I had a little surgery done on 24 Aug to remove a "little fellow" from my lower abdomen.
Indeed, it's been said that as we reach middle age, everything starts to wear out, fall out and spread out. If you look up a dictionary, it will tell you that Middle-Age is a non-specific age when a person is not old, not young, but somewhere in the middle. It goes on to add that, in developed societies, the definition befits people between the ages of about 30-60. And I definitely fall between this age group :((
Back to the "little fellow" on my abdomen ... It started off as a tiny pimple. I didn't really pay much attention to it as it caused no pain and didn't really get in the way of my daily life. But it did irritate me at times for the fact that it refused to go away.
I was at the polyclinic recently, and I'd thought I might as well "introduced" the "little fellow" to the young doctor who turned out to be quite unprofessional. I didn't quite catch what he said when he told me to draw the curtain and lie on the bed. When I said "sorry?", he repeated his instruction, but this time with some annoyance in his voice. How rude. I was piqued by the flippant attitude of the doc towards my "little fellow". All he did was just took a casual look at "him", not bothering to even use his hand to touch him or examine him. Then, without missing a beat, he proclaimed: "It's a wart".
How enlightening, I'd thought and I didn't even know what a wart is, to be very honest. He didn't bother to explain or shed light on what causes a wart.
"Should I remove it?" I asked.
"You can if you want to. I'll give you a referral letter to the hospital", he said nonchalantly.
When I asked if he could remove it surgically for me, he said: "No we don't do surgery in the polyclinic."
"What about a GP?" I asked.
"Provided the GP do day surgery," he added.
In the end, he gave me a lotion, some kinda acid I think, and instructed me to apply it to the "little fellow" twice a day. He said I may have to apply it for months before the "little fellow" drop off.
About a week after applying the lotion, the "little fellow" got highly irritated. From an innocuous looking little fellow, he was transformed into a "fiery and mean-looking" fellow, waiting to unleash his rage.
I had to get rid of him, I'd thought. Taking matters into my own hand, I visited a GP that performs surgery and had it removed. The older doctor, who has surely consumed more salt then the one at the polyclinic, has a different opinion. The little fellow was no wart, he had said. Rather it was Pyogenic Granuloma- two big and mouthful words but basically, it's a relatively common benign skin growth, usually a small red, oozing and bleeding bump that looks like raw hamburger meat. It often seems to follows a minor injury and grows rapidly over a period of a few weeks to an average size of a half an inch. The head, neck, upper trunk and hands and feet are the most commonly sites.
That doctor at the polyclinic is not only unprofessional, he's guilty of misdiagnosing as well. Victor, in one of his comments to my blog, had marveled at the fact that we in Singapore receive good quality medical care with no wrong medicines being dispensed. Victor doesn't know any better.
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2 comments:
Chris, I empathize with you for the kind of 'treatment' (not the medical kind) which you received at the polyclinic. Here's my explanation for what happened. Yes, I too have valid explanations for everything.
The young doctor probably got his medical degree on a government scholarship. Now that he has completed his course, he has to serve out a bond with the government (in the polyclinic). As you know, the bond is mandatory otherwise he has to buy himself out (and then be labelled as a 'bond-breaker'). Now noone likes to do anything mandatory. Just ask yourself what was your attitude when you were serving your NS. Well, ok maybe you were a regular but you get my drift.
This doctor can't wait to complete his bond. Then he can start a private practice whether alone or with some partners. That's where the money is. (Remember you paid $90 for a minor operation?)
Most important of all, I think that this doctor has chosen to be in the wrong profession. Not physically examining your 'little fellow' is a misdemeanour which can be forgiven. However making a wrong diagnosis and prescribing the wrong type of medicine are acts of serious professional misconduct which cannot be forgiven of a doctor. How could one be a good doctor if doesn't genuinely care about the well-being of one's patient? I suspect that this doctor has taken the hypocritic oath instead of the Hippocratic one, hee.
You think all doctors at the polyclinic are scholars and bonded? I'm not very sure. I still remember the first name of this particular doctor - Milton. Maybe I should lodge a complaint to the Medical Board (?) and have his name struck off the registra?
My wife was telling me that in Singapore, to be a doctor, you started off as houseman, then RO, then something else (can't remember) before becomimg a full consultant. You think like you so easy ah, consultant? (sorry I can't resist the swipe here, hahaha).
The whole process takes years. So some people set up their own clinic and become GP. This is because they don't want to waste the time going through the RO phase.
For the sake of my "little fellow", I think I'll let begone be begone lah. Consider Milton lucky.
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