Pre-empting

It has been a chaotic week with the kids taking turns to be ill, and everyone in the house on alert as my new nephew is due to make his arrival anytime soon. But what has been causing us some amount of trauma this week has been Lukey-boy with his hard-boiled-egg looking eye. And it hurts - Lord knows it must hurt cos he howls like he has never done before when it aches.

Took him to the hospital yesterday after another of his howling episodes and Mum at wits end. And sad to say, it wasn't the nearest hospital to us, but one that was about 50 km and 3 toll-gates away. Simply cos it was a public hospital, which would not cost me more than a buck should they need to run tests and what-have-you-not.

I have been in one hospital too many in this lifetime and my rule of thumb has always been - never go to one unless you absolutely have to. When I was in the UK, I had the experience of being a guest at St Mary's for 4 days. Fortunately for me, I was screaming my head off in pain upon admission so they gave me a room all to myself. But even then, here's public health for you - you drag yourself out of bed into the corridor when you hear the meal trolley come. Cos they sure don't load the food up and serve it to you. And good luck to ya if you're in pain and need to pee in the middle of the night.

Perhaps it was the anxiety over-riding every other thought in my head. Or the raised mummy alert when a prisoner from a nearby criminal holding pen came in (handcuffs and all!) and took his place among the rest of us at the triage area [My caution to Luke was to dive under the row of chairs in front of us should anything happen!] Or maybe cos my head felt as it was splitting apart from a bloody migraine that was following me yesterday.

Having said that, Barbsie would not be Barbsie if she did not, at some point, come to realise that she had brought her child into the A&E of a public hospital. And subsequently spiral into some rabbit hole of dark and twisted despair with an overwhelming sense of failure.

So yes, that DID happen but it was a small rabbit hole. Cos my brother, somehow saw that coming (he sure does learn fast!) and had texted me to say not to think about it, that it was far more important to realise that I had taken the effort to take Luke to the hospital instead of waiting it out.

And so, that was one Barbsie disaster averted. And the bro is right: I should not have such lil faith in the public health system just cos once upon a time, money was never an issue and thus healthcare meant specialist care. Afterall, I'm now in the business of churning out the young men and women in them white lab coats treating the nation's sick and injured at the cost of a buck. I should indeed have more faith in their training and skills.

Long live the NHS of Malaysia *ha*