Trip to Changi General Hospital

Even if you have the time to spare, the hospital must be one of those places that you will try to avoid visiting. Much less the A&E department. But when an emergency calls for it, and when the neighborhood GP is fast asleep (or shagging his/her partner/nurse), other than the 24-hr clinics, the A&E could be the first thing that comes to mind.

Just on the first weekend after I returned from Jakarta, I received a call from my mom, asking if I could accompany my dad to see a doctor. My mom was having diarrhea, my second sister (whom they stay with) was bedridden with migraine and thus it was up to me and my warden to perform my family duties. Apparently he had discomfort in his chest and stomach since Thursday, and the medication from the GP had not helped much. It sounded serious over the phone, and we were over there in a jiffy via taxi.

Past 9pm on a slow Saturday evening but the A&E department had a long queue of people waiting for their turns. There were a pair of policemen walking around, probably getting statements from accident victims, or bringing jailbirds to see the doctor. It was nothing like the mad rush of ER or Hong Kong drama serials, just quiet waiting and watching of TV programmes showing on LCD TVs hanging on the ceiling.

Priority is given to real “serious cases”, which probably means people who could be dying with open wounds, heart attack, asthma attack to name a few. I saw a lot of patients with different conditions at the waiting area, and they all looked a lot worse off than my dad. A nurse will first assess the condition of the patient, and a queue number will be given. After the wait, the young doctor will then check on the patient and recommend further examinations such as X-rays, ECG and blood tests. Ever wonder why A&E doctors almost always happen to be young and seemingly fresh out of school? I don’t know about other people, but if I am dying, I really don’t wish my fate to be decided by relatively inexperienced young chaps, that is if I can help it.

Back to my dad. He did his ECG which turned out normal. His blood pressure was low, and X-rays did not show anything wrong, except for maybe slight degradation in his spinal cord which is normal for old folks. And after waiting more than another hour, the blood tests did not present any clues as well. We went home slightly after midnight with medication for gastric and an appointment to see an orthopedic at the end of the month. Crap, how do they expect patients to deal with the discomfort for close to a month? And the doctor did not actually deal with the problem nor know exactly what is wrong. The diagnosis was just plain guessing, like playing Russian Roulette.