Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Convivial First Day..

I remember my first day at the workplace. Do you?

I was a student then. Bored stiff of my remaining year 5 clinical sessions in which I didn't have anything left to do except inventories and gossiping around I took up a part- time job or called locum sensationally by students. The word locum was not a sensational word as it has been widely used for many medical and dental practitioners. As a student we were prohibited from doing so in the name of professional integrity which of course I was fully aware of but yet the serious financial constraint had taken its toll on me on that particular time. Alas, economically.

The clinic was located at a residence in a leafy area of Sentul downtown. As I walked in to the first floor I saw a pretty tight collection of desks and chairs, lots of color-coded paper and stacks of medication-labeled boxes. An assorted group of women were behind the insurmountable waist height desks. One engrossed by a hand-phone lingered with fancy girlish tinglings , a pen hanging from her fingers. She looked up, a twinkle in her eye and a curl to her lip. There was another with a tea glass in her hand circling what I thought was coconut water. A whiff in the air told me it was creosote and a child screaming next door confirmed my pre-diagnosis. There was a cheerful elder lady greeting me at doorway as if we have been friends for years. The gang seemed bohemian, clever and fun. I was bitten but I was hooked to their sense of wit and openness and warmth.

After a brief introduction of my room and some other things whereabouts I managed to catch a few names of the staff; the hand-phone girl Asmah who later became Mek Semah, the tea glass girl Ida and remained as Ida and the bubbly elder lady Kak Sadiah-cum-dental-assistants-supervisor who later developed her underground name, Taliban (a discreet pact between Mek Semah and Ida) for her strong opinions about almost everything. The owner of the clinic was such an amiable lady. A BDS holder herself she had a scarce gait that made her a bit unique in a way. Well, I'm not going to elaborate more on that hence I'm sorry.

There it was, the clinic was quite spacious in size. The waiting place was as good as the other clinics who charged quixotically RM 100 for only consultation. Not that I say this clinic didn't charge for its consultation but it would rather more lesser than RM 100. Even though the seats for patients were adequate to keep every patient comfort while waiting to get drilled or jabbed but in any given school holidays or most Mondays one would not be able to even see the floor rugs! It was as if I was doing an out-patient in government clinic only locum required one to do most of the treatment stats.

The first time communicating to a real patient in clinic was still a vivid reverie for me. Being a wet-behind-the-ears fresh graduate made me a bit sluggish to bloviate facts that I so used to regurgitate in the form of essays during college time. Locum somehow taught me how I could communicate with patients in such a way that I couldn't get in government clinic. I could explain from ABC treatment options to rather more cutting edge technology all around. Yes, honestly I would be able to do the same thing in government clinic but what abstain me to abide were the times and the thought of worth doing it. The times were remained the major obstacle to deliver primary health promotion when one has got dozens of incoming cards (represented the patients awaiting ques number) to be finished before lunch time. Subsequently these would lead to another different entity that made every government dentists second guessing themselves whether or not some treatments to be given to the patients.

There are a lot of factors contribute to these kind of quintessential act and the critical part that are always undermined by government turns out to be the most essential one. The cost of some treatments in dentistry within government sector are surprisingly ludicrous. For instance, the ceiling cost for molar root canal treatment (RCT) is only RM 4 regardless of how much times and difficulties to put on such a delicate work. Not that I want you to imagine how hard it is to do RCT as not everybody is a dentist. What I'm trying to pull here is what the impact of these low cost treatments will do to patient's perception. The patients won't appreciate the value of the treatment and in fact will still be bigotry in a balloon of stale thinking that dental extraction are the biggest breakthrough in history of dentistry.

Believe it or not this trend will continue as a dim spotlight within a fire house, not enough to shine but simply cannot be vanished.

Perhaps the greener grass beckons?

