Just remembered why I am here.

Just imagine. While trying to rush through an examination on an elderly, she gripped your hand so tightly and smiled. You smile back to her and as you look into those eyes, you realise that there are tears coming down the side of her eye? I know of a pain that is silent. It is probably the result of mixing both aches and fear and hole it all up inside, stir it and prolong it for the next few years. It is the pains that the elderly become so familiar with. At the hospital, sometimes there's nothing left to say. The tables are hard and cold. There is no time for blankets and companionship. The radiographers appear to be more engrossed with their patient's hands or legs, or hips appearing perfectly on the workstations while she lays stiff and cold on one side in the X-ray room, wondering what is happening to her next, what is happening to her children ... and her grandchildren.. Hear these:

"let me go...."
"I have nothing to eat or drink since morning when my children sent me to this hospital."
"The doctor is busy, maybe I can come another day."
"You are so clever. So young become doctor ah? Pls no need to do anything for me becos I dont need my children waste money on me."
"No, you are busy too, but pls call my son to bring me home. It is too expensive for him to put me here."
"How much? But I am old woman. I have no money." (She was crying.)

Everyday I have to come across people waiting anxiously for a family or friend outside the theatre. Some were in groups. But my heart goes to the lonely figure sitting on the floor - alone. I also know the loneliness of the one lying still and cold on the trolley inside the theatre, feeling helpless and or hopeless. Not that the operations will be hopeless, but rather, whatever adjustments that will need to be done after the operations. Life & Death does not end there, in the OT. Even if the surgeons can fix the leg or hip, or remove the tumour, we realise that there is still a need for God - God of the living. God of our Quality Adjusted Life Years. And we wish we could go back in time and start all over.

Life goes on. Interesting people makes life interesting and fun. But happiness can be so fragile and it becomes so easy to frown. I see a fresh hope in Yen who is now so happy and free, and moving around on her little bike. In a place where quality can still be within easy reach.