Hazia’s Reflections

Today we celebrated my father’s 67th birthday. Well, actually it was supposed to be last week, just after Father’s Day. Only that my parents weren’t in town then. Since everybody loved the cup cakes my brother got on his birthday 2 weeks ago, we ordered a box for this occasion.

I was in a bit of dilemma on the choice of gift. My mother had bought a beard trimmer and my elder brother got a Samsung mobile phone. Both asked me to share with them. Hmm…in the end, I decided to chip in a bit for both:)

Being in town, my parents went for a medical check up at the National Heart Institute (IJN) yesterday. They had to come again next week for another test. My father had been diabetic for almost 30 years. Nevertheless, he was very strict with his diet and daily exercise, so he didn’t face what the average patients did until a year back. Hence, he didn’t have any problem in getting a reference letter for a heart health check-up since it was all related in the end.

My friend claimed that most Malays would end up diabetic anyway. That is why I try to control from now. Unfortunately, my 36 year old elder brother had just been diagnosed too.

My 62 year old mother, on the other hand, had been healthy all her life. Anyway, she said recently she started feeling pain in her legs if she tried to get up quickly after sitting for a long period of time. Since she wanted to be tested too, she managed to get the specialist back home to produce a reference letter for her. In a small town like that, they all knew each other.

The letter stated ‘patient asked to be referred to IJN’ instead of ‘the doctor recommended that this patient be referred to IJN’. The cardiologist made a fuss about the lack of professionalism there. Hehe…

Hopefully, it won’t be anything serious though. Insyaallah…

BTW, my mother brought a whole basket of mangosteen from our own backyard at home. This was the first time the tree had produced so many fruits:)