Born in Taiwan but left when I was 8y.o., lived in 5 different countries by 18y.o., Christian, full-time General Practitioner in Eastwood! Loves travelling&adventures. Master of Divinity graduate.
台灣出生，八歲出國，十八歲時已經長期居住過五個國家，基督徒，道學碩士，在澳洲依士活作全職家醫科醫生，喜歡旅遊探險。
Got my second dose Pfizer. This time, my left arm actually had a slight
ache as soon as the injection went in. The arm was a bit sore for 3 days. I felt
tired but had no fevers. There was an area of skin on my left back which felt
numb, but I couldn’t see any skin lesions, and this symptom continued for a few
weeks. I actually had less side effects with the second dose when compared with
the first dose.
31 August, 2021
Now that the Pfizer rollout is open for 16-39y.o., we no longer have to
check whether people fit the eligibility criteria so strictly, and have allowed
people aged 16-59y.o. to book the Pfizer
vaccine appointments with our online booking system themselves! Finally, our
clinic phone is no longer clogged up!
3 September, 2021
Received news that my grandpa suddenly passed away in Taiwan. Under “normal”
circumstances, I would have flown back to Taiwan. However, with the COVID
pandemic plus my pregnancy, I won’t be able to fly back. After all, even within
Australia, many people were not allowed to go interstate to attend their
relatives’ funerals.
7 September, 2021
Wedding anniversary. My husband was trying to use the COVID pandemic as
an excuse not to do anything for the anniversary. He eventually went out and
bought a nice lobster dinner from Mr Stone Pot after seeing how unimpressed I
was.
8 September, 2021
Even though the new COVID cases per day in NSW is not dropping (averaging
around 1200-1500 new cases/day for the last few days), the state will start
opening up on 18 October! And experts are predicting that October will be the “worst
time” for intensive care units. Not exactly a pleasant thing for a pregnant
woman with a due date in mid-October to hear.
I don’t know why some people are putting so much faith in the COVID vaccines, seeing it as the solution to everything.
It’s just a desperate band-aid measure where we just hope we’re less likely to
be hospitalised if we catch the illness, but people can still catch the
illness. Just look at the highly vaccinated countries, the numbers are still
increasing, which means the virus will have the opportunity to mutate into
something worse! And Revelations do say that things will be turning worse
before Jesus’ second coming.
Meanwhile, New Zealand seems successful in suppressing their recent Delta
outbreak. And Taiwan seems to be entering into a Delta outbreak.
9 September, 2021
The weather’s been good lately! Just recording the bump before the baby
pops out! Who would have known, that approximately two years after signing the marriage covenant, that I would be 15kg heavier, have a little human
rolling around inside my abdomen, wear a face mask every day, consult with
patients via the telephone every day, cut my own hair with surgical scissors,
become a rookie farmer using the Woolies Discovery Garden seedling kit, and have
a husband who's turned into a crazy curly beard caveman due to him working from
home for the last 1.5years!
The next two days after the Pfizer was uneventful. Had low grade fever,
mild fullness of the head and fatigue, but was still able to work normally.
Still did not get arm pain.
28 July, 2021
Sent a warning to an old friend who works in a Campsie GP clinic that’s
charging around $250 for Pfizer shots that they could get into trouble because
there is an official government information page saying no one should be paying
for their COVID vaccines, even non-Medicare card holders.
Then saw news about their clinic in the headlines right after sending
the message! Around 100 people flooded the clinic’s google review and dragged
the clinic to a 1 star rating! I guess if they had charge non-Medicare holders
the normal consult fees of $70-90, they probably would have passed under the
radar. Oh well.
A Youtuber gave the analysis that there is one group of people who may
be willing to pay so much for vaccines: illegal migrants. These people want to
be invisible and do not want to leave a mark in any government-related agencies,
ie. a Commonwealth Vaccine Clinic. And yet, they are afraid of catching COVID
and want to be vaccinated. So they might fish out the $250 in order to be
vaccinated.
2 August, 2021
Monday is always a busy day for the clinic. Today, there is an
overwhelming number of people enquiring about the Pfizer vaccines, including
people who are not regular patients of our clinic. Furthermore, the rollout is
restricted to people between 40-59 years of age, though there are a few
exceptions for people in other age groups. So lots of people are being placed
into telephone consultations with doctors to assess eligibility, as we don’t
want ineligible people to book themselves in for the vaccination. However, I
found that nearly all the 30 or so people booked in for telephone consultations
today are enquiring about Pfizer. A few have kindly provided a health summary
to us from their GPs, but most haven’t, so I had to spend quite a fair bit of
time taking their histories and ask them to send us a health summary and their
most recent blood test so we can book them in for the actual vaccination.
