Dr Denise Chin

After much procrastination, I removed myself from the comfort of my home to drop by Raffles Medical. There wasn't much choice. I have been sick for way too long.

The clinic was a little more crowded than I had wished. My queue ticket was a nice round number comprising all circles. The wait was long. And it seemed even longer when I was the next in line. None of us waiting could hide the frown on our faces.

Like most, if not all, clinics, you would expect killing silence. Maybe except for the nurses gossiping in the background and the sound of the bell that indicates another's turn, most of the patients would have been too sick to engage in any kinds of conversation. Or so I thought. 

Because, coming from the doctor's room were no doubt, laughter and chatter. If the lady who was in there was really ill, she must have contracted some laughing disease. And so must have the doctor. She was in there for the longest time, it felt. And the two sounded more like two long-lost friends catching up and laughing at each other's jokes than a patient and doctor discussing the symptoms and whatnots of the latest H1N1 virus. Had her boyfriend accompanied her in, I am almost certain the hearty conversation between the pair would have been cut very short. A blessing for the real sickly ones waiting outside.

When my turn came, I walked in with slight anticipation. "What would the doctor tell me?", I wondered. The moment I sat down and the doctor opened his mouth, I understood the reason behind the previous lady's long session with the doctor. This doctor was here to chat (with the female patients) more than diagnosing your illness. The latter took only 10 percent or less of his "valuable" time. His lame jokes - sometimes sexual, his questions about my current not-working life, and his brief mentions of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and even Scientology were rather hard to tackle. I had to keep laughing, albeit the difficulty with my braces, so that he thought I thought he was funny.

The aim? To keep him happy so he would introduce some handsome doctor friends to me, recommend me a job at Raffles Medical HQ, and give me a discount for my current visit. Let's just say I managed to clinch 1 1/2 of the three. The discount paid for my dinner tonight. =)

Well, if I had studied medicine back in uni, I need not have, although not intentional, resorted to the above. I would have plenty of cute doctor friends around me, my very own clinic and never to worry about paying to see the doctor! If only.