Sick

I really thought I had dengue fever.

High-grade fever with chills. Headache with retro-orbital pain. Diarrhea and vomiting. Loss of appetite and lethargy. Which perfectly fit the typical presentation of dengue fever.

There I was alone in pitch darkness, covered under my blanket and tolerating what felt like the worst headache I'd ever experienced in my life. Despite the words of concerns that I'd received from McVet and Ambrocius, I couldn't help but feel extremely lonely.

I thought of the old spinster whom I attended to during my 2-week feat in the high-dependency ward. She passed away mainly because of poor family support. It seemed her family members weren't very close to her. She had multiple co-morbidites. Hypothyrodism. Congestive heart failure. Hospital-acquired pneumonia. And also acute on chronic renal failure. And the saddening part was we couldn't dialyse her because no one in her family agreed for it. My specialist said it'd be pointless to dialyse her too if no one's send her for follow-up in future.

I saw her wither away. On BiPAP. Day by day. Occasionally, when I examined her, she'd tell me she wanted to see her elder sister, who works as a dish cleaner in some restaurant. However, there's nothing we could do except to support her the best we could medically.

A few days before I left HDW, her heart just ceased to continue beating.

Obviously, I'm going to grow old like her. Unmarried without offspring. And with family members and relatives I might probably be estranged from.

Will I die as tragically as her? I mean, to say the truth, she would have ameliorated clinically if she had undergone some sort of renal replacement therapy. Yet, when you delve deeper into the social issues of your patients, you'll realize that what you can do as a doctor is limited.

Yeah. I know. It's normal to think of all kind of nonsense when you're sick and alone.

But, thanks God. I got better today. Hopefully, it's just some non-lethal viral fever.

I didn't even have the guts to go have my full blood count and dengue serology taken. Getting warded is the last thing I need at the moment. Guess it's true when they say that doctors make the worst patients.