There are also some patients who are ineligible for Pfizer but keep
trying to debate, thinking that through debating they might be able to change
their eligibility status. This type of consultation is particularly tiring and
really just feels like an argument. Some people even bring GP letters where the
GP “recommends” Pfizer without listing any contraindications to AstraZeneca
which are:
·a history of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis
·a history of heparin-induced thrombocytopenia
·a history of splanchnic vein thrombosis
·anti-phospholipid syndrome with thrombosis
·Anaphylaxis to a previous dose of COVID-19
Vaccine AstraZeneca
·Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia after the first
dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca
·Other serious adverse events attributed to the
first dose of COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca (these events should be reported to
the local Public Health Unit)
If a person is ineligible, the person is ineligible, and yet I have to
be careful not to sound rude when I tell them they simply cannot get the Pfizer
and will have to consider AstraZeneca if they are keen to get vaccinated soon.
It is also very straining for my eyes as I book eligible people into the
appointment slots as there are so many grids in the appointment book that I had
to be careful to not make any mistakes when I book patients into the slots.
6 August, 2021
The new case numbers continue to rise, with 291 new cases today. I
guess getting vaccinated was the right decision. The number of people enquiring
about Pfizer vaccines remain high, although not as high as on Monday. At least
I am getting some consultations which are not about the Pfizer vaccine. The
whole practice is getting quite sick of this, and one of our principal doctors
tries to encourage us about the good works we’re doing to help the community as
a COVID vaccination clinic. It is very important we stick strictly to the rules
and firmly reject people who are ineligible for Pfizer, because if we do the
wrong thing, we may be removed from the vaccine rollout program like that Campsie
clinic. We have given 156 doses of Pfizer on the first weekend began administering
the vaccines, and continued to administer hundreds of COVID vaccines to people
each week.
13 August, 2021
Developed a mystery illness. Woke with headache on Sunday 8 August, and
had diarrhoea since that evening. This unusual headache actually kept me awake
during most of the night and did not subside until Monday afternoon.
The diarrhoea continued and became acutely worse on Wednesday evening
where I was going to the toilet every 10minutes and sitting on the toilet for
5minutes each time, with severe anal pain, and also feeling bad bladder
pressure and frequency. It continued throughout the whole night so I couldn't
sleep and was worried about 1) listeria infection which can give a 50% fetus
mortality rate, and 2) premature labour triggered by gastro, as I never gave
birth before and couldn't tell whether the cramps I was having was gut spasms
or uterine irritability contractions or premature labour contractions.
So I took Amoxicillin because I was worried about listeria, and ended
up going to the North Shore Private birthing suite for CTG monitoring at 4am.
Baby was fine, but I continued to have the diarrhoea. However, I was able to
eat and appeared well, so the obstetrician wasn't too worried and I came home
at 8am. However, I couldn't work that day because 1) the hospital did a COVID
test on me as a precaution, and 2) I was still going to the toilet once every
10-20 minutes. Then at noon I finally had 1 hour of sleep as the diarrhoea
became better. Diarrhoea happened 1 hourly until the evening, and less frequent
on Thursday night so I returned to work today.
Strangely, the COVID test, stool test and urine test were all negative,
with no infectious agents found. No one around me is sick, and my husband ate
pretty much the same things as I did. My husband is now trying to blame the
Pfizer, even though this mystery illness happened two weeks after my first dose
Pfizer, which is probably a bit too long to be put down to the vaccine?
However, the lady I saw in April developed the bleed in her brain after her
second dose of Pfizer, so who knows? But I guess getting the diarrhoea illness
is still better than actually catching COVID.
Anyway, one in four eligible Australians are now fully vaccinated for
COVID 19.
If there isn’t enough bad news worldwide already, today the Taliban has
taken control over Afghanistan. Can only continue to intercede for the nations.
18 August, 2021
My husband still hasn’t cut his beard. It has grown so long that he
looks like the Taliban... and he has developed a new habit of pulling his beard
up and placing it into his mouth to chew on it.
The new case numbers have jumped straight from the 452 yesterday to 633
today… without even going through the 500s… 1 case two months ago to 633 now! Hope
it doesn’t start going exponential! However, I personally think sooner or later
this thing is just going to spread everywhere and it's just gonna be an
affliction that the whole humanity has to endure. People will probably end up
needing to get vaccinated every year. But I think lockdown does help buy some
time, so that the unvaccinated population is not hit by COVID infections all at
once.
