Byline: Qadeem Zieman
Last month, I received a visit from a friend at the hospital whilst completing my antibiotic course following an open-heart surgery.
I was placed in a lonely one-bedroom apartment in the far corner, next to the janitor’s. Some would say that it was almost like being imprisoned, especially when you’re there for 42 days.
During the last few days before I was finally discharged, I received a visit from my dear, good friend, Ren, from the university.
As always, we share stories and thoughts, rant out about the things that we are not at peace with. I told her that despite being surrounded by kind doctors and nurses, I think that what the other visitors said about my condition was starting to get to me – I almost felt like I was being imprisoned.
She told me that I was still fortunate that I was not like her in the psychiatric ward.
She was admitted to the ward or which she described as an ‘insane asylum’, after having suicidal thoughts resulting from her bipolar diagnosis.
“I don’t think there’s anything good about it. I was supposed to be treated there, but the longer I was there, the more I felt like dying!”
Ren said that her twelve-day stay at the hospital was a mentally torturous experience as she was restricted from having any contact with anyone, followed by the required strip test and nurses who seemed to always be in bad moods.
The showers were also resembling the run-down bathroom stalls of a boarding school with no lock or a functioning shower head.
Also to be added, she was surrounded by uncontrollable foreign patients from the Rohingya, who were yelling and staring at her all the time, contributing to the already gloomy and depressing environment in 2022.
“I’m not crazy! I was under a lot of pressure, which led me to attempt suicide. I was not violent whatsoever.”
She believed (and I agree) that there must be another option other than tying them (patients) down.
Sometimes, what a patient needs is not much from the caretaker other than some gentleness. I don’t think I can ever forget what happened to me in the CICU when I woke up to be handled by at least six nurses, with one of them being a ‘witty’ blabbermouth as she was tying me down to the sides.
All because I was ‘restless’ as I was unable to voice a note with tubes going down my pipes and was trying to make sense of what had happened after my major open-heart surgery at 21 years old.
I still remember her name – Huda.
I had received help from the kind-hearted surgeon who sympathised with my situation – a young boy with heart failure and no biological family in contact. I was a miserable orphan with no savings to pay RM25,000 for the emergency procedure to take place on the 5th of August.
Huda, the one with black frame spectacles, thought she was being a heroine of the scene as she spoke viciously to me, that I was a charity case and that I should be grateful, not knowing that I was actually conscious and was not behaving restlessly.
I forced myself to sleep in tears that evening. When I woke up, it was already late at night and was attended by an innocent-looking male nurse who seemed to have nothing else on his mind but to get his job done as a nurse, while the rest were in a big group on the other side.
I was given water, glass upon glass with painkillers, as I was dehydrated and in pain with four drain tubes attached to my chest.
The next morning, as the nurses switched shifts, I was cared for by a Chinese-Malay-looking female nurse, Kak Yong. She was nice enough to enlighten me about my condition, not only to keep me in the know, but also to calm my bright, curious mind that kept on wondering. Then, again, they changed shifts, and this time, it was her again. Huda.
I caught her changing her headscarf in the morning as she tried to go unnoticed after knowing that I had talked to another nurse about how she treated me – I felt like a burden. She was now shocked to hear me call her by her name. I didn’t know that it was her, but I was told that the next nurse in charge of me would be another nurse by that name. Despite her loud and irritating voice, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be her, especially after being humiliated that way in front of the other nurses and patients. But well, well… here we go again.
She tried to cover her doings by proudly quoting the overused, typical Malay saying, ‘Mulut Laser’.
Darling, my mother and I, too, were entertainment writers. That’s what we say, yes. But only when it’s applicable. You were mean. You felt like you were superior to others for being able to say and do such actions on an almost lifeless body.
She knew I wasn’t having it, and I guess they looked me up on the internet and found out where I was coming from – with media contacts, she asked for another nurse to take over her place with me.
Despite leaving a daring impression that I might tell on them to any one of the doctors, I never did. In fact, I wanted to give people chances to learn.
But it was a little to my surprise to find another patient in the surgical ward who faced a similar case to mine. An older Chinese man, about sixty years old, from the ‘Kampung’ side of Perak, who had just undergone surgery to place a pacemaker.
He was crying to me when my surgeon, Professor Siva, asked me to keep an eye on him after he fell in the bathroom. I was the youngest, healthiest (in a way), and most mobile there. We had small talks with his loud and expressive voice when he burst into tears when he told me about the nurse with black frame spectacles and a face mask who told him repeatedly that he had no money and was laughing at him. I knew it was her.
It left quite an impact on him in the following days, as he despised all the female nurses who were attending to him. He only wanted the male nurses, Dr. Ong, and Prof. Siva.
I guess anywhere with irresponsible and unethical people trying to show power and superiority can be an ‘insane asylum’. Being alone in the cardiology was full of privacy, but it was lonely, and over time, I felt a little like a prisoner. But it was still better than being surrounded by them in the CICU. It was stressful for me, let alone for the older patients.
Qadeem Zieman (mrshaher.official@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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