Image via Dhivya Dhyana
About two weeks ago, a video titled ‘Chronicles of a Frustrated Doctor’ made the rounds on social media. The 10-minute clip shows a young Malaysian doctor, who’s currently attending to Covid-19 patients at a government hospital, expressing her disappointment with the rising number of infections and describing the exhaustion faced by our frontliners now.
The face behind the viral video is Dhivya Dhyana, who’s one of the unsung heroes in the DIGIyin Saathanai Hero-kkal campaign.
From a young age, Dhivya knew that she wanted to choose a career path that would be rewarding and could help her become an asset to society. Her mother is a member of Rotary International, a non-political and non-religious organisation that brings together business and professional people to provide humanitarian service, as well as to advance goodwill and peace around the world.
Thanks to her mother’s involvement in community service, Dhivya and her siblings would tag along to help in different activities. She also started volunteering in an interfaith NGO, Sathya Sai International Organisation (SSIO) Malaysia, early in life and was exposed to many social issues within the community, such as poor healthcare.
Following her life passion, Dhivya is currently working in the general medicine department at a local government hospital. However, due to the ongoing pandemic, there has been a major shift in her day-to-day work as most doctors have now been deployed to Covid-19 wards.
“We have been rotating in and out of the Covid-19 pool for many months now. Currently, I’m working a 12-hour shift, 5 to 6 days a week,” she shared.
Her current work mostly consists of tending to Covid-19 patients from their admission right up to their discharge, including noting down their medical history, prescribing medications, taking blood for investigation, supplying oxygen based on necessity, attending to in-ward emergencies like collapse, poor oxygen saturation, and also referring severe cases to the anaesthesiologist for ventilation or intubation.
And this is all done while wearing PPE suits all day long! That’s just the daily medical work. During the pandemic, Dhivya and her colleagues have extended their work to include simpler things, like encouraging patients who need the extra words of encouragement, helping them to fix their phones or set up video calls with their family members, feeding bedridden patients water, holding their hands through their anxiety attacks, or simply sitting next to the patient so they feel like they have somebody with them.
In case you weren’t aware, Covid-19 wards are in isolation. No visitors are allowed to see any patient, so patients are on their own most of the time.
Despite the seemingly never-ending pandemic, Dhivya shared a story that restored her faith. She recently encountered a very ill Covid-19 positive patient who was initially admitted in Category 3 (doesn’t require oxygen). His condition quickly deteriorated to a severe Category 5 case of pneumonia and almost required intubation.
“There were days he used to ask me, ‘Doctor, please tell me the truth. I'm going to die, right? Tell me, I can take it.’ On other days he would say, ‘I'm scared. If I die then who will take care of my children?’,’ the 30-year-old shared.
During her shifts, Dhivya would take the time to talk to him and explain his condition, but he became more fearful as his condition worsened. She and her colleagues continued to remind him that he needed to fight for his children’s sake. Every day, he would be on the brink of requiring intubation, but he would be able to come out of it. Finally, after fighting for 2 whole weeks, the patient was discharged.
“Seeing him being wheeled out of the ward brought tears to our eyes. We rejoice every time a severe Covid-19 patient gets to go home. This just reminds us that not every day is bad,” she said.
When Dhivya first found out that her video about Covid-19 conditions in the hospitals started gaining a lot of attention, it scared her because she realised how powerful social media can be.
Besides working full-time in the medical field, she has also participated in many beauty pageants in the past, including the 2016 Miss Universe Malaysia competition. This experience taught her to always be careful with social media.
“Regardless, I am humbled that the video reached so many people and was shared by so many influencers. I received so many heartwarming messages which I shared with many of my colleagues. During a time of difficulty, it is comforting to receive such positive words from our people,” Dhivya said.
Speaking of Dhivya’s pageant experience, she actually competed in Miss Universe Malaysia while doing her final year in medical school! She discovered her own resilience after persevering through that year juggling pageantry and studies.
“I learned that I could push myself through anything if I wanted to, and that I could bounce back from any difficult situation and find a way to overcome it.”
She spends most of her free time attached to NGOs focusing on various projects related to women empowerment, health and mental health. Over the years, she’s been involved in conducting educational and empowerment camps for women and children who fall under the B40 category across Malaysia. She’s also helped run free medical camps and health screenings for the underprivileged both domestically and internationally, namely in India, Nepal and Vietnam.
Moving forward, Dhivya hopes to focus on improving our primary healthcare by placing more importance in health promotion and disease prevention in order to reduce hospital admissions.
“More schools and colleges should include health promotion in their curriculum and that way, we can create more health awareness. And through this, we can achieve better health outcomes in our society,” she expressed.
We truly admire and respect everything that our Malaysian frontliners like Dhivya have done and continue to do for the country. Let’s continue to support them in every way possible!
As part of the DIGIyin Saathanai Hero-kkal campaign, we’re constantly looking to share stories of Malaysian ‘superheroes’ that live amongst us.
If you know a hero or if you have an inspirational story about overcoming challenges, we’d love to hear from you. Just submit your story at RAAGA’s website or click the image above.