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Jambongan in Perspective

Last week I had such a blast weekend. I was being 'selected' to go to a super rural place somewhere deep in Borneo jungle in the name of Medical Camp. The truth was, I was not being selected based on any SKT or academic or being-the-best-dentist-around reason. It was purely and utterly because it happened that I was the only male dentist and nobody seemed like to care to go (understood as the rest of the dentists are female and no one had slightest sense of adventure). Not that I full with adventurous spirit or eagerly to go or anything, I just stucked in the middle of statistical ratio of lack of male dentist in Malaysia and global I guess.
So I went.
The place called Jambongan in up north Borneo, it was an island as I could see in Google map. According to my mother in-law Jambongan had some similarity with Zamboanga which meant 'Jambangan Bunga' or a bouquet of flowers in Zamboangan aboriginal language. Yeah, I could see the similarity there.
We began our journey by hitting one of the Sabah's riddly roads. Composed by natural potholes that made every tires gasping to blow it was a mind-boggling to imagine how these people surviving every other day to even walk on it. Shame on Sabahan's politician for not making proper roads or highways for people who voted for them. I didn't think that people would mind so much to pay the tolls provided the roads were good and free from potholes. But in the end of the day politician will always be politician. Always keep their heads up and resist to look down despite being stumble at every points.
Eventually, we arrived at Paitan jetty after having a waggly body massage all the way. As you can see on the extreme right of the blog page, the dusty roads were so terrible that made the driver went blindly to go forth. Luckily, our driver was an expert of the roads and could even predicted which corners that he could go over taking. But as much as I despised the roads, I enjoyed the bumpy roller-coaster that made me feel like part of Eco Challenge drivers.
From the Paitan jetty, we took on a speed boat and attained Jambongan 45 minutes later. I must admit, for somebody who loved out-doors and physical activities so much, boat riding along the Jambongan river must be a super compelling and intriguing experience one could ever ask for. Sorry for the extreme right picture as everybody was given butts as a result of major amazement!
Jambongan itself was nothing short of remarkable and overwhelming. The beach was so picturesque that I even managed to pick couples of alive clamps within seconds I set my foot on the white shiny beach sands. The shells and corals were great and dozens of lanky coconut trees waving as if two lovers at far were about to unite after so long adjournment.
I met several cool guys while I was in the island such as Dr. Kelvin (didn't realize he was a MO until we reached the island) and some teachers who took me by surprise that most of them were from West Malaysia (orang Semenanjung we called them here). I had a good time chatting with them while being served a local food siput sedut of the ocean version. Oh my.. seriously I was stunt to see how casual they were while eating the 'thing' as if it was a goreng pisang (fried banana). Since I already mentioned about it might as well I go with description. As everybody knew how was it like for siput sedut of the river version (RV) morphologically, the ocean version (OV) were only slightly bigger in size. There was one major thing that differentiated between RV and OV which was the OV had a single claw projected out from the shells once its cooked. This claw was very important during serving as it acted as a tool to pull the filler out of the shells. Despite being called siput sedut the OV didn't really carried its name well. In stead of being sucked to evacuate the filler as in RV, the OV on the other hand needed to be pulled out single-handedly. To me the name was rather a misnomer if not totally true. As for me, after being persuaded and threaten that they will leave me in the island if I didn't eat it, I did and it was a pleasant surprise for me that the taste of the 'thing' was nothing like I imagined. The taste was good and it had a strong taste of cuttlefish. I ended up finishing the rest!
I asked one of the teacher about how they filled up the gap between after school and the next day. The answer was simple yet so powerful almost shaken the inner core of me inside out. NOTHING. Seriously?!
How could one survived and at the same time keeping the sane on par when there were no at least some entertainment or rather social activity to be done?
Well, I guess this was the major turn off for me. I could not at all living in such places that offered me no life. Call me town boy or spoiled brad or anything I didn't care. Bravo to the lines of dedicated teachers. I raised everything up for them.
So I think I got all covered up for now. See you in next writing!