For a happy birthday, keep it simple

Source: The Sunday Tmes,  May 8, 2011

For a happy birthday, keep it simple

Fancy parties spoil children as pleasures become routine and don't evoke happiness

By Lee Wei Ling

In last Sunday's Lifestyle, there was a full-page feature on the birthday parties parents throw for their children nowadays.

Quite a few parents now employ party planning companies specialising in children's birthday parties. These companies claim that such parties are no longer 'rich man's events', and even some HDB residents employ their services.

Balloon sculpting and face painting cost between $350 and $800 per party, which usually runs over two to three hours, depending on the number of activities.

Parents today spend more than they did before. Lifestyle reported that the average birthday party package cost $300 in 2007. Now parents can expect to spend upwards of $2,000.

I remember the birthday 'parties' my brothers and I had as children. There were no guests. There would just be mother and us three children. We never asked why father was not with us. We knew he had more important things to do.

All we would have was one birthday cake, with one candle and tiny porcelain animals that corresponded to the animal of our year of birth.

For me it was porcelain horses, since I was born in the Year of the Horse. For Hsien Yang it was roosters and chicks, for he was born in the Year of the Rooster. The porcelain animals are still at home in a display cabinet that belonged to my mother. Hsien Loong was born in the Year of the Dragon, but none of us can remember what Mama used to represent a Chinese dragon.

The only presents we received were from Mama herself, and the presents always consisted of books. We were content with these little 'special events' once a year for each of us.

Even in our kindergarten days, some parents used to arrange for their children to have birthday parties at school, complete with gifts for their classmates. Some parents still do that. I know because one of my doctor friends who has five children has to buy gifts for all of her kids' classmates in kindergarten on their birthdays. Kindergarten parties now seem to be the norm, as are elaborate birthday parties at home.

My brothers and I were the odd ones out. We did not have any birthday celebrations at our kindergartens. But we did not feel deprived nor did we complain. Perhaps implicitly we understood why our father would turn up at our kindergarten 'graduation' in white and white, yet did not have time for our birthdays.

By the time we began primary school, even the cake and small 'special event' at home ceased. We did not feel deprived - not even when our cousins invited us to birthday parties at their homes, complete with magic shows, door gifts, and not just cakes but also ice cream, popsicles, candies and jellies.

Birthday presents also became passe by the time we hit primary school. Mama explained that there were 365 days in the year, and only one of those days was our birthday. Wouldn't non-birthday presents be better, she reasoned, as they would come as a surprise and could occur on any of the other 364 days in the year. We were convinced - and indeed, she did buy us books more than once a year.

As we became teenagers and adults, and now into late middle age, birthdays remained non-events for my brothers and me. But some time in the early 1980s, Hsien Yang began organising birthday parties for our parents. At first, he did the cooking himself. Later, he would get chefs to come to cook up a gourmet dinner at his home. Yang, a good cook himself, made sure his kitchen met the highest standards the chefs required.

In the past six years, starting when I hit 50, a small group of friends would sometimes cajole and persuade me to go out for a fancy meal on my birthday. My family seldom remembers my birthday, and I'm old enough now to prefer to forget about it too. Still, I am pleased to receive e-mail or SMS birthday greetings from patients, friends and my father's security officers. As asocial as I am, it is nice to know there are people who view me with goodwill.

But I digress. Old memories diverted me from a lesson I wished to impart. There is no doubt that Singapore has advanced economically, and many parents want to give their children the pleasures they themselves did not have in their childhood. But when the pleasures become routine and common, they no longer evoke happiness.

My readers may be anticipating at this point my customary lecture on the merits of a spartan lifestyle. I won't lecture or preach. But I do think my parents were right in bringing me up to disdain material pleasures. I am happy to enjoy them on the rare occasions I am offered these pleasures - for example, a gourmet dinner a friend insisted on throwing for me on my 50th birthday. But I won't miss these pleasures if times are hard.

Many of our young adults below 35 seem to feel they are entitled to an easy life. They are footloose and fancy-free, believing the world is their oyster. They are probably not very different from others of their age in other developed countries. But I wonder how they will react when misfortune or disaster strikes. Will they have the necessary resilience?

I am not sure, but I don't worry too much. I have no children of my own. If I had, I would have brought them up the same way my parents brought me up.

Just one cake, decorated with porcelain animals, plus a book present - a 'special treat' that always remained 'special' precisely because we were never spoilt with excess.

When doctors invoke God’s will

Beware of consigning people to prolonged suffering in the name of ‘not playing God’

Source: The Sunday Times  Dec 18, 2011

By Lee Wei Ling

In medicine, we often come across situations where an attempt to save a patient’s life may well condemn that patient to a severe disability and a life devoid of meaning. Though alive, the patient may be unaware of his surroundings and unable to think or communicate. This condition is termed the ‘chronic vegetative state’.

