Reflection Session 0

Reflection Session 0

The very first time.

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This was our second meeting at HCA, but the first time that we were able to meet the patients over there! All the group members were present today, except for Samuel, who had SYF training at Singapore Poly.

Before going in to actually interact with the patients face to face, we met up with Valiant for a quick talk, to update us on what had been happening and the rough guidelines for the programme today, he brought us in!

I was rather uncomfortable at that time when we first met with the elderly people, as I felt that I was emotionally far apart from them at that time, and it all felt very formal at first. I didn’t want to strain to force a good impression or anything like that. So after introductions from all five of us, Andrew agreed to sing a song for the patients! Andrew was the only one amoung us who had prepared an actual speech, but we didn’t get the opportunity to voice our speeches. I suppose it was a completely new situation for most, if not all of us.

After that, we joined in the activity that was happening then, which was passing a ball with questions on top around and answering them when the music stopped. I was sitting beside a woman whom as I later discovered, had dementia. Valiant said that she was reliving the memories from when she was 40, and kept crying for someone. She wanted to hold our hands too.  I felt very helpless at that time, as there was seemingly nothing that I could do to “reach” her, and I didn’t seem to be able to communicate. I also now have a reason to work on my Chinese, as its really hard to speak in broken Chinese to the patients. Valiant also introduced me to an Indian man over there, who was really cheerful and would greet all the other patients there. He even jokingly told me that I might not see him next week. This really struck me, and I still wonder how he perceives death to be like.

- Joseph Hoon

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First Impressions

Today we had our first interaction with the elderly at HCA. The outcome was, definitely unexpected. Firstly, our planned icebreaker activities were not conducted due to time constraints. I was not very confident that our icebreaker activities were able to engage them as we were quite unprepared to conduct them, having rushed them out on Wednesday. Instead, we had to introduce ourselves and participate in the activities organised by HCA, while at the same time getting to know the elderly better. Nevertheless, it was an eye-opening experience. This was the second time I walked into a hospice; previously my impression was that a hospice is a very dark, gloomy place, where despondent people reside and languish, watching TV and waiting for the end to come. This was influenced to a great extent by my visit to a hospice in Ipoh, Malaysia, where the place was dilapidated and dark, where the elderly were literally in the clutches of death. They weren’t doing anything at all, just sitting there and staring blankly at the ceiling. That was definitely not a good way or place to live your last days at. To my amazement, HCA was the complete opposite of the hospice in Ipoh. It was a modern facility, the elderly were well cared for and every one of them seemed to be contented at that very moment when I saw them. For once, I was very pleased to be proved wrong. I guess that we should work towards dispelling this sort of negative misconceptions others might have about HCA and hospices as part of our project focus. Together, we can make the world a better place to live in! 

- Juefei

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This was the first time that we visited the charges in HCA, minus Samuel, since he had some SYF compulsory training thingy. Anyway, the entire thing went much more smoothly than I was expecting. For one, the charges were far friendlier than I was initially expecting them to be. They were very welcoming of us. We were introduced to them halfway through some ‘fishing’ game.

Anyway, we discussed a few things with Valiant before we were formally introduced. Mainly, he just briefed us on fitting in with the program that the HCA staff were already running, so that we could get a better glimpse of how we should organize our future activities. Then he brought us in, despite all of us feeling rather apprehensive, and got one of the assistants in charge, Jo, to stop the activity and introduce us. The charges had apparently been informed of our showing up beforehand, as none of them looked surprised to see us there.

I was not very comfortable about going first, since I had prepared my self-introduction speech only that morning. Not that I was to blame; I had spent until 1am that morning preparing 6 large paper tangrams from scratch, for our activity, which we postponed until further notice. Brilliant life I lead. Not to complain (much) but I felt like I had wasted 4 straight hours of much needed sleep.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I was not very comfortable about introducing myself first, but I suppose it was the best way to go about it, as everyone else turned out to be far more eloquent than me, and were able to make impromptu speeches about how excited they were about working with HCA and befriending all the elderly there. As for me, my speech was limited to my name, age and school… I could probably have brought my prepared speech in, but I felt a tad awkward about reading off a sizable piece of paper in front of the charges, while the rest of my group brought nothing of that sort in.

The best/worst part of the intro was when they found out that I was in choir. Just after we finished our self-introductions, Jo suggested that we perform an impromptu song item to break the ice. I immediately regretted telling my group mates that I was from choir, since I was volunteered immediately for a solo performance. Although I did have the option of dragging in the rest of the group to sing with me, I chose not to. I’m too nice. Besides, I had more than just a nagging suspicion that my group mates couldn’t sing. Anyway, I performed the chorus of Bruno Mars’ “Just the way you are” since I couldn’t think of any Chinese songs that I actually knew. I guess only the English-speaking ones appreciated the lyrics. Did I mention that our intro had to be bilingual to accommodate the mandarin-only speaking patients?

The next activity was ‘Pass-the-question-covered-ball-around-until-the-music-stops’. As the name suggests, if you had the ball when the music stopped, you were supposed to pick a random number. There were numerous questions on the ball, each designated a number. You simply needed to answer the question that was related to your choice number. I specifically recall one of the Chinese ladies sitting beside Leon get the question: “If you could go on a holiday to anywhere in the world, where would you go?” She boisterously exclaimed, “Australia! My husband is there. Australia is a beautiful place.” A very simple, but very heart-wrenching answer.

