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Asiahomes
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06 Aug 2002
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"Ta
boleh kenching, ta mahu makan (Not able to pass urine,
no appetite)" Mr Humzah, the 70-year-old trim
groomer with thick long-sighted spectacles said. He had
waited for me to treat the horse and now could not go
back to Malaysia as it was past 4 p.m now.
Monday was a day off and the stables were quite
deserted. The stable manager who always keeps an eagle
eye on horses had phoned me for advice on this
thoroughbred who was not exhibiting the classic colic
case of pain in the stomach area. The gelding was just
lying down the whole day and had difficulty in passing
urine.
I said it would be best to examine the horse as
telephone diagnosis would be incorrect.
Thoroughbred horses are sensitive creatures and if they
are treated early for impending colic, they recover
fast. If not, there is the agonising pain of rolling and
kicking.
Mr Humzah was happy to see me. I apologised for arriving
late and now he could not go home. He said, "There
will be thousands of motor cycles at the Johor check
point. That will take 2 hours to clear the immigration.
I will cycle another 2 hours to my house in Johor.
That is why I leave the stables at 4 pm to avoid the
traffic jams. I go to Singapore at 4 am for the same
reason," he explained patiently as he helped me to
restrain the thoroughbred for injection and to give an
oil laxative by stomach tubing.
I can't imagine a fitter 70-year-old than Mr Humzah on
his bike daily for 2 hours each way. In Singapore,
very few people can afford to buy a house as it cost
around a million dollars. That would be why Mr Humzah
bought a house in Johor.
I checked out the patient. It is not normal for a horse
to lie down the whole day in a stable. This bay
gelding was sent to the spelling station and was in fine
condition when you saw his glossy coat and trim figure.
He looked normal and would get up if you asked him to.
After a while, he just lay down on his side. His
conjuntiva in his eyes were of the normal pink colour.
Gums were normal pink too. No hoof pawing of the
litter. No swelling of the stomach area to indicate he
had gas flatulence in his intestines and therefore an
impending colic. I inserted the thermometer into
his rectum and the temperature was a normal 38.2 degree
Celsius.
The complaint was that he slept too much and was not
passing urine for 2 days.
So what's the problem if the horse sleeps the whole day.
After all, he was in a spelling station to rest from the
hard races. But he had difficulty in passing urine and
that was not normal.
I put my stethoscope onto his stomach area. There was no
intestinal sound heard. The guts were not motile moving
food. His bladder must have been compressed by the
large amount of stools in the long intestines. That
could explain why he had difficulty passing urine. I
gave the horse the usual 3 injections of
pain killers and antibiotics. He was suddenly hungry and
picked up a few blades of grass from the
sand.
Why
not put grass into the water so that he would drink? I
plucked some grass and put them onto his pail of water.
The horse could not apprehend the grass with his
lips. He did not drink a sip. He tried again to
get at the green grass blades but gave up soon. He went
back to his bran and chaff in the another pail. You sure
can bring the horse to the water but you can't make it
drink.
"When don't you retire?" I asked the
stablehand who cared for horses for at least twenty
years. Going to work at 4 am in the morning daily
from Johor to Singapore in a motorcyle is not easy for a
young man and it must be tough for a senior
citizen.
I
know I was stereotyping the grey haired elders with high
blood pressure and diabetes who can't cope with physical
work. This stablehand must be exceptionally healthy as
there is a lot of hands on work, grooming and bathing
the horse and clearing the horse stools.
I waited for the horse to urinate and I knew it would
take a long time. The horse pawed the sand and rolled on
his back but he could not pass urine. He looked at me,
very interested in the surroundings and was no longer
laid on his side.
It
was a peaceful afternoon without the high humidity in
this leafy suburb of Singapore. A gentle breeze. A lazy
black cat was napping. A grey and skinny kitten was
looking for some food. A thin squirrel was up the tall
branches after fighting off another one. Two Caucasian
riders were exercising their horses. It was hard to
believe that there was still a garden of eden in fast
paced competitive Singapore.
"My daughters want me to retire, but I get body
aches when I stayed at home for a long time once."
he explained as he fried some rice with two tomatoes. He
would be sleeping over at the stable for the night.
"Will the mosquitoes be biting you?" I asked
him. "No," he replied. "My blood may not
be sweet for them." This stable had few mosquitoes
although there were big stretches of grass land.
Singaporeans fogged the environment with insecticide as
often as twice a week in some condos to control virus of
the denque fever spread by mosquitoes.
"Don't you want to spend more time with your wife
instead of working 7 days a week, at seventy years of
age?" I asked. Singapore is now promoting family
bonding, another campaign to get the time pressed
parents to spend more time with the children.
"I am not married," Mr Humzah said
nonchalantly.
Nurse Ann who was helping me to remove the paraffin oil
from the stomach tube for me, arched her eye brows in
disbelief.
Mr Humzah is a pious Muslim. His religion would permit
him to have four wives, but now, he has two daughters
without being married. How could that be?
Two grown up daughters and no wife?
Nurse Ann asked how this could happen?
"Well," Mr Humzah said. "I bought two
babies from a poor Chinese family at $5,000 per
baby."
$5,000 was a lot of money forty years ago as the average
salary was probably $50 per month compared to more than
$1,000 now for a stablehand.
The daughters loved him and wanted him to retire. We
always think of retirement as freedom from the yoke of
labour. But it would kill this man who really loved
children and horses.
This stablehand was not the type who could be sent to
the pasture although he could afford to retire. I was
worried that what his daughters could not do, the
careless drivers of cars or heavy vehicles would. He
might not be fortunate enough to survive another knock
down by a heavy vehicle. His bike was smashed and he had
been hospitalised with rib fractures recently. The hit
and run driver disappeared. At least he was well now and
the horses had a caring stablehand to look after them
well.
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