Labour Day

It was more a Laborious Day than it was Labour Day.

I started off the day making morning beverages when I spilled Milo on the floor. I took a cloth, bent down, and wiped the powder off the kitchen floor tiles. As I got up, my head smashed right against the corner of the kitchen cabinet door and I literally understood first hand the meaning of "where stars are born."

I immediately applied pressure to the impact area and then I closed the cabinet door. "Damn it," I cursed silently. It was really really painful. Although the skull is a rather thick piece of bone, the scalp had many nerve endings and, if there were any open wounds, prone to bleeding.

As luck would have it, the wound began to bleed. Oh my Guanyin Niangniang, as Aunty Lucy would say. I pressed kitchen towels against the wound as it bled, hoping that I could stop the blood. Meanwhile, I ransacked my rather badly stocked first aid box for something to clean the wound.

No antiseptic solution. No Burnol. No... well, it's no everything useful basically. I found a betamethasone. It's a steriod and these don't go with open wounds generally. Being Labour Day, my family doctor is not open for business. I can't go there to get help.

I won't want to go round looking for a doctor who is open today. In fact, I wasn't even sure I was interested to find one. I cancelled my morning appointments and got Victor to drive me to the hospital.

Because of the nature of the injury, the nurse taking temperature at the entrance registered for me at the Accident and Emergency Department at Changi Hospital.

After a rather long wait, and after turning to a few clean sides of a new piece of kitchen towel to staunch the bleeding. It is NOT a serious bleed, but it is irritating enough to have blood oozing out non-stop.

By the time I got triaged, it was almost one and a half hour after I got cut. The bleeding, the nurse said, has stopped. But the doctor will get me some antiseptic cream and have my wound cleaned.

Waited for my turn after triage and saw the doctor. A locum at the A&E, the guy was young and very patiently impatient. Said a lot of things I already knew but I wasn't too bothered. After all, as long as he got the wound cleaned and then prescribe me some antiseptic cream.

Then if there were any justice, I didn't know it existed. The A&E only carried tetracycline based antiseptic creams. I was allergic to the 4-ringed antibiotic. So I could only have my wound cleaned but I can't get any antiseptic cream for it. I was prescribed only a cleaning solution to cleanse the wound. (In fact, the doctor prescribed the tetracycline cream, only to have me stop him!)

After the ordeal at A&E, we left as the wondrous emergency room filled up so suddenly.

And my day has barely begun.