as age goes

my lecturers have told me: learn from your patient, not only when it comes to medical knowledge but as a whole.

this is completely true, i 'm currently doing ostetrics and gynaecology and our gynae ward is the same one as the female surgery ward. because we have a lot of time on our hands, we go 'cruising' through wards as well, meaning we walk through different wards, catch a patient and clerk them exam style for practice and needless to say, we learn a lot from them.

patients present with a variety of symptoms and hints. this week i had a patient with DM type 1 who came with shortness of breath but turns out had atypical pneumonia and pyogenic liver abcess which caused her to get diabetic ketoacidosis. so while we were clerking her, we asked the standard questions - do you have a boyfreind and are u sexually active? turns out that she has one and she is sexually active. i felt it was my duty to advise her, so after my friend left i had a couple of words to say to her. she seemed to take it well enough. then i went to read her notes, turned out that she was raped 2 years ago by someone she knew and this boyfriend is kind of like her savior.

i was appalled to learn about this. how could someone rape a friend/family member? what caused him to be a monster and rape a 14 year old girl? she had to be admitted to repair a tear at her vagina as well. does he not feel any guilt?

then i remembered the other countless patients who came looking religious but had skeletons in their closet.

1. a religious ustaz who turned out had HIV because he played one time with prostitutes

2. a Muslim man who drank alcohol when he was young and had GI bleeding because of cirrhosis once he reached his 60's

3. an abusive father who developed a stroke and could only moan while his children refused to take care of him at the hospital

i guess the conclusion i managed to dig out from all of this is that Allah has many ways to punish us for our sins whether it is immediate, when we are old,or in the afterlife. whatever our sins might be, they will come back to us. so i guess, i shouldn't be angry towards the rapist, because i can be certain that he will get what he deserves.

p/s: my back saket lagi esp tonight. and i seem to be in a foul mood the whole week. got my social-cultural issue which i had discussed and drafted in my head taken, overslept. hasn't been a good week.