I am always open for negotiations. Meaningful, collaborative & amicable discussions. Not threats, one-sided and lousy leadership.
The moment you make me look like a villain. That’s when I know you have a dark soul, a non sincere tarnished existence in this realm.
In the movie Final Destination, victims tend to have near misses before their final death.
I have had near misses of infectious diseases throughout my short career. Once, I had in contact with a patient who had suspected Meningitis. I received a prophylactic shot in my arm because I was pregnant at the time.
Some time down the line, I was in contact with a patient who had pulmonary TB and is on active treatment. He did not declare he had the illness until I saw his family coming in with masks. It looked a bit odd to see these people all in masks when they had no symptoms. It is as though he was immuno-compromised. When I asked them the reason behind the mask, one of the more younger family member said her father has TB.
Trust me, I was furious. Because I was also pregnant at the time. I asked a colleague to take over but I felt sad for the other HCW who tended to him earlier in closer proximity. The patient was very defensive. He said there was no need for us to know. He said if we knew he had TB, we will owe his back pain to TB. Stupid people exist. Little did he know that he was imposing harm to not only us but for other unsuspecting patients.
And now we have COVID-19. People tend to forget that those working in primary care are also front liners – for we are who the patients see first in ill events. Any front liner is risking chancing upon a COVID positive patient during the consultation. Let us just pray that everything will go well.
COVID could be walking around us.
Every morning en route to sending my youngest to nursery, I would pass by a primary school. The parents would drive in a bee line and send their kids in front of the school gate where the teachers and security guard are waiting to assist the drop off safely.
I used to also wait in that bee line as the turn to Ninie’s nursery is just around the corner. Later, I improvised and sent Ninie using a different entry route but my exit was still the road in front of the school. It was very congested because the road (in the morning) looked like it could only fit vehicles going through one way.
I later observed an unspoken rule amongst these parents. They were meant to drive in a loop. You drop off your kid –> take the turn (the one I took for my kid) and then take another left turn into this first row of residential houses and exit accordingly. Inadvertently, I began doing the same although my kid is not going to the school.
The unspoken rule is everywhere. In medicine for instance, it is allowed to prescribe T. Metformin 1g TDS a day for a patient but normal practice only allows a maximum of 1g BD. Similarly, on prescribing HCTZ. Despite the safe dose of 50mg OD, better clinical practice would suggest only 12.5mg OD.
The unspoken rule exists in a family structure too. I cook, you clean. I wash the laundry, you fold the pile. I prepare breakfast, you think of dinner. No instructions involved but people get it and abide to it.
Needless to say part of the family, a community or fraternity. You have observed enough to understand the unspoken rule.
.. with the best results. The drop off loop was unintentionally created most probably by a few parents first driven by logic to ease the congestion. Other parents began to follow suit having seen the results even though it takes a while to make that turn. Other exit methods exist too like making a U Turn or using the main road exit but this loop has proven to be the most practical.
The rule thus enables one to sift out newbies, wannabes etc. If say, someone went against the loop rule – this would raise a flag to the parents that this car owner is not a parent of a child in the school, an outsider OR this parent is simply a rule breaker and being ignorant.
While these rules are in place for the betterment of the community abiding to it, there are some unspoken rules which are ridiculous. I am sure some of us have come across that which then creates unnecessary stress in our lives. Do you have one? What was the most absurd, invisible rule you had to follow in your daily life?
No one ever said that if you have a medical degree, you are destined to become a doctor forever. What if, like Jonny Kim, it was a temporary gig and that you are destined for greater things in life?
Growing up in a traditional society – I have been programmed into thinking if you did a law degree, you should become a lawyer. If you chose accountancy in high school as opposed to biology – you almost certainly are made to become an accountant by your parents. Perhaps it took me too long to notice that in my family, my sister is already breaking the norms and that it is never too late to do something that you like.
She has a degree that qualifies her to become a certified nutritionist. But life has its ways of making my sister walk down a path that led her to teach. She is now a teacher and when I asked her from some advice with regards to food and health – she would honestly say, she does not remember a single thing! LOL.
I am blogging this because I had an epiphany today. What if I am not meant to become a specialist and that this career, as an MD, is just a temporary path for me to sharpen my skills and allow me to blossom into an individual fit enough to undertake a more interesting path in the future. The more I thought about this today, the more euphoric I got with the job choices that came floating in my head.
(I am so excited with this possibility that I am imagining myself in my future chosen career already..)
… and that career spells out as premium, exclusive, dark yet meaningful.
Minci Moss 