IF I say I am up to the neck these days, every other person is also in the same boat but Rehman Rashid's column Lu Siapa ( NST, July 25) prompted me to write this. Lessons he learnt on journalism from his guru Pak Samad decades ago still make sense and is valid and I wanted to write on something that touched my heart lately.

My preoccupation with people and their antics go back from my school days as I have always loved watching people in various moods and actions. Recently, not by choice, but rather due to circumstances I had the invaluable experience visiting the geriatric wards of UMMC and KLGH and it was just then I realised that things we take for granted may not be ours tomorrow.

Wealth may come and go but life goes on but when health fails, living each day will becomes a nightmare.

If you have a CGPA of 4 for Karma, there might be filial children who would want to watch over their elders with a strictly drawn up schedule, yet others, who might have seen better days may now be regarded as thrash and dumped at the geriatric wards, with no onward destination. The thing is, if there is someway of checking my CGPA, we could be in control of what is waiting for us at old age. The clich 'ripe old age' is seeing dwindled use and I wonder why.

'I hate hospitals'

My mom-in-law has become a PR by default at the KLGH geriatric ward and watching her in agony sometimes is not the only pain that greets me during my visits.

I hate hospitals, to begin with and walking past the long rows of beds arranged in some queer order is unnerving enough, what with a face gaunt from illness, giving you that long forlorn look and yet another wailing like a baby with a tube running into her nostril, her hands tied to the bed rails. Is the suffering an end itself or only a means to the end, only the Almighty knows.

I also often catch a glimpse of a lone octogenarian (I think), wrinkly and crumbly from wear and tear, serenading mouthful of curses to don't know who. I catch some words off and on and deduce that she is very angry and bitter about some family members who have taken her money.

Occasionally, she receives an entourage of visitors but she is not pleased and appears agitated and yet at other times, she engages in long monologues and keeps herself well-occupied. I wished I had the time (and the guts) to yarn with this grand old lady for she would make a great story for a novel. Her hostility is threatening but isn't it really sad?

On the bed across my mom-in-law's this cheery uncle has streams of visitors and he is always busy entertaining them (in between recuperating) and he seems to be getting better each passing day. Just like this senior, people make difference to people. A caring word, a consoling gesture and a smile can do wonders to the old and more if they are ill.

My family is going through that part of the cycle when trying times are here. My father has been at the UMMC Geriatric Ward for days now seeking treatment plus rehabilitation for Parkinson's. My father, with no other medical complication is basking in all the attention he gets from the round-the-clock bedside vigil and seeing him happy, makes my day.

And again, the hospital makes me sick. An orphan he claims, the fifty-something on my father's opposite bed keeps his own company and every time he sees us visiting my father, I can read the thoughts running in his mind. He hails from Kluang and fainted in KL while visiting a friend, ended up at the ward, does not know when he will be discharged, rather he says that would not make any difference to him. There is none interested in knowing his whereabouts. Such callousness I thought but he had every reason to be.

Sensitive to needs of patients

The lift lobby outside the geriatric ward becomes a congregation of Indonesian maids, several squatting, others edging on the worn-out sofa, talking, I think, or gossiping, I don't know or planning or scheming, there is no way of knowing, in some dialect beyond my understanding.

The maids, I believe, have been left to tend to the fathers or mothers of their bosses and they do a pretty good job, between the networking. But then again, the maids come in handy when long duration of hospitalization is warranted.

At the geriatric ward, I am touched by the care given to patients by the wardens, nurses and doctors. Laden with insurmountable amount of patience, though not as much energy, the doctors and nurses show professionalism and are sensitive to the needs of the patients. The feeling must be totally satisfying and consuming for these doctors and nurses, getting home after a hard day's work, knowing deep inside that they had indeed been of service to people.

Kuddos to the team from the geriatric ward in UMMC and KLGH but still my prayer hereafter would be for God to pluck me from this earth when my time is up, without having to languish in illness.

BHAVANI KRISHNA IYER has a queer vocation which is watching people. It provides her the interlude she sorely needs and keeps her supply of ideas fresh, for rambling.