Nadai Mutual Energy

Posted in All in a days work, Ponderings & Personal Development by

Even as adults, we are learning new things about forging relationships with other people. In my situation, it still hurts when people do not reciprocate your energy in building that relationship. At one point, you just get tired and prefer to spend that little amount of dignity you have towards yourself.

I wanted to make a few of my vegetarian friends feel included in our workplace get-together potluck. So I brought some candies with me as options for the vegetarians to snack on alongside other veggie-friendly food. In fact, I bought some for all my other colleagues so that we could try and enjoy the same thing. I had it myself, and it was a delicious gummy. Good things are meant to be shared, right?

Two colorful candy packaging bags featuring cartoon creatures: one for 'Grumpy Candy' with a blue monster and the other for 'Fruity Gummies' with a blue creature sitting among strawberries. Both bags indicate they are suitable for vegetarians.

Unfortunately, the one that I wanted to hopefully feel included did not turn up to the event. Not only that, but all the other food was also flatly refused. It was a sad yet shocking experience. All the husnuzon just went down the drain. Even if you do not prefer something, just accept it graciously and chuck it into the bin secretly later on. Sigh.

Some people just don’t deserve our energy, after all.

Her colourful, unstable brain

Posted in Everyday Life, Ponderings & Personal Development by

Not all doctors are prepared to manage mental health illnesses. Let alone family members. I knew at least a few doctors, my own batch, who once said, ‘nak sgt mati, terjun je lah’. To them, mental health is all just in the head and that what these patients are experiencing are merely pettiness and poor resilience. It is very difficult for this particular group of doctors to accept that these people are suffering physiologically as well. It takes an empathetic doctor to sit with this patient and explore the symptoms. In a fast-paced world with medicolegal implications lurking around the corner, empathy can be hard to train.

I have always thought that it is brave for someone to admit that they are unwell mentally and seek help for it. People with depression have anhedonia. They have poor appetite and sleep quality. It is not because they are not trying, but because something is always in the way of their recovery journey. A patient once described that she was actually ready to leave the world by paying off all her debts and decluttering her things. She noticed that the duration of her low mood got a bit longer than usual. It was no longer during the premenstrual period but almost every 2 weeks. Not only that, she was experiencing uncontrollable bursts of rage from time to time over small disputes happening at home and at work. She was beginning to hallucinate. It was either her name being called or doors being slid open when they were not. Or doors being closed shut when no one else was at home. She forgets things easily and tells the same stories all over again. But then at other times, she sometimes wonders if the things she knows about a person or an event are really true or if the ideas were something she conjured in her monologues before, and accepted by the brain as a fact. This went on for at least 6 months.

At one point, she contemplated the least painful way to die as she felt that her support system had crumbled. She felt that her husband was slowly pushing her to the edge so that SHE would be the one filing for divorce to get out of the painful marriage. The spouse also kept the kids close to him, probably as an attempt to win their favour in case there is a battle of custody. Not knowing that she was prepared to give it all up in return for her life. Every behaviour is deemed a nuisance and unnecessary by the spouse. Soon, heartfelt conversations are no longer shared because the patient doesn’t feel safe and supported. Everything just comes back to her for either being ‘stupid’ or ‘weak’. As a result, the partner would narrate the situation to the kids, in what he thought was a harmless manner, portraying the patient as an incompetent mother who has no brains to figure things out on her own.

The last time I met her, she was still refusing to start her meds as she felt she could still manage her emotions and that she could still function at work. She said she just needed someone to talk to without passing judgment. She is also refusing a CT Brain – I wanted to eliminate as many organic causes as possible. She was confident that if there was anything wrong with her brain, she would experience relentless headache and nausea. Or her limbs would just give way.

I hope that her resilience and protective factors would shield her from self-harm or suicidal attempts. I am rooting for her to still have a chance to have a seat in Heaven in the Hereafter.

