be independent enough, I’d slowly distant myself from them, although I don’t totally stay away. I still do monitor their progress, and help will still be rendered if they really need it.

From time to time, the staff nurse at the HIV clinic in Ipoh would call me and seek my help to follow up on certain cases, particularly if the cases involved patients with hospital appointments on the days other than Mondays (we only have volunteers helping out at the HIV clinic in Ipoh on Mondays).

Today for example, although I was on clinic duty, and 2 new cases were referred to me during clinic, the staff nurse also requested that I look into another case of a single mom with a 3 year old child. The lady’s appointment at the clinic was on a Thursday. While the nurse did give the Buddies brochure to the lady and told her she could call us for help, it is not surprising that she hasn’t. Usually it is us Buddies who’d have to take that first step.

And so I did call this lady today and after speaking to her on the phone, she did seem quite receptive to the idea of having me visit her at home. I’m planning to visit her this week. It has been quite a while since my last visit to an unfamiliar territory. I do hope the lady will be able to give clear directions on how to get to her house.

Getting mother and daughter to go for treatment

When I brought Adila, the 13 year old HIV+ girl to the hospital last Monday, the person accompanying her was her 18 year old sister instead of her mother, although the mother was home when I went to fetch them.

When I got to the hospital, I was told by the nurses that the mother, Hamimah, simply refused to get treatment for herself, insisting that she was doing fine as it is. According to the staff nurse, no matter what they told her, Hamimah always came up with an answer. After that Hamimah wouldn’t even bring Adila to the hospital, I suppose to avoid getting more “lectures” from the nurses about getting treatment.

Luckily Adila’s older sisters (married and staying elsewhere) took over the responsibility of making sure Adila doesn’t miss her hospital appointments.

When I sent Adila and her sister home that day, Hamimah still didn’t seem too receptive. So I avoided going in to see her. I didn’t want to seem too pushy. I figured I needed to give her time and space, otherwise she’d avoid me altogether.

Then on Tuesday, I received a text message from Hamimah, telling me that Adila had another hospital appointment that day, this time with a different specialist. Hmmm… who did they think I was? A taxi driver providing them free service? If they had problems getting transport to bring the girl to the hospital, they could have at least informed me the day before instead of telling me on the day itself, just like calling a taxi. This time I told Hamimah I already had some other appointments and wasn’t able to help.

I then used a different approach, I asked whether Hamimah could bring her daughter to the hospital for future appointments if I could arrange for assistance with the taxi fares. It was only then that she admitted to me she couldn’t afford to pay for taxi fares and that she’d appreciate any help she could get.

To arrange for financial assistance, I needed more details. Great opportunity for me to visit them at home and personally speak to Hamimah face to face.

And so this morning, after giving a talk on HIV to a group of foreign workers at a factory here in Ipoh, I headed over to Hamimah’s house. Hamimah this time was a bit more receptive, knowing that I was there to help them, not to pester her to get treatment.

After getting all the details I needed about her 2 schooling children (Adila and her 11 year old sister), I had a heart to heart talk with Hamimah. She then opened up to me about her problems, including health problems, which, to her, had nothing to do with HIV. I managed to coax her to get treatment for her HIV, telling her that unless and until she gets treatment for HIV, it will be difficult for her to get better from her other health problems, mostly skin-related issues.

Hamimah then promised me that she’d accompany Adila to the hospital during her next appointment, see the doctor and try to get an appointment for herself as well.

I hope she will stick to her word and won’t change her mind.

Shopping for the children… and the new case of a 13 year old girl

I had initially wanted to take Dahlia & her children shopping for their needs during the recent 1 week school break, but Dahlia’s 2 year old son was down with pneumonia and had to be warded at the hospital. I had no choice but to postpone the shopping.

Once school reopened, it wasn’t practical for me to take them during weekdays, because although all 3 schooling children go to school in the morning, they’d usually be back home only around 3 pm, especially the ones in secondary school. With their home being about 1 hour drive from my place, I didn’t want to rush everything and end up coming home quite late.

So I finally decided to take them shopping last Saturday morning. When I arrived at their house circa 10 am, Dahlia was still hanging some clothes on the balcony. Apparently their place was affected by the water rationing, and they had no supply of water for the previous 2 days. Water was back on Saturday morning, and so she took the opportunity to wash all her children’s clothes immediately.

Her second son, 13, had some activities at school and so he couldn’t join us shopping. However, according to Dahlia, his size is just about the same as his 15 year old sister, including shoe size, and so there was no problem buying his schooling needs without him tagging along.

So off we went… Dahlia and her 8 month old daughter at the front seat while the other 4 children aged 15, 7, 4 and 2 at the back seat. Since it’s no longer “back-to-school” promotion season, it wasn’t practical taking them to a supermarket. So based on Dahlia’s recommendations (she knows better where to shop at that town), we went to a bazaar in town. More choices of sizes etc. But I definitely wasn’t able to simply swipe my debit card for payment, and so I needed lots of cash with me.

The first round of shopping involved buying school uniforms, shoes, and uniforms for co-curricular activities (Kadet Remaja for the 15 year old girl and Kadet Polis for the 13 year old boy). Total came up to slightly over RM800. And I had about RM800+ cash in hand.

Seeing that the younger 2 boys were becoming restless and thirsty, after putting all the stuff into the car, I brought them to a nearby stall for brunch (they hadn’t had breakfast even). Then, before proceeding with more shopping, I had to go to an ATM first to withdraw more cash. We went on to buy track bottoms and school bags before finally heading to a supermarket to buy milk and diapers for the younger 2 kids.

Total damages: RM1.2K. But all the 3 schooling children are under our sponsorship programme, and I’ve also got some donations to buy milk and diapers for the youngest 2, and so all those expenses are already covered for.

Meanwhile, the blood test results for all the children will be known later this month. Dahlia’s blood test, came back with a CD4 of 110, and so she needs to get started with ARV medication immediately. She does intend to look for a job, but I told her to hang on a little while longer after she starts her ARV, in case there are any side effects. Once she’s okay with the ARV, then there shouldn’t be any problem for her to find a job.

Today I was thinking of just staying at home to finish up my slides for this Thursday’s talk on HIV to a group of factory workers. But after coming back from my morning walk, a call came in from an unfamiliar number. A lady, who got my number from the staff nurse at the HIV clinic, sought my help to bring her 13 year HIV+ sister to the hospital for her appointment. Usually she’d bring her sister to the hospital herself, but today she couldn’t. The girl’s mother, who is +ve herself, simply refused to go to the hospital. If it was up to her, the girl would miss her hospital appointments and meds as well. That’s why the older sister (who is married and stays elsewhere) took over the responsibility. But while she could bring her younger sister for follow up appointments, there was nothing much she could do to coax her mother to do the same.

The nurses had already spoken to the mother, telling her that she’d need to come for appointments herself, but no matter what they told her, she insisted she doesn’t need to because she feels simply fine.

I think she’s still in denial…