Things that we might not care much

"Abdullah, ta'al wa ta'mal zai-hu." said the Prof. in my clinical round yesterday. She meant, "Abdullah, come here and do like him."
Of course this is not the exact sentence she said, but more or less, that was it. It was a case of Ankylosing Spondylitis and i was the one who responsible to take the patient's history, and performed the clinical examination of his joints.

It maybe was just another clinical round like the other days, but there was something different, something that hit my mind during the class, and i feel like sharing it with everyone else. Before we go far, let me introduce the patient a little bit, he is Mr. Mamduh Abdul Hamid, 50. He was a nice man, he helped me through the history taking, explained his condition slowly and did not get bored out of repeating the same things to me since I'm not that good in arabic, especially when it comes to all the medical terms.

"enta 'arabi meiyah-meiyah." (ur arabic is 100%! = excellent), that's what he said, i think it's not even 50%, haha.

During the class, I was asked by the prof to become the model for normal person. I needed to do the same movements as the prof asked the patients to do, and she wanted me to do it in front of the whole class while performing the clinical examination on the patient in the same time (by observing his movements). Of course, it was kinda funny when a medical student need to act like a patient-model. Medical student cum model perhaps?

"It's like you're teaching the patient to dance, haha." that's what a friend of mine even said, hehe.

Ankylosing Spondylitis is a joint disease, it starts from the spine, and spread to the big joints like the shoulders, hip and neck, and that's what Mr. Mamduh is suffering from. His joints' movements were very limited and it seemed like whenever he moved any of his big joints, it was something very hard and painful to do.

There i was, standing next to him, doing all these movements freely, as a model of a normal person. Then, suddenly it strucked my mind, "It must be hard for him to see me doing all this movements freely and happily despite that we were doing all that for teaching purpose." Just imagine when you have a sprained ankle and cannot move your ankle freely, then you se your friend running here and there happily, you will feel down and disappointed.

What about Mr. Mamduh who cannot move his back, neck, shoulders and hip freely all the time with no hope of short and easy recovery? But there he was, smiling to us the medical students, willing to help the Professors to teach us about joints diseases and examinations so that one day, we would become good doctors, not brainless doctors. May Allah bless him always.

All the healthy joints that we have with us are definitely a great gift from Allah S.W.T. All the activities that we do everyday, walking, running, cooking, eating, praying, playing, even urinating and defecating, all of them were made easy by Allah through giving us these healthy joints.

Have we ever think about it? Have we ever feel really grateful with this great gift? Must we wait until we have a sprained ankle, a torn ligament, or a broken bone before we will feel grateful? But that's human's nature, always takes something for granted. Let us pray that we would never become such a shameful human because deep inside, we always know that all these things are from Him, and He have every rights to take them away from us, anytime He wants. A grateful person is someone who live his/her purpose of life; as a slave of Allah S.W.T.

Remember, every single joint in our body is a great gift from him, and in return, we should do everything that He told us to do, and leave everything that He prohibited from us. Also, live a healthy life so that we will always have healthy joints insyaAllah. And medical students specifically, lets do our best in our studies so that we will become good doctors, not brainless doctors. That's also a way of being grateful, and to help others appreciate their life and health more, to bring them closer to the Al-Khaliq, The Creator, Allah S.W.T.

Wallahu'alam.




p/s: Can't believe OSCE and Radiology exams are in less than a week! Woah!