My one year anniversary as a schedule generator

Posted in All in a days work by

I took over making the work roster from my colleague out of camaraderie. The previous MO who did the list was a lovely colleague whom I knew had been taking the punches for everybody for the many years I have known her at work. I believe that the moment she approached me to take over, she was already at wit’s end. At the same time, I think she knew that I was a person who could accommodate everybody else as much as she did to ensure that both clinical services and each medical officer’s personal matters were taken care of.

To become a roster maker, you could choose to be empathetic or a bitch who doesn’t give a shit. Since I started arranging the schedule last October, I’ve found that my colleagues are rather colourful behind the scenes. They are a mix of positive and negative traits but never too evil or goody-two-shoes all the time. They can be mischievous, and at times, when I am able to see through them, I would let them off the hook if it is not much of a nuisance. Otherwise, most of the time, my superior would sniff it out based on the whistleblower’s information. Yes, we do have a mole amongst us.

Anyway, back to my colourful MOs. There are the:

  • ones who think the world revolves around them ONLY. The schedule has to fit them and their priorities ONLY. There is very little room for discussion and negotiate the demands of clinical work and other MOs. Dia je yg nak gi CME. Dia je yang nak itu dan ini. Time kita bagi, tetiba ada hal tu la, ini la. Bila tak dapat, mesej bos. what the fish.
  • ones who have requests but are also accommodating of other people’s needs. Meaning, they provide back up plans with other negotiable dates, with clear objectives that allow me to provide my ideas of how to make the line up for work effective for everybody. I like this type of people. They are assertive in their scheduled and others.
  • ones who go with the flow. While it may seem easy for me to place them anywhere, it does put me in a spot where I need to practice conscientiousness on my part. This is because I do not want to exploit this particular group of MOs. I do not want them to be burnt out. In fact, I would put this people on my watch list. Because they can either remain docile, turn rogue in a jiff or commit suicide. I am putting myself on this list as well.

To celebrate my one year anniversary, I will order an iced coffee today. Ha ha.

A close-up of a keyboard with scattered papers and folders on a desk, featuring a note about a millennial's approach to managing work rosters.

Different versions of a person

Posted in Everyday Life, Parenting, Family and Relationships by

My sister was telling me the other day that our dad arranged an umrah trip for him and his missus. Meaning, our stepmother. It was a good package, fully funded by our dad. Of course, I would not expect any less from someone in the role of a husband (who has the money). But wait, why did this version of my dad not surface before? The version of putting the comfort of the wife in mind and not rubbing it in about how much he will be spending on the umrah. In fact, this version of him in this second marriage is totally different to how we remembered him treating our mother before.

Maybe this new wife befits his evolving taste for a woman with a career that he could parade to his friends and relatives. I have nothing against this lady. She has led her own fair share of hardships in life, as well as being a single mother. And her kids turned out to be great human beings. Or so we were told. The only thing I made clear to my dad was that I do not wish to participate in her life and her kids. That means if we are having a birthday party, with her being present, I am not going.

Anyway, back to the umrah story. This is not my dad’s first umrah trip. He went for umrah with our late mom many years ago, but I remembered him being a nuisance about it. Everything to him was either expensive or tedious. Up to the point that our mom, who was a housewife by the way, living on the pocket money that we (working) daughters gave her every month, said that she would fund the trip. In other words, she had saved enough money to fund an umrah package and proposed the trip to her husband to come along. She really wanted them to experience umrah together. Only to be met with defiance. Aisyah Retno’s song Tidak Adil is so fitting of the situation back then. Dad still went as a man with Nuisance as his middle name. Only Allah knows how it was there. My mother made the best out of the trip.

Hence, this different version of him is new to us. Maybe it is because he is getting older and is having more time with his pension money. Maybe his love towards our mother waned with time and they just decided to give up on each other. They were housemates who co-parents their kids.

Inevitably, it happens to the best of us when you don’t recharge the spark and keep the romance burning.