365 days in a blink of an eye

One year into my job in baling. Its amazing how fast time flies. Every sunday morning dreadfully dragging my feet to work, all that is in my mind was to count the days to thursday. Thursday is the day i work like a crazy kamikaze soldier in order to finish my 5 days of work piling from sunday so that i can enjoy my weekends. Friday on the other hand is my personal business day. YES, even on weekend i 'work'. I go to the banks, the post office, the dentist, the phone centre, the governments' building and more banks. Practically everything that clashes with my working hours. On saturday, my sunday blues kicks in. I know it's not even sunday, i already feel the blues. The word monday blues just made me realized it came from the calendar itself. Weekdays were marked blue in colour and weekends were red. Well at least according to my calendar, which made me realized the origin of the words itself. Am i supposed to say sunday reds instead? LOL! Unless i feel like an angry psychotic serial killer, i shall stick with sunday blues. And when sunday come, the cycle repeat itself. So the question is what did do from sunday to wednesday? Its what people do on free time, i work on my hobbies, like counting the hours. And when i am bored with it, i proceed to the minutes then followed by seconds. Its a good way to improved maths and time management. LOL!!

Anyway enough of all the craps. What i want to convey here is in a blink of an eye, one year has past. I had been sitting in my office for one whole year now and sometimes the room still felt foreign as if i was just replacing the person before me temporarily. As if i am going to leave to a new place. As if i never belong here. Maybe that is what was playing in my subconscious mind all along. I remembered how unwilling of me coming to work here, how i handed in my transfer forms just one month into the job, how i dread the road to baling, how i loathe to beg for drugs from bigger hospitals and how i were always the one working on public holidays. As days past by, i became fond of this place. A small hospital as it is, at least i am in control of everything. From store budgeting to customer service and care to management of how the pharmacy flow and beyond. All under my tiny skinny hands. Of course as the phrase goes 'with great power comes great responsibility'. There are always the endless problems arising everyday and as dreadful as they are, i need to clean them up.

Many people i know assume all i do in a day is to dispense medicine to patients. Countless of times i tried explaining my job scopes but still i got the 'all you do is sit at the counter and dispense medicine' assumptions. Wouldn't my job in a way similar to those working at mc donald serving you mc chicken only that the pay was so much higher? If so, i wouldn't mind. With so much money in hand and so little to do, it will be the easiest job on earth. Dispensing medicine can easily be done by dispenser. Pharmacist on the other hand deals more with pharmaceutical care and purchasing of drugs. Take my job for example, i hardly do any dispensing. The only time i had to do is when there's deprivation of staff. My job is to counsel patient like a mom nagging a child on how to take medicine and to take care of themselves. Apart from that i screened for mistakes in a prescription like a teacher marking papers. And of course controlling budget and shopping for drugs which was ever so hard because the budget was never enough. overall i am just a stingy accountant, a mom and a teacher who is a nag and can't stop finding fault. i bet i am so irritating you wish you can squish me like a helpless worm. Nowadays i can't be bothered with all the assumptions they made because i don't even know what they do after they explained to me.

After staying in baling for a year, more or less i have adapted with their lifestyle. I called baling as our own local 'wisteria lane'. At first i was annoyed because everyone here like to stick their nose into your business. There was no way anyone can keep any secret to themselves. The best way is to not tell anyone anything. As time past, i began to become apart of the society not in the blowing out secret way but as the recieving end. People here gossip just about anything anytime anywhere. If i happen to be somewhere in a right time, i might just be pull in for a gossip treat but i have to always bare in mind the answers to the questions shooting at me after the treat. I might just be the next treat of gossips to them. Its easy to laugh everything off at the end of the day because there's more to life than gossips. Well for me at least because i will be too busy minding my own life.

By saying baling being a small town, people here are nicer. They treat you as part of them which make my job harder. I have to make sure i counsel them properly so that i don't have to see them in the hospital again. If they were warded because they don't comply to their medicine, it just make me feel like i did a bad job. I know compliance is a tough issue and even the most educated people have difficulty in compliance. I just want to make sure i educate them enough to understand their disease origin and if they choose not to comply then at least its not my fault. I cant force a person to take care of themselves when they choose to die. I hope from all the counseling given will turn the society's mindset that their own health is under their own responsibility. The doctors job is to diagnose and if you are lucky, they cure you. If not then they only can slow the progression to your death bed. In a long run, not only we create a society that is healthconscious, the average age of mortality increases and the government burden on health budget decreases. Then we can start yakking on quality of life.

Anyway, i am suppose to summarize my one year experience in baling but i kept trialling off. This post is so random to the extent of i don't know how to continue anymore. I shall end now. Update soon.