Off the drip

Guarded elation today, the eighth day of my stay at the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre in Penang, where I had been re-admitted for diverticulosis.

My condition has improved after a transfusion of cryoprecipitate and fresh frozen plasma yesterday. Admittedly, there was a slight tension during the transfusion process. I had to be monitored throughout the one hour, with my temperature, pulse and blood pressure monitored at 10-minute intervals for reaction. Luckily, there was none although my temperature rose slightly above 37 Celcius.

I did not feel any visible change the whole of last night but this morning when I went for my morning ablutions, there was no visible sign of further bleeding. The doctor confirmed it when he stuck a finger up my you-know-where.

He then ordered me to be put on a soft diet while still putting me under observation. He has also said that the intravenous drip line would be removed and all my medication would be changed to oral. More significantly, he said that I should stop taking the aspirin which had been prescribed by the doctors from the government clinic.

The aspirin, he said, was a possible cause of my condition as it is a known anti-coagulant. But since my blood pressure was not that much of a concern, he was wondering why I should be taking aspirin on such a long term in the first place. Why, indeed? I guess that goes for commercially available medical products like Cardiprin too, and various health products already in the market marketing gingko extracts.

But separately, I've also been cautioned by an old schoolmate friend that I should also seek advice from a cardiologist on how I should strike a balance between taking and not taking aspirin further. And I must thank him for catalysing the change of surgeons. He made me demand the right answers from the first surgeon, and I wasn't satisfied with what I heard.

[As a digression, perhaps I should also add that from our conversation this morning, this surgeon treating me turned out to be a member of The Old Frees' Association in Penang, just like me, but anyway, he is five years my senior in school.]