The activity was stopped for a birthday celebration. Three of the charges’ birthdays were rather close to that date, hence the celebration and cake. I was volunteered again to sing a bilingual birthday song. Honestly, I was getting used to the idea by then, so I figured that I should prepare a few songs from then on, just in case. Anyway, after the song, the charges went to their tables for a tea-break. Basically, cake. I was asked to help one of the charges to (but thankfully not into) the toilet. Apparently she had just undergone some surgery or treatment, which would explain her beanie and unsteady walk. I was standing outside the toilet, waiting to help her to her seat (as she requested) when one of the nurses asked me to help transport some bags of food to the area in front of the TV. Since I had to wait for the lady in the loo, I got Joseph and Leon to substitute me.

After the charge came out of the toilet, and got to her seat, I went to do my share of the transporting food bags. There was a rather dismal, bed-ridden old lady quite near where we had put the bags. As we were on our way back to where the charges were eating, she reached out her hand towards me. At first I thought she wanted to shake my hand or something, since most of the charges did that when we introduced ourselves. So I held out my hand, which she held on to quite tightly. I then thought that she wanted to sit up, so when she held out her other hand, I offered mine in return. However, once she hand both my hands, she pulled herself upright and started mumbling something that I couldn’t quite make out. I suspect that it was dialect, since it sounded somewhat like Chinese. I guess it was either a toilet request, a thank you or something else entirely. Even Valiant couldn’t figure out what she wanted. So I stood there for the better part of 3 minutes, with my hands crossed in front of me, uncomfortably letting this poor old woman hold on to my hands while trying, in vain, to communicate. I honestly wished that I could have helped get her whatever it was that she wanted or needed. Fortunately, one of the nurses relieved me of the awkward situation, but I nonetheless felt quite unnerved by the entire situation. Subsequently, I discovered that she was one of the Dover Hospice patients. She had less than 3 months left to live.

I was brutally reminded that all the hospice patients were all suffering from some chronic illness when I observed their eating. It was an innocent question, really. I simply asked, “Why do some of the patients have cake, while some have only sandwiches?” The nurse’s answer was all of four words. “Because they have diabetes.” I was immediately taken aback by the truth of her statement.

After the tea-break, the patients had a few minutes to talk with each other and us before they had to leave. One of the Indian patients struck up a conversation with me after I wished him a happy birthday. (He was one of the patients whose birthday we had celebrated.) He was just about the chattiest person I met that day. Despite that fact that I was a complete stranger to him, he just kept talking about how he ended up at HCA, what his life had been like, and eve mentioned that he was 62 that year, although he really looks more like he was in his 50s. He was so chatty that when Joseph stopped by and I went to interact with the lonelier charges, he just kept going as if nothing had happened. Joseph essentially got his life story in five minutes.

We had a debriefing after the charges left. The 3 of us, minus a Juefei following one of the buses to help out, discussed with Valiant how things went and how we were to go about doing things the next time we came. We were also informed that a school is coming next week for CIP. Dunman Secondary, if I’m not mistaken. Valiant was quite pleased with how things had turned out, and I agree entirely with him. Of course, I’m personally quite worried about next week, since I have no idea how it will turn out. All I can do is hope.

-Andrew Yap

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Before going to HCA for our first meeting with our charges, we had already prepared a few activities as icebreakers to introduce ourselves to them, as well as preparing a short introductory speech. WE had orignally planned for games such as Samuel’s “Name Game”, Blind Man’s Bluff and even prepared a few sets of tangrams for the charges. However, we were told by our external mentor Valiant, that he would prefer us to simply join in with the activities that our charges were having then.

So, with our plans effectively trashed, we went to meet them with empty hands. To be honest, I felt a little scared and awkward when we walked into the activity room. Thankfully, one of the helpers there, Jo, helped us to introduce ourselves. That really eased the tension in me. Then, it suddenly dawned on me that these people wouldn’t eat me up, and I started to relax. Credit to Andrew, he even had the courage to give a performance of the chorus of Bruno Mars’ “ Just The Way You Are”.

After Andrew’s short performance, we joined in a game which allowed several of the charges to introduce themselves, which I felt was really helpful in understanding several of our charges. During this game, I noticed a lady seating in the corner, whom I went to seat beside. She was rather outspoken, and I easily started a conversation with her. Due to Valiant’s advice, to make friends with the charges and not go straight into accomplishing our project agenda, we did not talk about many important things, but instead just making some small talk.

However, the only good time to converse would be when they were having their snack, which made up a rather large part of the time of our visit there. I felt awkward conversing then as it felt wrong to interrupt them while they were eating. It was sometimes quite hard to pick out the words she said during our conversation, despite being very close to her. Despite these difficulties, I felt that it was a very meaningful first trip to the hospice. I could sense that though many of them were reaching the end of their lives, the environment in the hospice was not dark and gloomy, but rather bright and vibrant, which could be seen through the attitudes of those patients. Many of them were responsive and enthusiastic towards the activities, and none of them appeared sad or sulked in a corner. After comparing this to our daily lives when we get sad and become “emo”, our problems were really nothing compared to the imminent death that our charges was about to face.

After that visit, I was really enlightened and encouraged by the enthusiasm that our charges displayed. I also looked forward to our future visits as I recognised that there was a lot to learn from our charges, and I would be better off seizing this golden oppurtunity.

-Leon Chin

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