most of the patients warded at my work place seem to be the happy and cheerful type. not surprising, given that most of them are here for the simplest of surgical procedures that require at most 2-3 days of hospitalization. before you know it, most of them are fit enough to not only be discharged, but also to complain about the 'bad service' in the hospital. those ungrateful little wretches have apparently forgotten about the many times the nurses fetched those urinals and wiped their asses in their moments of need. it's ironic that these 'come-and-go's' are the ones that demand the most medical attention actually. in the minds of these patients, 'medical attention' can refer to things 'excuse me nurse, can i have a cup of Milo with two cubes of sugar and one tablespoon of milk?' or even 'excuse me nurse, i want an update from the consultant regarding my hemorrhoids!' to put it metaphorically, the patients demanding an update from the consultant is like the average citizen demanding an audience with the prime minister. it's just hemorrhoids lah. you can google all that stuff off the internet.

on the other hand, we have the direct opposite of the 'come-and-go's' in terms of hospitalization durations. we call them the 'long-stayers'. in my standards, anything beyond a week is considered a long-stayer. i have known patients with histories of spending at least half of every year in the hospital, seeking treatment for the progression of their diseases. from liver cirrhosis to diabetic-related foot ulcers, you get to see an entire spectrum of human emotions in these long-stayers. IMHO, these are the patients who deserve the best of nursing care. it's not easy having to cope with a disease that is difficult to remedy. but to do it in the confines of the hospital ward with other patients of varying emotional outbursts... it's not exactly conducive for recovery, isn't it? spend just a weekend staying in my ward and you can see the darkness and selfishness that lurks in the hearts of mankind. i think this is why a patient tried to abscond from my ward last week.

i arrived at work at 6.25am on that particular morning. work officially starts at 7am, but i prefer to turn up earlier so that i can have a head-start in serving the medications and all the other mundane medical chores like the Milo with two cubes of sugar and one tablespoon of milk. my colleagues from the night shift had trouble with a particular patient whom they claimed was threatening to run away from the hospital with a IV cannula in his arm and an abdominal drain sticking out from his body. i have never seen this guy before, but upon approaching him, one could see that look of desperation and frustration in his eyes. it's as if he had been trying too long to fight the disease and was on the verge of giving up.

Mr. Abscondee kept shouting that he wanted to see his doctor-in-charge and that he would run away with cannula and drip trailing behind him if he didn't. obviously, none of the team doctors were in the hospital at 6.25am yet. most of them were prolly still downstairs at the lobby getting their daily dose of coffee and breakfast.

he had by then pulled out the various other tubes connected to him. the syringe pump dispensing IV morphine was beeping away, and another nurse was there trying to rationalize with him. he was already changing into his civilian clothes in fact. not helping with the situation was another patient that stayed opposite Mr. Abscondee. this particular chap had been in that same bed for nearly 2 months coming. i call him the muthafuck. he has liver cancer and like a messenger of doom, he has constantly told everyone that he wants to die. obviously, Mr. Abscondee wasn't spared from the doomsday preaching. while all the nurses were trying to convince him to stay for treatment, the muthafuck was shouting things in mandarin like:

'You stay for what? the nurses here don't care about you one. their service is so slow. just go home because it doesn't make a difference. run off when they're not watching! they'll be too busy to notice anyway!'

it's all fine and dandy if you want to kill yourself. but just like homosexuality and religion, you don't go around trying to convince everyone to switch over to your alternative lifestyle and ideals. in this case, the muthafuck was no better than an indirect murderer. there i was, trying to inject some hope into Mr. Abscondee while muthafuck was trying his cynical best to be an asshole. out of irritation and anger, i told muthafuck in English:

'Oi! Mr. (insert muthafuck's real name)! Can you shut the fuck up? You don't want to live it's your business. I'm trying to save my patient here. One more word out of your mouth and i promise i'll push your entire fucking bed out of this room, you hear me?'

very vulgar, i know. but i think i got the message across to his suicidal mind. the muthafuck gave a half-heartedly inaudible reply that i couldn't catch. by then, Mr. Abscondee was already walking out of the room. despite that fact that he was presumably in lots of pain (on IV morphine 1mg/hr) and had a drainage tube sticking out of him, he walked really fast. thank goodness we managed to catch him at the lift. because an abscond meant that the nursing staff would have to file a report with the police and write up a full overview on what happened. very tedious, given all the paperwork and red tape involved.

inside the lift, i tried to talk sense to Mr. Abscondee. he was on the verge of tears. you could see it in his eyes. there was this look of 'lost cause' and frustration with his disease. suddenly, he started crying. well, not really crying but bending over and crying without the tears. so there we were, a colleague, Mr. Abscondee and i, all stuck in a moment where we didn't know what to do. all i could say was the usual barrage of hopeful statements about silver lining in clouds and 3 good things always happening after 3 bad things. we managed to get him back into his bed. only to lose him about 4 hours later. Mr. Abscondee had finally lived up to his name. he absconded with his abdominal drain at somewhere around 11am that morning.

events like these just make me ponder about life at the hospital. isn't it just depressing to see patients giving up hope on living? i mean, i go around telling people of how much i wish to die young so that i don't have to go through the endless barrage of diseases that come with old age. but to really see someone fight a battle and give up halfway... that's something that makes you wonder about life. would i fight if i had a critical illness as well? or would i just fly to Amsterdam and ask for Euthanasia?

as for the muthafuck, he's still constantly mouthing his nonconstructive criticism to the staff. most of the staff ignore him because of what happened with Mr. Abscondee. it actually brings to mind a quote from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist:

'When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.'

i guess at the end of the day, the will to live is contagious. just as similar as the will to die.

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