The politically correct response that many doctors parrot when faced with such a situation is to say: ‘I can’t play God.’

That statement can imply that the doctor does not know God’s will, and will therefore not act to take extreme measures. Rather, he would leave the patient’s survival in God’s hands, or to the natural course of the disease.

But more often than not, when doctors say they ‘can’t play God’, what they mean is they don’t know when to stop medical treatment. They end up trying to prolong the life of the patient, though they know that if he survives he may be faced with a meaningless existence filled with suffering and misery.

When a doctor claims he cannot play God, the truth is that he does not have the courage to leave the patient alone and save his family from years of suffering. Ironically, in deciding to save such a patient, the doctor is in fact playing God – and a possibly vindictive God too.

I have seen such situations too often, and have refrained from writing about them because I did not wish to offend anyone. But after witnessing so many cases of unnecessary suffering, I feel I should speak out against consigning people to years of suffering in the name of ‘not playing God’.

When faced with a situation where saving a patient may well condemn that patient and his family to years of suffering, a doctor would usually hold discussions with the patient’s family, and where possible with the patient himself.

Doctors try their best to abide by their patients’ wishes if their patients have already communicated them. If not, we rely on the family or whoever the patient has given the power of attorney to. We try to put across the best medical advice in a form that is comprehensible to patients and their families.

Patient autonomy is considered the basis on which we make medical decisions. But when faced with the shock of imminent death, very few patients or their families can make rational decisions. In this situation, emotion usually overrides reason.

A few years ago, the mother of a good friend of mine had a serious bleed in her brain. As my friend himself is a doctor, we all rallied around to save his mother, with no effort or expense being spared. In the end, the mother survived, but was extremely disabled, unable even to eat or drink by herself.

My friend, a devout Christian, would probably have accepted whatever outcome as ‘God’s will’. But was it God’s will that his fellow doctors should have used all the powerful weapons of medicine that they possessed to pull this elderly woman through a medical crisis and leave her and her family facing months, if not years, of suffering?

It seems to me that those who invoke ‘God’s will’ should be more humble. At the very least, they should avoid ‘playing God’ themselves and blaming the terrible results on ‘God’s will’.

There is an often repeated story of an observant Jew that is of relevance in this context.

This Jew’s village was flooded in a terrible rainstorm. The police instructed the villagers to evacuate their homes immediately and leave for higher ground. But our deeply religious man decided to stay put, telling the police, ‘God will save me’.

Soon, he was forced up to the first floor of his house because of the rising water. Some villagers in a dinghy sailed past and pleaded with him to join them. The pious man declined, calling out: ‘Don’t worry – God will save me!’

But the water continued to rise, and he was forced to climb to the roof of his house. A helicopter came by and threw down a rope. Again, the devout man refused all assistance, exclaiming: ‘No need, God will save me!’

Eventually, the water rose so high that the roof was covered, and he drowned. On arrival at the pearly gates, he asked to see God.

‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I trusted you, I put my life in your hands, I had faith in you, and you let me drown. How can I believe in you and your beneficence?’

God looked him up and down and replied: ‘You nebbish (a Yiddish word meaning a pitiful, ineffectual and inept person), I sent the police, a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want me to do?’

Often in life, we have to make important decisions, some of them with life-and-death consequences. Those who believe in God try to abide by His will. Yet God’s will is not known to us – and as the above story indicates, very often we can miss the obvious (God sent a boat) while looking out for some special signal.

Growing Up Mulitlingual

Notable quotes:

"I do not regret the hours I laboured over Chinese classics. I carry to this day the values they imparted to me,  and they continue to guide my behaviour in life, 38 years after I completed my Chinese education."

 

"But when I visit China or Taiwan, and am immersed In a Mandarin speaking environment, I find that within one to two weeks, l can speak Mandarin fluently again, and even find myself dreaming in Mandarin again."

 

These are important lessons on why we need to learn our literature being a Chinese and how the environment and attitude affects one's ability to pick up the Chinese language or for that matter any mother tougue for other races. 

 

source: The Sunday Times  20Nov2011

Living a life with no regrets

A reader JS emailed me: "Just browsing your site with Dr. Lee's articles. Think you missed out one in October 2011 "Living a life with no regrets". Can post?".

