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by Rahim Said
Another colleague is in a hospital bed, and the machinery of goodwill has started up again. The Prime Minister's officers have visited Makkal Osai's senior editor Rajan Boopalan at Selayang Hospital and passed on a contribution.Malay Mail
Messages of support are circulating. His condition is reported to be stable after surgery to remove a blood clot in his head. We are all relieved, and we should all pray for his full recovery.
Let me be careful here. I don't know Rajan's medical history, and nobody should speculate about what caused this. Strokes and ruptured vessels have many causes, and some strike the fittest and most careful among us. Blaming the victim would be both cruel and lazy.
But I can say something about the rest of us, because we know the pattern. We are a profession that treats exhaustion as a credential. We wear the 2 a.m. deadline like a medal, brag about skipped lunches, and call it "passion." We run on kopi-O, cigarettes and adrenaline, sit for twelve hours, and tell ourselves the checkup can wait until after the election, after the budget, after this one story.
There is always one more story.
The cynic in me notes how this usually goes. A journalist collapses, tributes pour in, and officials visit with flowers and envelopes. We nod gravely and share the news. Then we return to our desks, refresh the feed, and carry on exactly as before. Sympathy is cheap and it comes in bulk. Prevention is the thing we never schedule.
So here is the dull, unglamorous reminder, from one tired columnist to the rest. Get your blood pressure checked. Do the full medical screening your company probably offers and you probably skipped. Walk for thirty minutes a day, and no, scrolling on the treadmill of Twitter doesn't count. Sleep. Take your leave. If a headache arrives with something that feels unfamiliar, such as sudden severe pain, blurred vision, numbness or confusion, don't be heroic. Go to the hospital. Immediately.
No editor ever died wishing they had filed faster. The story will survive without you for a weekend, and the newsroom will survive without your martyrdom. It will not survive many more empty chairs.
Get well soon, Rajan. And the rest of us should stop waiting for a hospital visit to make the same promise to ourselves.
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