I’ve heard an anti-lockdown person argue that argue that “it’s mostly the
old people dying and old people are the ones who usually use up the health
resources and are unproductive to the community, and having them die sooner actually
saves the country money.” However I think this argument is ridiculous. Not only
is this argument cruel/callous, but if you think about it, lots of young people
will also catch the illness too if an uncontrolled sudden outbreak hits a large
number of unvaccinated people. COVID infections have many long term consequences,
and young unvaccinated people who catch it might become unproductive in the
long run due to long term health issues. This will actually cost the country
more money.
Meanwhile, Delta’s entered into NZ community now. Don’t know if my mom
will end up having to do hotel quarantine in late September when she comes to
visit me from NZ.
21 August, 2021
The new case numbers have jumped straight from the 644 yesterday to 825
today! Anti-lockdown protesters in Sydney and Melbourne gone into the city to
protest again! Meanwhile my dose 2 Pfizer is being delayed to next week because
my colleagues are feeling apprehensive about giving me the vaccine and wants my
bowels to settle completely normalise before giving me the second dose.
Today, I took on the role of a “farmer” and started playing with the “Discovery
Garden” packs I got from Woolies in 2019. Might be good to just plant some veggies,
in case the pandemic gets so bad that food runs out! However, I’ve never been interested
in taking care of plants and most plants die under my hands… Hope these veggies
will survive.
Sydney has been in lockdown for nearly a month now, and today is the
highest daily total so far, 136 new cases, with 50 cases infectious in the
community, which is more infected people out in the community than ever before.
Looks like there are lots of idiots still roaming around in the community. Furthermore,
NSW Health’s ongoing sewage surveillance program has detected fragments of the
virus that causes COVID-19 at sewage treatment plants at West Lindfield. It is
the first ever detection at the West Lindfield sewage network, which serves the
areas where I live and work. Furthermore, medical practices and even COVID
vaccination centres have had cases of people of COVID coming in and getting
turned into hot spots. So I believe I do have a much higher chance of exposure
to COVID than the rest of the population since I work in a medical practice
that is also a COVID vaccination centre which has just given out 156 vaccines last weekend!
My obstetrician is inclining towards me having the vaccine this time,
saying he doesn’t think it will be harmful and is comfortable with me having
it. He says if there is no signs of the numbers going down in the next 1-2
weeks then I should really have it. He also mentions that there are many third
trimester women who are sitting on the fence about this, because 32 weeks is when a baby
can be delivered relatively safely if one really does catch COVID and they had
to deliver the baby prematurely.
Meanwhile, further changes have been made with the national COVID vaccination
guidelines today. Pfizer has been approved for 12-15 year-olds, and all pregnant
women have been shifted into the category 1b of the rollout, meaning all
pregnant women can choose to get vaccinated now.
The Australia NZ travel bubble is now suspended for two months. Meanwhile,
there is news saying NSW will not get any extra Pfizer supply so second doses
of Pfizer could be delayed in NSW. This news is what tipped me over towards
having the vaccine. Seriously, I don’t want to end up not being able to get the
vaccine at a time when I may really need it.
Meanwhile, my husband went on a nonstop tirade at 2am about not wanting
me to have the vaccine because he thinks the risk of catching COVID is too low
to justify accepting the risk of the unknown long term effects of Pfizer and
refused to shut up until things turned very ugly. I ended up not getting any
sleep and going for the vaccine in a very angry and suboptimal state.
24 July, 2021
Received my Pfizer dose 1 at my clinic at 1:18pm. Stayed in the clinic
for 20 minutes post vaccine, nothing happened, not even any soreness at the
injection site!
Meanwhile, cases continue to rise, with 163 new cases, and thousands of
idiots are out in the Sydney CBD protesting about the lockdown today. We’ve
only just managed to not get an exponential increase in new case numbers, but
after this protest, who knows.
Our clinic has decided to transition all patients to telephone
consultations from 30 June until when the lockdown finishes. I’m very glad
about this decision. After all, with patients who come in, when you ask them
about whether they’ve got cold-like symptoms, you never know whether they’re
tell the truth about their symptoms. Sometimes we get people who were
previously advised to get a COVID test trying to come back without doing the
test, saying their symptoms have resolved already so don’t think they need to
do the test. Occasionally we even have to turn away people who try to get a
face to face consult before their COVID results are out. Anyway, it does feel
risky seeing patients face to face when the Delta variant is running wild in
Sydney!
30 June, 2021
Someone posted a photo of him having the COVID vaccine at the Sydney
Olympic Park. He booked 8:15am and the cue was very very long! There’s no
social distancing, and he waited 40minutes before getting his shot! This makes
me wonder whether people can catch COVID just in the process of lining up in a
long cue like this. Could the reason why the mortality rate post-vaccination in
Taiwan is so high be because people already caught COVID when they were lining
up to get the vaccine?
