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Here we pen our stories about our latest activities and our weekly feature on Humans of Medicine. Our team is forever expanding, if you’re interest in contributing to our blog, feel free to contact us.
“Advocating for refugee health is the catalyst for me to become the physician I want to be.”
Refugee /rɛfjʊˈdʒiː/ n. A person forced to flee their country because of violence or persecution.
It started with an opportunity – “Oh, I’m starting a refugee clinic in Serdang.” “Great! What can I do to help?” – and my journey advocating for refugee health unfolded from there. Klinik Amal Muhajir (KAM) was the brainchild of Dr. Siti Noraida, a remarkable philanthropist I had the good fortune to know by being under her tutelage for PBL at one point during my pre-clinical years. I wanted to follow a leader of her calibre. I wanted to learn how advocates like her offer their services to a society that desperately needs their contribution.
“I’d like young girls to know that healthcare providers are their allies,”
A voice went, “I was raped,”.
It sounded odd. Garish and out of place. Yet, this was my voice. The words bounced off the walls of the doctor’s office in the private hospital where I had seconds earlier requested to have a pelvic exam and pap smear performed. I glanced at the clock and noticed a full minute had passed. Wrapping my ankles around the cold metal of my chair, I leaned forward and reiterated my intentions– “I want to do a pap smear, please,”
“...my hand remains resolutely above the surface, asking for help.”
To me, having depression feels like drowning. In an ocean so dark, so deep that no light could possibly penetrate it, my head is under water and all I see is black. But no matter how much I’m pummeled by the waves, my hand remains resolutely above the surface, asking for help. Anxiety, on the other hand, is like standing at crossroads, but one that branches out to innumerable directions. I stand there paralysed, not knowing where to go. “Ah,” I thought, “Here comes the tachycardia.”
“Do I have to wear skirts and makeup just to be given the same treatment?”
It all began in the orthopaedic posting where most of the bosses were men. The specialists in the subspecialty team had the liberty to pick and choose house officers as they like. Naturally, with such a biased and patriarchal system in place, male house officers were much preferred. The only chance of a female attaching to a subspecialty team was if she was deemed attractive enough. What was left of the lot -- the so-called ‘unattractive’ females were left on the general team. My ‘unattractive’ self was then denied the chance to be attached to a subspecialty team such as knee and hip replacement or sports medicine.
“...if a mother could carry out such heinous acts on her daughter, who else could I trust?”
“Am I still alive? Where am I? Where is she?”
Tears rolled down the side of my cheeks as I attempted to shake off the remnants of my nightmare. Amidst my disorientation, I needed some sort of affirmation that it was all a dream – a bad one revolved around the negative themes of abandonment and murder. The voice of a loved one over the phone soothed my racing thoughts and provided me with the reassurance I needed..……
“...it is up to us to break the taboo.”
I started out great with aspirations to become a good doctor and was offered a scholarship to read medicine in China. Life, in simple terms, wasn’t going too badly. Who would have known I would also fall victim to depression.……
“A hug may not seem much to you, but to me, it is everything.”
The ever-waging war in my mind compelled me to isolate myself from the world. Toxic and pessimistic thoughts clouded my rational mind and sound judgement. I was well acquainted with the feeling of loneliness and hopelessness but when they became too overbearing, I succumbed to the temptation of self-harming.……
“It felt as if I was living life from a third person’s point of view.”
It was my second year in medical school- the first time I experienced an overbearing wave of sadness. I knew something was off, it was way too soon for me to be graduating from a bright-eyed freshie to a beaten-up medical student. The dread loomed for weeks before I decided to see a GP, who slotted me in a two-month long waiting list. I was lost, depressed and desperate; my condition was spiralling downwards every single day.
Yet, all I could do was wait. .……
“My brain felt like a lump of tangled threads that wouldn’t untangle no matter how hard I tried.”
I was thousands of kilometres away from home when I started experiencing knee pain. I struggled to continue with my routine; gone were the days when I could cycle 10 kilometres to university. I now had to push my bicycle uphill because my knees would otherwise scream in pain. I used to play rugby with my friends quite often but now even the thought of running caused pain in my knees.……