Saturday, January 16, 2010

A 40 minute wait at a 24-hour clinic!

I had sort of an emergency on Wednesday, 13th January, 2010 when my son complained in the morning about not being able to swallow his food and having trouble breathing. He also said that he has got spots on his forehead and hands.

Concerned that he might be having an asthma attack and suspecting that the spots he mentioned could be chicken pox, I immediately took him to a 24-hour clinic near our house in USJ4.

We registered ourselves at 6.50am, but were told that the night doctor had left but the morning doctor was already on the way. Aren’t 24-hour clinics supposed to have doctors TWENTY FOUR HOURS of the day? What happened if it had been a life and death situation where moving the patient any further to maybe a hospital more than 30 minutes away could be fatal? Why call it a 24-hour clinic when there is no one to attend to you 24 hours of the day?

Can such a ‘misleading’ practice be reported to the Board of Medical Practitioners?

Guess how long my son and I had to wait before the doctor finally walked in daintily and calmly into the clinic? FORTY MINUTES later! Uurrgghh!

Did she apologize for making us wait? NO! I would have put up a fuss, but I myself was not feeling too well, and, besides, I did not want her to retaliate by prescribing the wrong medicine to Aiman.

However, I still think that the Malaysian Medical Association or whichever body that governs the setting up of medical practitioners should do some enforcement on such practices. They shouldn’t wait until something fatal happens first before taking any action.

Anyway, Aiman did have chicken pox and I was down with the flu.


Aiman has been on MC since Wednesday, and today, looks like most of the spots/blisters or whatchamacolic have pretty much appeared all over his body, face, hands and legs. What is so pitiful to him is that the blisters are also appearing around his mouth and on his lips and it is making him so uncomfortable to eat.

I hope the spots/blisters will subside by today and the process of healing will start. I took leave, or rather, I was on MC on Wednesday due to my flu, and my hubby took the day off on Thursday. However, we had to send Aiman to my in-laws house on Friday as neither one of us could get out of a meeting to take leave to care for him.

I thank God that I have my in-laws here in KL living not too far away from us as it really helps in cases of emergencies like these.

My hubby said that his mother was more than happy to care for Aiman and he jokingly `complained’ that when he had chicken pox about 12 years ago (yup! He had it when he was already an ADULT! *grin*), his mum didn’t even want to visit him as she did not want to pass on the virus to her grandchild, Hilda, who was in her care at that time.

Did I sense a tinge of jealousy there, Dia? LOL! *grin*

1 comment:

nikai said...

Get well soon Kaknun and Aiman. Don't let him scratch.