I had read this article but had decided not to include in this blog. This blog is meant to collect only those articles, in my view, that are memorable or with a good value to convey. The quality of her recent articles seems to drop quite a bit and I have decided to give them a miss. In these days of internet, it is quite easy to google and get the articles you want. Here are the links for this article and related topics for those who are concerned about the health of the ex-PM:

• "Living a life with no regrets" - The Stars
• http://cclnewsworthy.blogspot.com/2011/10/living-life-with-no-regrets.html
• "The truth about my father’s health"

Subsidised or not, treat all patients equally

[Askmelah's Note: this is an old article that I happen to chance upon in my paper cutting collection. So I have included here for sharing. Kudos to Dr. Lee who was born with a silver spoon and yet remain humble and down-to-earth in treating her patients, rich or poor. Her experience of a "subsidised" patient in Singapore is very real and is a problem with our healthcare system.]

Source: The Straits Times  16 Dec 2009

By Lee Wei Ling

THOSE who have been reading my columns regularly will know that my health has been uncertain. Perhaps for that very reason, I feel keenly the ill fortunes as well as triumphs of my patients.

Today, as I write this, I feel like a '104-year-old', a term that my friends would understand. It means I feel 50 years older than I really am.

But I have patients to see. Many among them would have taken leave or made special arrangements to be accompanied by a parent or caregiver in order to see me.

I could, of course, get another doctor in my department to see them, for most of my patients are subsidised and thus not allowed to choose their own doctors. But I treat my subsidised (B2 and C class) patients no differently from my full-paying (A and B1 class) patients, and provide all with the same quality of care. I also insist that all the doctors at the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) do the same.

This ethos of caring for patients regardless of whether they are subsidised or not is sometimes absent in our hospitals, even in cases of subsidised patients with complex problems. Sometimes such patients are assigned to junior doctors.

Recently, a friend telephoned me one evening, very distressed. Her husband had had a severe head injury. I asked her who was the doctor in charge. She said she did not know. I told her to write down my name and mobile number on a piece of paper and pass it to the most senior doctor there and ask him to call me.

The moment the doctor saw the note, he telephoned his head of department. My friend had never seen or heard of the head of department before that. Other doctors in the hospital asked my friend: 'Who are you and how are you related to Professor Lee Wei Ling?'

An hour later, the head of department called me to give me the medical details, sounding as though he had been in charge all along. The next day, a bouquet of flowers from the hospital appeared in the room of my friend's husband. A senior doctor took care of my friend's husband and performed every operation on him personally. My friend's husband had been admitted as a subsidised patient because all emergency admissions are categorised as 'subsidised'.

Our system must find an effective way of ensuring that senior doctors also treat subsidised patients. At present, it is in the economic interests of senior doctors to focus on paying patients rather than subsidised patients - and it is not always the case that doctors look beyond their economic interests. Thus we get incidents like the one I have just described. My friend's husband should have been treated by a senior doctor as a matter of course, without my intervention.

At NNI, a subsidised patient with a complex medical problem would be seen by a senior doctor, or at least a junior doctor under a senior doctor's supervision. My doctors know that I would come down on them like a tonne of bricks if I found they were not providing the same quality of care to subsidised patients as they were to paying ones.

Back to today: I had four glasses of ice-cold kopi-o and made it to the clinic to see my patients. I have just finished seeing all my patients and decided that doing so was the best medicine I could possibly have.

Two of my patients were young men who had been under my care for about 20 years each. One was an engineering graduate of the National University of Singapore, and the other, a polytechnic graduate; both are now gainfully employed. Two other patients were severely handicapped, and seeing them reminded me that I had no right to whine about my fate.

Another patient came with her mother. She continues to have seizures but less frequently now compared with her previous visit.

Three patients did not come. Instead, their elderly parents came and I asked the parents how the patients were doing. I knew all three well and their parents knew me well. I understood the difficulty of elderly parents having to take their handicapped adult children to the hospital by public transport.

My best reward of the day was a lady with epilepsy who has been under my care for 12 years. I casually asked her whether she was still employed.

'Yes,' she replied, 'I am in the same company I was working for when I first saw you. Don't you remember, when the person in charge of me asked for a medical report from you, you said that she could contact you personally? She never did, perhaps because she was frightened of you, so I am still working in the same company. During the recent retrenchment exercise, she lost her job and I have been promoted to take over her duties.'

If that superior had contacted me and the patient had granted me permission to release her medical information, I would have done so. Since her seizures had been brought under control within six months of her coming under my care, and since there is still much social stigma attached to epilepsy, I would have told the superior that the seizures were well controlled and would not affect my patient's ability to carry out her duties.

When I walked out of my clinic after attending to all my patients, I felt psychologically like a 44-year-old, 10 years younger than my actual age. Which medicine can make you feel 60 years younger? More importantly, I felt I had contributed, in a small way, to human welfare.

Today was worth living though it had started badly and I am still stiff and tired. I will do my best, though at times my best is not good enough, for my patients' medical conditions are too severe for current medical science to cure.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute. Think-Tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figures in Singapore's tertiary and research institutions.