The Day That Didn't Pause

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoSome days arrive already full, as though the hours had been spoken for before I'd even reached them. This was one of those. Back to back from the start, one appointment giving way to the next with barely a breath in between, the clinic running like a tide that doesn't much care whether you're ready for it.

There's a rhythm to a day like that, and it isn't an unpleasant one, exactly. You stop thinking about the time and simply move through it — name after name, each person carrying their own small worry, each deserving the same attention as if they were the first of the day rather than the eleventh. The trick, if there is one, is not letting the pace flatten anyone into a queue. Easier said than managed, on a day that hardly lets you settle into your own chair, let alone anyone else's situation.

Which is why there's not much to show today. The camera stayed where it was, idle and faintly reproachful, while I got on with the part of the day that doesn't film well anyway. There's something almost honest about that — the busiest days are often the least visible ones, the work happening in rooms and conversations that don't translate into footage. You can't vlog your way through a full waiting room. You just get through it, and the record of having done so is mostly the tiredness you carry home.

It was only afterwards, once the last of it had cleared and the quiet came back, that I found a little room to think. There's a particular clarity to the moments just after a busy stretch — the noise drops away and you can finally hear yourself consider things. And what I found myself considering was the simple arithmetic of it. If the days keep arriving this full, with people fitted into gaps that barely exist, then perhaps the answer isn't to keep squeezing harder. Perhaps it's to make more room.

Extra clinic slots, in other words. It sounds modest written down, almost administrative, but there's a small humanity in it. More slots means fewer people waiting longer than they should, fewer afternoons spent apologising for delays that were never really anyone's fault, just the consequence of demand outrunning the hours available. It means the next busy day might breathe a little easier — for them, and, I'll admit, for me.

I haven't decided anything yet. These things deserve more than the conclusion you reach while still tired and still emptying out the day's tension. But the thought has landed, and thoughts that survive the journey home tend to be worth returning to. I'll let it sit and see whether it still seems sensible in the morning light, when the urgency of a full day has faded into something more considered.

For now, though, the day is done, and that alone feels like an achievement. No footage to speak of, but a reflection to keep. Not the worst trade, all things considered.

A Bright Morning That Asked a Lot

Please click the photo above to play the daily videoThe day began sunny, in that disarming way Fridays sometimes have — the light coming in clean and golden, promising an easy run into the weekend. The sky, as ever, had not consulted my schedule. What it promised and what the day delivered turned out to be two rather different things.

The Friday clinic was long, and considerably busier than I had braced for. There is always a certain optimism in glancing at the morning list and thinking it manageable; that optimism rarely survives contact with reality. The patients kept arriving, more of them than the hours strictly allowed, and the list refused to shorten no matter how steadily I worked through it.

The morning, on top of all that, decided to test its mettle with a run of emergencies — several of them, stacked closely enough that there was no real pause between, only the brisk shift from one to the next. There is a particular adrenaline to those stretches, a heightened clarity while they last, followed inevitably by the slump once they pass. By three o'clock that slump had well and truly arrived. I was tired in the bone-deep way that no coffee quite reaches, the kind that announces itself plainly and will not be reasoned with.

Still, the work was not done. A quick set of afternoon rounds, conducted with rather less spring than the morning's, and then the paperwork — that great unglamorous tide that follows every clinical day, indifferent to how spent you are. I dispatched it with the grim efficiency of someone who knows that leaving it only makes tomorrow's pile worse. There is no wit to be found in paperwork, only the small satisfaction of an inbox brought to heel.

By the time I surfaced, the better part of the day had been spent, and so had I. Home felt less like a destination than a reprieve. We had an early dinner — there is no shame in eating at an hour your younger self would have mocked — and I found my appetite for the day's events fully exhausted, replaced entirely by an appetite for the sofa.

The evening's sole ambition was to catch up on Star City, which Anita and I have been working through at our own unhurried pace. There is a particular comfort in a good series at the end of a hard day, the way it asks nothing of you but your attention, and not even all of that. We let an episode or two carry us along, the plot doing the work so we didn't have to.

Then, sensibly and without resistance, an early night. A long Friday earns one, and I was in no mood to argue. The weekend sits just on the other side of sleep now, and after a day like this, the prospect of two slower ones feels less like a luxury and more like a necessity.

For now, lights out. The clinic will keep its tally for Monday. Tonight belongs to rest.

Back to Business

Things were slowly picking up after almost the whole of KL stood still following a super-long weekend post-election. The road were pretty empty in the morning and I did not have to make any school runs. On the domestic front, my father-in-law had also been discharged.

Anita had been busy sorting him out in Gombak and she was clearly tired in the evening. I had taken a couple of days off to celebrate the start of Ramadhan, although I still do my morning rounds.

I had some paperwork to complete during those days off, rounding off my stuff for the MSH Meeting. I also had to do some shopping and sorting out the bills. I wouldn’t mind doing some shopping for Raya as well while I was at that!

Behaving

It has been almost a week since the implementation of the new HMIS system at SJMC and it had been a trying one. There were quite a few mishaps but in the end considering the doom and gloom we were anticipating, the week ended pretty much where we started. Nobody really knew what to expect.

Some people were impacted more than others. I had a relatively slow week apart from the weekend when I was on call. The clinic was pretty light until this morning where it ran over until after lunch.

I was on call today and the hand overs seemed to be OK. An admission earlier got her medications missing, but it was easily rectifiable. Despite the busy clinic I found the new system to be workable. The problem I had earlier was with ordering CT scans. Thos would need sorting out since I would be ordering many more of those!

Let’s see how things pan out in the second week ….

Casual Day

The Malaysian Society of Haematology would be holding our yearly Scientific Conference later this week and I had been gearing down my clinic for that as I would be involved. This morning in fact, I have cancelled my clinic in Subang but had to make my way to Park City for a session. And today, I was just dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, and everybody was wondering why.

Well, best to wind down the clinic fast as I have some things to do this afternoon plus a talk to attend from tonight.

Happy Conferencing!