dr tan

When I was young, I was a sick kid. There were many visits to the doctor. I was hospitalized twice or thrice every year. Most of the issues involved my lungs, so I would get bronchitis and related problems like sinusitis.

before my parents found a pediatrician, I visited my mother’s general physician, of whom she had began going to since she was young. Doctor tan is in her fifties, about five to ten years older than my mother. She has a classic get up. She has a bob haircut, pale skin and she is always wearing her white doctor’s coat. Ten years passed and you can go back to her clinic and everything about her seems the same. She hasn’t changed at all, I tell my mother. My mother says she has wrinkles and she had white hair. I say she has jet black hair. My mother says doctor tan probably dyed her hair.

I stopped going to doctor tan for a period of time in my childhood because I went to a pediatrician, whose practice was in toa payoh. when it became clear that I could no longer visit her anymore (almost everyone around me was less than half my age), I went back to doctor tan and stayed with her since. she is very cautious - sometimes she would prescribe antibiotics for a slight infection. I learnt how to say no to such cases, because it wasn’t necessary and antibiotics just made me weaker.

dr tan has a whole wall of articles beside her cashier/medicine collection counter. they remained largely the same over the years. Every time I visit, I will point to the article on a cervical cancer vaccine (dated 2006) and I will tell my mother that the woman featured in the photo of the article is the daughter of the Flying Dutchman, a radio anchor from one of the English radio stations. then she would always tell me about how she refused to let my sister get the vaccine because in the early stages, there were reports of people getting cervical cancer after getting the vaccine. Years later my gp teacher would talk about the same vaccine during lessons.

for decades, dr tan only accepted payment in cash. She refused to bring in other payment methods because it would simply add on to her operating costs. She had two children in college and she had to pay for their tuition. But years later, she probably broke even. Her medical certificates, referral letters and receipts were all handwritten. She had her own stationery, which did not change in 10 years. It was the name of her practice written in green letterings, with her name and her husband’s written beside it. her medical certificates were green and the receipts yellow.

only recently did dr tan begin to accept NETS. this was a turning point, even in my life. we no longer had to walk the distance to the nearby ATM at prime supermarket to withdraw cash to pay her. She also digitised her medical certificates and receipts, and now they are all itemized.

But her patient records are still the same. My records are a few inches thick, because of my multiple visits as a child. My records would go back to the few weeks after I was born. Time passes so fast. But doctor tan has not aged one bit. She gets the sniffles every now and then when i see her, but she always recovers from it. She is always wearing her white coat and her platform shoes with her jet black bob cut hair. Her daughter is back from Australia. One of them has completed her studies. She wants to be a doctor.