But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this
all-surpassing power is from God and
not from us. (2 Corinthians 4:7)

Monday, April 12, 2010

When the world laughs at you 2

Hello world, how have you been?

Truthfully, things have not been that good for me in the past 2 weeks. Just wondering, do you find it harder to find God’s grace in the midst of trials or when your life is “smooth-sailing” and monotonously stable?

Anyways, this is already my 3rd week as an inpatient pharmacist. Today while I was taking train home, I was quite astonished to see my reflection on the MRT train windows. Such a haggard me. Suddenly, I feel as if I’ve blend into the working world. I used to think that I’m different from the other working adults who have been working for years, BUT I realized that I was wrong, I look exactly like any of them, and I dislike it.

Since last week, my ward load has increased from 1 to 2. I have been handling 2 wards and just yesterday, I hit the highest number of beds. Just to put things in perspective, there is no correlation between the number of beds I am handling with the competency or what so ever. It is just natural for inpatient pharmacist to handle an average of 2 wards.

But I think I have not been handling my life well. Last Friday, a sister in my fellowship group shared something that happened in her life lately and a statement she made then really brought me back to reality. She said “when the spirit is right, everything will become just so right”. I guess I am just experiencing the absolute opposite of this statement, that is when the spirit is not right, everything will become so wrong.

Things have been so wrong lately. I don’t know why. Guess which pharmacist had to report 2 e-HOR in 3 weeks? ME! Yeaps, 2 medication-related errors happened in my ward these 2 weeks and even though I wasn’t the one doing it, I am the one who has to face the score when such things happen because I am the ward pharmacist. Actually I didn’t feel things were so wrong even when the e-HOR took place, because I know that errors happened and one happened during a public holidays when the discharges at the main pharmacy was like horribly enormous; and another one happened just to remind us to be more alert to the multiple strengths medication in the pharmacy. Didn’t blame anyone, just that, I am so wow-ed by the frequency of such things.

And I also don’t know why, I seem to have an intrinsic mechanism that attracts all the weird cases to my wards. One Bangladesh patient came in because of fits and it was found that there’s worms in his brain. Rare case for AH but I got it man. Bought in the medicine for him because AH doesn’t keep so many of such medication and in the end, before he’s even completely healed, the employer wanted him to be discharged because of the bills. It took me a couple of phone calls just to persuade the employer to agree to pay for the treatment for this patient and to come down to collect the medicine. Not cheap I have to acknowledge, but it’s necessary. At least he’s willing to buy 2 weeks supply of the medicine, instead of 1 month as prescribed by the doctors.

One day, suddenly I received a call from the ward saying my consultant wanted to PERSONALLY administer IV tensilon to this patient. Tensilon is a medicine used to diagnose myasthenia gravis. It’s an exemption drug, ie not registered in Singapore, hence no hospitals will stock up this item in their pharmacies.. We only kept 1 vial but it was used up the day before, for the same patient -_- SO SO wasted. Wilson helped me to call TTSH, SGH, NUH – ALL of them had 0 stock. I was darn panic that morning, I shouldn’t be. L

Another case - patient needed midodrine for orthostatic hypotension. Again, this is not a usual drug and hence we don’t keep in AH. Oh, first time in my life to come across EBA –Epidermolysis bullosa acquisita also.

Imagine doing all these and reviewing the patients in your wards at the same time. It is so so difficult L It shouldn’t be, if I have time. But it seems like everyday I get to encounter this kinda weird weird stuff and at the end of each day, I really get a real big mental block.

Many times, it felt as if the weight of the whole world is on me. I have been asking myself, why am I so jaded these days? Why do I always look so tired and I seem to have lost the joy that I used to enjoy?

And it’s until Friday that I realized why I am the way I am.

You know, the spirit is not right from the beginning. I have been handling things myself and my mind has always been running too quickly, or trying to think about solutions or how to carry my points to this doctor or that doctor. Things have not been mad. But the severity of the un-mad things has been magnified when the spirit is wrong.

I have been so occupied with things that I forget that He is with me and I can draw strength and wisdom from Him. And why do I have to make myself so tired and worried when He is the one in control and things have not been bad for me, not in the past, not now, and it won’t be in future. The only thing that’s changed is the intensity and frequency of matters that I have to deal with – seems to have increased. But I realized that actually, I don’t need God to give me wisdom to handle them.

Above all these, I really need to seek God and have the right Spirit first before I even start thinking about the problems/ situations. Why is it so hard fix my eyes on the unchanging ONE when I am surrounded with so many things that are changing?

Sigh.



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