Of A Maid & An Asthma Attack

My maid Aton who has been taking care of my Haziq and my Husna will be leaving soon. We’ve extended her visa for another month so that Aton could teach the new maid for at least a month before she leaves us for good.

However, the new maid somehow arrived 2 weeks late, which was last Tuesday. She was 25, married with one kid. Nani came from a very poor family – money was the reason why she came to work here. 4D3N on a ship from Tanjung Priok to Tanjung Pinang. 3 hours on a boat from Tanjung Pinang to JB. And another 4-5 hours on a bus from JB to Shah Alam, where we picked her up on Tuesday. She arrived looking tired, but happy to start working.

On Wednesday when we arrived home from work, we saw that she looked kinda weird. I asked Aton and Tina (my other maid who comes from a rich family – my subject in my upcoming post..hehe) what was wrong with her. They said they didn’t know, but Aton said Nani was ok in my Haziq & my Husna’s school that day. In fact the teacher texted me earlier that Nani was eager to learn new things and given time, she’d be a better helper than Aton.

Dear Hubby asked her to sit on the carpet in the living room. She obviously had difficulties in breathing and she was gasping for air. I asked her whether she was ok, she managed to say “asma”. Suddenly her body then came to a curve, it was like she was hunching over. Since I’ve never seen an asthma attack before, I didn’t know that those were danger signs. Dear Hubby quickly said that he’d bring her to the nearby clinic to find out what was wrong with her. Tina helped her to the car, with great effort since by this time, Nani already had trouble walking.

She was lucky to be brought to the clinic juz in the nick of time. “Or it might be fatal”, the doc said. Doc also told Dear Hubby that Nani was a liability to keep since she has acute asthma, gastritis and Tick Typhus (ohmy ..I have no idea what this is). Apparently Nani accidentally left her medications in Tanjung Pinang and by the time she realized, she was already on her way to JB.

As much as I wanted to give her a chance to work with me, I had to think about my Haziq and my Husna. Since my Haziq himself is on Epilim 200, and taking care of both my special ones requires swimming twice a week, air-conditioned rooms with carpets etc etc (and she said she couldn’t sleep in air-conditioned room), I juz have to let her go.

Lucky that she was on JP Visa (usually to apply for a working visa within a month), so she was sent back to the agent in Kluang yesterday. She cried while salam-ing me. Somehow I wonder how in the world did she pass her medical tests prior to coming here?

But whatever it is, I believe it was a blessing in disguise. Allah loves us more. Perhaps there will be unfortunate incidents if she were to work with us. Only Allah knows. And Allah knows best.

Now I’m playing the waiting-for-the-maid game again.
Hopefully this time I'll win :)