Charity, Charity!

Everyday is a good day indeed. Yet, in my case at least, everyday is just like the day before, with the same routine. However, after almost drowning myself with self-pity on that fine Thursday as I was stuck in the house without anyone with my intellectual capacity to talk to, the phone rang. I dashed, with anticipation, hoping someone would save me by adding some spice to that fateful Thursday. Sure enough, I heard a familiar sound from the other side of connection. My saviour happened to be my old schoolmate back in secondary school. She goes by the name “Kamala”. Little wonder to why I found such joy for finally being able to fill up my Thursday evening with such a company for she is known as “ALAMAK” (Kamala becomes Alamak if it is read out the other way round!).

            “Alamak” is probably the best word to describe how I felt just under 5 minutes of conversing with her. First, I forgot that her birthday had just passed. After receiving a nice sounding for it, we resumed our conversation in which she gave me another blow. She told me that the coming weekend, she was going for a ‘medical camp’ where she would be a volunteer. After hearing the ring word ‘medical’ I gave her volleys of questions. I had always wanted to be a doctor since I was a kid that spent most of her television time watching the TV-series “ER” or emergency room. Of course it is hardly a reason enough for me to commit me life to the profession that is associated with sweating blood and slaving for at least a decade before becoming a ‘specialist’. Imagine the look on the faces of the admission officers for university when they hear my reason.

            To cut a long and winding conversation short, I agreed to come with her to volunteer my services to the society. I had been looking furiously for the past few months for a concrete reason as to why I want to be a physician. Medicine is a field where there has to be passion for what you are doing. And that is precisely what I am looking for. By searching myself now, I would not be making any wrong turns in life by entering this field blindly only to discover later that medicine is not for me.      

            The subsequent days left me in fits of anticipation. Would I like it? Is it going to be under the hot sun? I knew a few things though. This medical camp was organized by the Pusat Satya Sai Malaysia. They are a religious organization that does voluntary services. This medical camp is conducted for the villagers of Kampung Sungai Kayu Ara. The irony here is, this ‘village’ is actually situated in the city itself. Moreover, it is so near KDU. The residents of this village are mainly Indians. That is about the only information Kamala could give me and I was suppose to be contented with that. I did ask her what kind of volunteering we were going to do and she told me that there would be the ‘eye-chart test’, measurement of height and weight and also ‘urine test’. She added that I should not be in such high hopes because as a volunteer, we could be asked to pick up rubbish or control the crowd. Being more of a technical kind of person, I hoped that I would not be doing something I do everyday. I want some experience in the medical field to add colours and dimensions to my personal statement when application for places in university comes along.

            That day finally came. On the 3rd July, I woke up in the morning, took my breakfast and with a deep breath left home and hitched a ride with dear Kamala to go to “Charity Medical and Health Camp”. When we got there, it looked more like a political rally camp than a medical camp. There were banners and there was a continuous stream of people walking towards that area. That ‘area’ turned out to be a Tamil school after all. It is sad because its condition was bad, nearly dilapidating under the watchful eyes of the city. I did not even manage to get the schools name. Kamala then spotted a fellow volunteer and asked her where we were suppose to meet-up and finalize matters. We then moved in the direction shown by her, to find ourselves in a room. There we met the other volunteers, which included Saras, Supriya, Dhanya, Michael (a white guy who unfortunately was not good-looking) Raj, Kala, and Pravin. Subsequently we were given identification tags and divided into groups by Dr. Wong. Kamala, Michael, Raj and I was in-change of the ‘eye-chart test’, while Supriya, Kala, Saras and Dhanya were told to measured the height, weight and BMI (ratio of the weight to the height of a person). Then, we were shown in a room where the booths were set up for us to carry out our respective tasks.