3 July, 2021
Symptoms of nasal congestion, sore throat and voice change in the
evening. This is the first time I’ve ever had cold-like symptoms, since the
pandemic started. Guess a trip to a COVID drive-through testing centre is
inevitable!
4 July, 2021
First time ever to get COVID-tested since the pandemic began! Woke
early and went early to the 95 Epping Road Macquarie Park drive-through testing
centre, as I don’t want to wait in a long cue or get any cross-contamination as
the collectors test more people. At 7:40 am, I was the only car there. However,
as soon as my engine is off, two or three cars came up behind me. Anyway, the swabbing
process is very quick and I was out of there in approximately three minutes.
5 July 2021
Fortunately the COVID test was negative. In fact, the respiratory
viruses swab was negative too. I wonder if I am having vasomotor rhinitis? It’s
been extremely old in Sydney lately, sometimes down to 3oC!
8 July, 2021
Today, the NSW COVID numbers is the highest it’s ever been since the
Sydney Delta variant outbreak! 38 new locally acquired cases! The lockdown will
be extended! Just as I am starting to feel very tempted to get the Pfizer
vaccine, suddenly came a young man who became unwell with chest pains after
having Pfizer. Ran an ECG and sent him straight off to the ED, because the ECG
showed ST changes suggestive of myocarditis/pericarditis.
The last time I felt particularly tempted to have the Pfizer was in late
April, when GPs still couldn’t get the Pfizer vaccine, and our primary health
network suddenly emailed us saying a limited number of appointments had become
available at Westmead for GPs in our network to have the Pfizer vaccine.
Suddenly, a middle aged health worker who suffered a small bleed in her brain
after her Pfizer vaccine came in for review. She had no past medical history
whatsoever before the shot. After getting the vaccine she felt unwell, her
blood pressure shot up through the roof, and she was subsequently found to have
a small bleed in her brain!!
About a week ago I had asked my obstetrician what he thinks about the
COVID vaccine in pregnancy, especially now that the RANZCOG and ATAGI updated
their recommendation in mid-June saying pregnant women are should be routinely
offered Pfizer mRNA vaccine at any stage of pregnancy. His reply was like what
I expected: he could not give a yes or no answer. He mentioned that “theoretically
speaking” the mRNA vaccine shouldn’t do harm. However, everything needs to be
around for at least ten years or so before we really know what’s going on, and
mRNA is a new technology. The risk in Sydney is not that high at the moment but
my occupation puts me at a higher risk than the rest of the population. So
let’s see how things develop over the next few weeks.
Now, I’m not a fan of “theoretically speaking.” I am someone who take
into account “lived experiences” seriously. And my “lived experience” is that
I’ve personally seen two people with serious complications from Pfizer, but no
one from AstraZeneca so far, despite our clinic having first hand experience as
a vaccination centre of the AstraZeneca vaccine since April this year.
Soon, more data will be on hand as our clinic give out the Pfizer vaccine to
our regular patients from mid-July onwards.
Anyways, if I wasn’t pregnant I would have gotten my COVID vaccines
already. Currently I do not know what will happen to the children of pregnant
women who received the mRNA vaccine during pregnancy 5 years or 10 years from
now. But if there is no clear and consistent downward trend to this Sydney
outbreak within the next two weeks, I might just get the vaccine.
11 July, 2021
New COVID cases continues to rise every single day! 77 new locally
acquired cases today! This morning, the RACGP sent a mass message to all its
members urging GPs 1) to shorten the dosing interval of the AZ dose to 6 weeks,
2) to use telehealth or wear full PPE, and 3) to check that all GP staff have
had a COVID vaccine.
As usual, our clinic was way ahead of the government/ Royal Colleges
when it comes to COVID response. We had already been doing all of these since
29June! And remember how the government was slow to recommend masks last year?
Staff in our clinic have been wearing masks every day since 28 Jan 2020!
Spent the rest of the day joining the annual Taiwan Association of
Family Medicine online conference! Learnt some useful information.
12 July, 2021
Today’s new locally acquired cases are in 3 digits: 112! I’m really
going to have to do telephone consultations only until the current outbreak is
over!
Our clinic’s landline phone has been overwhelmed by people calling in
about the Pfizer vaccine since the beginning of this month, but today it is
totally non-stop! I couldn’t even use the clinic landline to do telephone
consults and had to use my own mobile phone! In fact, people experienced so
much trouble with the landline that they started trying to flood into our
clinic reception to try and book their appointments!
