Death

Hey guys. Here I am again.
Working in a hospital had been exiting and exhilarating. Since my days working in a hospital has just ended, I want share some interesting experiences I've been through before I forgot what it feels like.

One thing about working in a hospital is that you can’t avoid death even if you want to. There has been at least 4 death cases during the short 4 months. Truth be told, on my first day of work, there’s already one death. It was an uncle in his 80’s, who stayed in the hospital for 2 months or so. (try guessing his inpatient bill, if you got the correct amount plus minus 100 ringgit,  I might consider treating you to lunch.) The look on the face of his daughter when she came to settle the bill was heart breaking.

Since then, a few more deaths occurred in the hospital.  There was one teenager who got ran down by a car, whose face was partially crushed. He got sent to our hospital through the A & E department. There was a lot of blood on the floor. It was so bad that the doctor refused to accept the case. His mum was hysterical. He died when he got transferred to general hospital.

Another one was a 3-month-old baby. The baby passed away due to a genetic disease which killed a few of her sisters previously. It was sad. Her father was a fisherman who cant afford insurance premium, let alone the hospital bill. The father is already numb and accepted the fate that the baby would not survive the week when the baby was sent in. You might want to ask why he still send her in despite knowing that she would die. The answer is simple, for a child’s father, if there a slight chance to save his child, he would gamble everything including his life. [Curious how they foot the bill? Ok, there was this god-sent Samaritan who promised to pay all the baby’s bill for the father. And he paid. Amazing huh? God still exists.]

The most recent death is the death of a 94-year-old gramps. I have no idea how he died, but let’s assume its just old age. This one I had the chance to witness more than just how the relative react to the death. It was this fine day. Suddenly, there was a code blue (hospital equivalent of military's code red). Few minutes later, the doctor came out of the ward, shaking his head. Later that day, when I was going to close my collection (I had half day that day) I happened to pass by the ward. The deceased's son asked me for the bill, which coincidentally was in my hand. He paid for the bill on the spot. He was smiling all the time, but you can see his hand shaking. I witnessed the carcass brought off after in a cemetery van.

Deaths. An event where an individual ended his life. An event that had different meaning to different individual. To a mother who just lost her son, it was agony. To a father whose baby had genetic disease, it was utter helplessness and despair. To daughter and son who lost their fathers through old age, it was a mixed feeling of relieve and grief. Relieve because death had ended their father’s suffering; grief because they’ve just lost their loved one. Death evoke such extreme emotion. Raw emotions that is so intense to a bystander like me that it almost stopped my heart from beating.

P/S: Procrastination sucks. This post should be on the blog before I quit metro.