            This room is where I spent my entire day of this camp. My booth was in the middle, separating Dhanya’s booth and the “blood-sugar level test”. Dr. Wong then gave us instructions on how to conduct the eye test. First, patients would stand behind a line    (approximately 2 meters from the charts) on the floor marked by tape. We would then close one side of the patients’ eye to test its acuity. The patient would then be asked to name the alphabets In the report papers carried along by the patient, we would write the smallest font size the patient can read based on the chart. The font sizes were from the biggest to the smallest: 60, 36, 24, 18,9,7.5,6,and 4. Eye acuity of 60-9 would be categorized as “red”. Within this group, those with eye acuity of 24 and above would be sent to see the ophthalmologists next door for further medical evaluation while those below 24 to 9 should consider wearing spectacles. On the other hand, font size below 9  would be termed “blue” (more like an no-need-to-worry sign). In the report papers, we must write the results by ratio, which was 6 per the font size patients could see (ex. 6/36). According to Dr. Wong, this test would enable us to spot those people who actually never come to realize that they are partially blind. Some of the older patients would also come with cataracts and myopia.

            By that time, residents of Kampung Kayu Ara were streaming in steadily, wanting to take this once in a lifetime chance to get their medical check-up. An elderly man, aged 103 came on wheel chairs. This shows that they took this medical camp seriously. My job was to write out the results on the report papers carried by the patient, Michael in controlling the traffic, Raj and Kamala got to play the models on “Wheel of Fortune” by doing the alphabet pointing. Now, it took me a while to get warmed-up to the task of getting it right. However, I managed to memorize the reactions on the patients face when they could not see anymore and jot down the font size without being told by Raj what the results was. I realized that this test was well adapted to suit all kinds of patients. For those who were illiterate, symbols was used. The patients would use a card to turn in order to show us the shape pointed on the chart (the letter E laid in different angles).

            The height and weight measurements were carried out in this manner. Patients would come in to have their weight and height measured. The numbers was than recorded in the report papers. Once this was completed, a scale was used to see if their weight was proportional to their height. This scale made the work easier as in actual fact the BMI can be counted by this formula: weight per unit square height (weight in kilograms and height in metre). If this scale showed a number larger than 24, the patient would than be considered to be overweight and obese if the number was larger than 27.

As time passed, call me naïve, but I was certainly shocked when many requested for the symbol card. It was a hard blow because most of them were middle-aged women. This clearly shows that there is still the prevalent attitude among the Indians that women are useless if not for being a good wife, a loving mother, and a productive baby-making machine. Then again, I must not forget to say that some men could not read too, noticeably among the elderly ones. The kids were joyous bunch to work with. Some were so shy to even tell us what they see. They keep glancing at their mothers. On the other hand, some found it as an opportunity to showcase their intelligence. They practically shouted the alphabets to us and we appreciable gave them the “bagus” hand-sign. 
           
            On the more medical side of my evaluation, I noticed that these villagers had a serious eyesight problem. Many were given the “red” label. There was a case where this teenage girl, who was wearing glasses, recorded a result of 6/36 on both eyes. This shows how badly in need these people are. Her parents probably could not help her because of their financial constrains. I can safely say that 90% of them needed spectacles to see clearly. Far more saddening was fact that this group included a large number of school-going kids. I also learned that those who were considered overweight or obese had a high chance of having bad eyesight. Of course this would be then a clear indication the patient suffers from diabetes. When we were conducting the eye-test, we were told by Dr. Wong to refer those who were above 40 years of age to the ‘blood-sugar level test’ booth. We were also to keep our eyes open to those who were overweight to refer them to this booth. Patients who did not belong to either of this group would then be cleared for the subsequent check-up, which was physical check as I was told. 

            Moving on, I cannot avoid saying that I suffered the most violent slap on the face that day, metaphorically that is. Although I am an Indian, I do not know to converse in my mother tongue, but I do understand it. Every time I try, I sound very odd. That is precisely how I sounded that day. I had to direct the patients to the next destination once the eye-check up was completed. As most of them were Indians, they all expected me to converse with them in Tamil. I suffered needless to say. The worst was yet to unfold until I had to explain to an elderly illiterate lady how the symbol card mechanism worked in the most retarded Tamil sentences ever spoken. I managed to pull off some words and I am proud to say that by the end of the day, the most frequent sentence structure I had to use was mastered quite well. Prior to this, I have never been ashamed of my disability but now, I sincerely regret that I never bothered to master this intricate language that requires such complex and multidimensional tongue movement.