14 July, 2021
The newly locally acquired cases are in 2 digits the last two days: 89
and 97. Lockdown is now extended until 30 July. I actually feel safer during
lockdown, because once lockdown is lifted, I don’t know if I can keep doing
telephone consults, and the flow of people will become more complicated again. If
I am to get vaccinated in time for the opening up, I probably need to do so
next week when I reach week 28, when the baby might be strong enough to endure
the insult if I were to get sick from the vaccine. My mom was well after both
doses of Pfizer, hope I’ve inherited the same response as her. Will ask my
obstetrician again next week when I see him.
Meanwhile, telehealth is not without its troubles. As our landlines are
being clogged up by calls about Pfizer, people who actually want to book phone
consultations probably have difficulty doing that. Some patients are getting
more agitated and aggressive due to frustrations about being unable to get
through to our phone line and turn up at the reception quite angry. Furthermore,
phone consultations take a longer time than the normal face to face
consultations for me, because I can’t see the patient in 3D which means I don’t
have the opportunity to do spot diagnosis, so I have to ask more questions, and
it takes time to print and scan documents and email it back to patients etc. Medicare
does not allow us to bill long consultations for phone consultations even if we
go beyond 19 minutes. You earn more with face to face because you get a
combination of normal length consultations and long consultations each day. It’s
much easier to accidentally go beyond 19 minutes from face to face
consultations because people have a greater tendency to go overtime face to
face, but I can often catch up when because there are also some simple face to
face patients who take up very little time.
15 July, 2021
News article: A nurse at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital has tested positive
for Covid-19, despite being fully vaccinated and wearing full protective
equipment.
So don’t go around thinking you’re invincible once you’ve been
vaccinated. I think vaccines are only a short-term fix. In fact, I am quite
concerned that if people don’t continue to be careful after getting vaccinated,
they can potentially catch the COVID but remain asymptomatic and keep spreading
it to other people, which gives the virus more opportunity to mutate into
something even more virulent in the long term.
16 July, 2021
The mystery box have finally arrived in our clinic at noon today. Why
do I feel like this is the calm before the storm?
It’s 2021 and the COVID pandemic hasn’t ended. In fact, it’s getting
worse globally now with the Delta variant. Life in Sydney had been pretty
normal for us from August 2020 until two days ago. There was a short lockdown last
December in the Northern beaches but that did not really affect us. However, my
husband is getting so used to working from home that he no longer shaves.
Nowadays his moustache is dropping into his mouth when he speaks and he has to
spit it out. His beard is 4cm, longer than anyone of Chinese ethnicity I’ve
ever seen! He looks like a Ming Dynasty man! If this working from home thing continues for
him, I wonder if he will accidentally choke on his moustache one day?
Now Greater Sydney is in lockdown for two weeks starting from 6pm
yesterday, because of the infiltration of the Delta variant, and the Australia-New
Zealand travel bubble has been suspended. The infiltration occurred on 17 June,
when a limousine driver got infected. Then, pretty soon, from a CCTV footage at
the Bondi Westfield, we saw how the virus spread from one person to another in
a two second encounter as two people walked past each other 60cm apart without
masks. New cases increased by 2 everyday until 21 June, and by then I was
already getting pretty nervous, as I am working in a high risk setting as a GP,
pregnant and had not been vaccinated against COVID yet. And by then, I already had
a feeling that lockdown would be inevitable and already started topping up on
the food supply from the supermarket before people made their last minute
rushes, and ordered 25 boxes of My Muscle Chef ready-made meals. But I don’t
understand people’s obsession about the toilet papers – that’s definitely not on
the top of our shopping list. Then the daily case numbers started increasing
rapidly: 5, 10, 18, 11, 29, 30.
The situation in Taiwan, my home country, is not good either. Community
outbreak had already gotten out of hand by May, and my grandpa who has dementia
got kicked out of the motel he was staying in. Luckily, the relatives found
social housing for him, but his dementia deteriorated rapidly. Now Delta is in
the community as well. Unfortunately the death rate in Taiwan is too high in
proportion to the number of people diagnosed, which means there are lots of
undiagnosed people around. I think they should stop mucking around and just
lockdown! The annual Taiwan Association of Family Medicine conference has been
changed into an online conference for the first time ever, which meant I could
actually join this year’s conference online and collect CPD points for my
Family Physician specialist registration in Taiwan.
I think Sydney’s lockdown had happened too late. Can only pray that
things will be good enough for reopening in two weeks’ time.
There is a prayer movement happening in Taiwan. The organisation that’s
helping with this is the College of Prayer International, and the pastor
helping Taiwan is Rev Donald Young:
