A Night on the Couch

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days arrive quietly and then keep adding to themselves. This was one of those — the sort that starts with one item on the list and ends somewhere entirely different, with you sitting in a room you hadn't planned on being in, wondering where the hours went.

It began, reasonably enough, with the Starex. It's being sold to make room for the new car, which is the unglamorous half of buying something — the part where the old one has to be moved on, priced, described, and eventually handed over to someone else's driveway. There's no great sentiment about it. It's a vehicle. It carried people and shopping and the occasional argument about directions, and now it'll go and do that for somebody else. Still, there's a small pause in it. Cars accumulate a surprising amount of ordinary life without ever asking permission.

That, though, turned out to be the easy business of the day. Anita's stomach trouble, which had been an irritation over the weekend, decided to get properly serious — the sort of worsening that stops being something you manage at home and starts being something you do something about. So: admitted, and put on a drip for fluids, which is one of those interventions that sounds more alarming than it is and works rather better than anything you could have offered her from the kitchen.

By the afternoon she was improving, steadily and visibly, which is the best kind of improvement — no drama, just a gradual return of colour and conversation. Relief arrives quietly in these situations. You don't announce it. You just notice, an hour or two later, that your shoulders have come down from around your ears.

There was a brief escape for dinner at Upstairs Cafe — quick, functional, eaten with one eye on the clock — and then home, not to stay, but to collect clothes. There's something faintly absurd about packing a bag for your own hospital-room sleepover, standing in your own bedroom at an odd hour, deciding how many shirts constitute optimism.

Back to the room, then, for the night. Hospitals have their own peculiar relationship with time — the corridors never fully dark, the sounds never fully quiet, and the furniture designed by someone who clearly believed that visitors don't really sleep, they merely wait horizontally. Luckily, tomorrow's a public holiday, which took the edge off the whole thing considerably. Whatever the night did to me, at least it wasn't going to be followed by a full working day.

I went down early, which felt like a small triumph at the time. Less so this morning, when I woke up with a back that had strong opinions about the couch and wasn't shy about sharing them. Sore in places I hadn't previously thought of as places.

Still — she's better, which is the only line of the day that really matters. Everything else was logistics. The car will sell, the back will recover, and the holiday is here at exactly the right moment, which almost never happens.

The Day That Wouldn't Be Pinned Down

Please click the photo above to play the daily video

An early start, with one clear objective in mind: be back by noon. A simple enough ambition, the kind you set yourself with reasonable confidence at six in the morning, before the day has had a chance to make its own plans.

The day, of course, had its own plans.

A few unwell patients delayed things just enough to nudge the schedule sideways. Nothing dramatic — just the gentle reminder that medicine doesn't keep to anyone's diary but its own. By the time I extracted myself, "back by noon" had quietly mutated into "back at some point", which is a downgrade I've learned to accept with reasonable grace.

But lunch made up for it. Rebung — finally. Anita has been harping on about this place for weeks, with the particular persistence of someone who knows she's right and is simply waiting for everyone else to catch up. And she was right. The spread was excellent, the kind of buffet that doesn't feel like a buffet but rather a thoughtful tour of Malay cooking done properly. Generous without being showy. I shall, in due course, admit she was right. Perhaps over coffee. Perhaps never.

The peace was short-lived. Mid-meal, more or less, came the call back to the hospital — one of those summonses you can't really argue with, only attend to. So back I went, the afternoon now firmly in charge rather than the other way round. These are the days that quietly remind you who's really running the schedule.

Somewhere between obligations, I managed a haircut at Lucky Garden. A small, civilian act in the middle of a day pulling me in several directions. There's something steadying about sitting in a barber's chair when the rest of the day has been frantic — the slow, methodical work of someone doing one thing carefully while the world outside continues its noise. I emerged tidier, marginally more composed, and ready for the evening's main event.

Which was the College of Physicians Gala Dinner at Dorsett Putrajaya. And here, in the spirit of honest journalling, I shall record that it was not the greatest. Gala dinners are a curious genre — formal enough to require effort, social enough to demand attention, but rarely exceptional in any single department. Tonight's outing leaned firmly into that pattern. The room looked the part. The company was fine. The food and the flow were... let us say adequate. Sometimes the highlight of a gala is simply having attended.

By the time we made it home, the day had stretched itself into something almost unrecognisable from the one I'd planned at dawn. Early start, late finish, with a half-dozen small detours in between. The kind of day that doesn't follow a clean narrative arc but instead zigzags through obligation, pleasure, duty, and a decent meal.

Bed will be welcome. Tomorrow, hopefully, will keep its own promises. Tonight, I'll settle for having kept most of mine.

Looking Good

No, I was not admiring my looks, but was staring at the new MediPlex being built right next to my ward. SJMC decided to build an annex after all these years. The project was delayed at the basement level for the last few years and the building only started to take shape from last year.

There would be new restaurants and medical-related services being set up. But the most important aspect of the whole project as far as I was concerned was the transfer of the rehab department to the new building. That would create space for the Oncology Unit to expend and in the next couple of years, I would have my clinic transferred across there.

It may cause some issues at the beginning as I might have to see some of my General Medical patients there as well, but hopefully things could be ironed out by then.

Words had it that the building would be transferred to the management as early as next month, and the internal renovation would start to take place after that before the transfer of the Rehab and Laboratory Departments. Expect more commotion in the coming year ....

Sweet Suite

During my ward visit yesterday, I found myself stumbling into one of the VIP room as I was finding the exit. Honestly, the room was more like a hotel suite than a hospital.

Dining area with a pantryYou get your own private balconyMore sofa for your visitorsAnd the hospital bed of courseWell, if I were to be admitted for something routine, I wouldn't mind here. Although it would likely cost more than a hotel suite as well ....

New Name

Yesterday when I was at the hospital to see some admissions - we were talking Sunday afternoons here - I noticed that there was a big crane at the Doctor's car park.

The business end of the crane was reaching the fifth floor of the South Tower building to peel away the old Sime Darby Healthcare sign and presumably install a new one.

The old sign as it wereThe hospital was now being renamed Subang Jaya Medical Center like the good old days. The parent company was now called Ramsay Sime Darby Healthcare Group. A new beginning hopefully. And not new name and new game ....