            Finally, after all the hard work, the volunteers were allowed to go for our first break on a rotational basis after nearly 6 hours of non-stop work since 8.30 a.m. There was specially prepared food waiting for us. The food was vegetarian, since The Satya Sai is in fact a religious movement. I heard the food of excellent. I decided to skip it by downing some sponge cake to take a look around at the other booths available in the camp. I spotted a dentist room, pharmacy, and a common area. I also heard that they were conducting pap-smear test and breast examination for the ladies. How wonderful I thought to myself as I walked back to me room. It was then that I decided to infiltrate into the “blood-sugar level test”.  As I said, I wanted some technical experience and I was sure going to go and look for it. As the volunteers manning the booth had left, I decided to help out.

            First thing first, I was brief by a fellow volunteer how to conduct the test. The steps are : 1) dab some ethanol on the tip of the patients finger with clumps of wool
                 2) insert the lancet in rectangular shaped injector
                 3) place the tip of the open injector on the tip of the patients’ finger
     4) press the button which would release the lancet for penetration of epidermis
         layer of the patients’ finger
                 5) once pricked, finger then pressed to facilitate blood flow to produce a larger
                     drop
                6) blood glucose test strip inserted in glucometer
                7) drop of blood dripped on the strip
                8) wait for the reading on the glucometer
                9) offer the patient some wool to cover the prick
Of course there were a few precautions that had to be taken to ensure the safety and the validity of the results. I must remember to change the lancet in the injector and the blood test strip each time. I find that the injector helps a lot especially for those with injection related phobia. They would be spared the trauma, as the insertion of the lancet on their finger cannot be seen. This test would yield a better result if the patient had fasted before the test was conducted. Only then would the sugar level in the bloodnot fluctuate as when it does right after a meal. For a person who had fasted, the normal sugar level in the blood ranges from 3.0-6.0, measured in mmol/l (milli moles per liter). In lay mans’ term, this would mean the concentration of sugar in the blood.

            And what did I discover? Many things actually. Although it took me some time to get used to the idea of pricking people, but I was thoroughly enjoying it. It was quite hard to get a nice drop of blood from some patients as they either had to little or watery blood. Some of the men had such rough skin, I had to injected a few times to get a puncture. I presumed that these men were labourers. If once was not enough, I had to face another slap. I could not explain to the patients their results other than delivering the reading on the glucometer to them. I had difficulty applying my classroom knowledge in the real world. I had to keep on referring them to a rather nice lady volunteer who assured or chided them gently, depending on the results on the meter.

            All good things have to come to an end. And so, my day as a medical camp volunteer ended with me being a more knowledgeable person. I went home at around 3.00 p.m. By that time, the common area was almost empty. I could safely say that at least a thousand people turned up that day and this camp was certainly a success. It proved that although impoverished, these people had a clear understanding on the importance of being healthy. They took up the opportunity to evaluate their health level. At least now I know efforts like this actually help those in need.

            Most importantly, this experience gave me a clearer picture of myself. At least I know now that I do in fact enjoy helping people. That is a step closer to being a passionate medical practitioner. Furthermore, I realized how foolishly disillusioned I was in assuming that it was a disgrace to speak my own mother tongue. Nothing beats the joy of knowing more about your very own roots and culture. I had blindly dismissed any attempts to cultivate a clear understanding in the Tamil language. Now, I have to pay the price.

            On the brighter side, I had a chance to meet and see things and sceneries previously hiding in the blind spot of my eyes. As a human being, I just got too comfortable with my surroundings that I never thought of displacing myself. Now that I did, I am proud to say I have exposed myself to the reality of the world.

            Now, wouldn’t you agree that that was a great day spent?