Healer [Part 1]

Medical check up, yeah for the JPA scholarship requirement… so that Calvin do not spread tuberculosis or AIDS to Australia or cause trouble for professors there if I happen to have some chronic disease. After all the tales of other JPA scholars about their medical check up, I was rather excited than scared. I love that what Mantoux test, probably because I like that French-y word. Jyo Lyn then warned me of the needles, but I wasn’t at all scared. So happily I went for medical check up, coughing away… (because I had a flu by the way)

Private hospitals are rather efficient. Name and that yellow book. Then, immediately comes the bottle. Oh now, how am I going to produce urine so fast? *Panics* Aha, panic is the solution… and I managed to push with all my might, and naturally nature calls. Done, what’s next? I sat on the chair and that big needle came. Yeah, it’s just gonna be an ant bite! So it was, they plunged the humongous needle into my artery (or vein, dunno-lah which one) and let blood pressure force blood into that tube while the thing sucked it. I never look at bloodsuckers. I felt pity for the blood that is supposed to happily circulating in my body instead of being sent to laboratory for testing. Then, a young woman which covers all her aurat ask me to come into the X-ray chamber. AND SHE ASKED ME TO TAKE OFF MY CLOTHES!!! Oh, fine, that’s a little too exciting. And then I headed to that beaming machine and had to do that funny chicken wings pose just to have an x-ray to show how skinny and bony I am. I almost laughed. BOOM! And X-ray penetrated me and it’s done. No more showing bones. And then comes the long anticipated Mantoux test to test for tuberculosis. The nurse warned me never to rub the part which the needle enters. She says my hand was suitable for that test, a mole, just a right spot to identify. Then, very caringly, (she was a very nice person, really) she said “BE BRAVE!”. And that needle intruded me. The liquid flowed in and I waited. Nurse, it was rather long! I was getting impatient, but before the needle had chance to break in my hand if I move my hand more, it ended. Wow, it’s done!

It wasn’t that done. After that she drew a 15 mm circle around the hole and it looked pretty like a tattoo. Calvin got a tattoo, so unwillingly. I feel like a bad kid living some street with a tattoo on my arm. Feeling rebellious just like many people who choose to have tattoo.

IT STILL WASN’T DONE. A nurse misplaced my bottle (the urine one for very obvious reasons). I don’t have anything to push out, really, DO I REALLY NEED TO? I drank three cups of water, and the nurse said “Faster, go toilet!!!”. So fast process mer? Anyway, for obedience, I went to the cubicle and try to force some out. Thank God, there was still some, the very last and it filled three quarters. So it’s always good to have backup and a God who performs miracles at the time you need it.

[A note to Christians: Continue to read…. I do not condone having tattoos. And there is good reason to thank God that I don’t suffer from prostate cancer and cannot pee.]

Ok, this is the ending of the medical check up, soon. A Dr Tan examined me, asked some brief questions, used a stethoscope and I had to breathe deeply even though the horrible mucus kept preventing me from doing so. Then, pay the RM 222 at the counter and the same caring nurse said I can come and check the coming Monday.

[To be continued...]