My father-in-law

It has been a trying and tiring two weeks for my wife and I. We have been popping in and out of the Bukit Mertajam government hospital, usually twice a day but sometimes more often, to look after my warded 87-year-old father-in-law who was - and remains - in critical condition. 

It all started on the 26th of last month. Shortly after 11 o'clock, she received a call from her brother to say that their father had breathing difficulties and was being taken to the KPJ Hospital. So we rushed there to meet with the rest of the family. My father-in-law was outside the emergency ward while the hospital tested him for any possible Covid-19 infection before admitting him. But then the medical officer in attendance came out to say that there were fluids in his lungs. "He might have to go into the ICU ward," the MO said. And then came the million-ringgit words of caution. "It's going to be very expensive here," he said, "costing about RM10,000 per day or more" without knowing how long he would need to be there or the procedures that the hospital would do on him, before suggesting that he be taken to the Seberang Jaya government hospital instead. Maybe we were wrong but the impression we got was that the private hospital was rather reluctant to accept him. 

But then, my nephew who is a private medical practitioner himself said that between the two nearest government hospitals, if we wanted to ward him in one, the Bukit Mertajam Hospital would be a better bet as it had all the facilities and was nearer our homes. Thus, we decided to transfer him from the KPJ Hospital to the Bukit Mertajam Hospital. By this time, it was way past one o'clock in the morning of the 27th of June. We waited until about 3.30am before going home after getting an assurance from the hospital that he would be warded as soon as a bed became available. The next day, we found him in the hospital's Ward 8, relatively conscious of his surroundings but still very weak.

The problem with my father-in-law is that he has so many medical problems: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, prostate enlargement and a two-time stroke survivor which left him no choice but to use a walker in recent years to move around the house as he has difficulty coordinating his left leg well. On top of that, he started to develop dementia several years ago. People used to call it senility but we know it now as dementia: a state of confusion and an inability to remember recent and present events but remembering events from the past well enough. That's why in my brother-in-law's house, he wakes up at odd hours to check that all the doors were properly locked. That was his habit when young. When he was a bit healthier, he even checked on the front gate. And this, he would attempt several times in the middle of the night. It was a toll on my mother-in-law.

Since late last year, we have seen him getting weaker. Eating less and getting even less mobile. In the last two months he even fell when he couldn't coordinate his feet properly despite using the walker. Once, he injured himself badly when his head hit the walker's bar and gave himself a black eye! 

So he was now in Ward 8 of the BM Hospital. Initially he was strong enough to stand up by his bed which alarmed the ward nurse enough to restrain both his hands. But funnily enough, he was able to use one hand to untie himself. Until we saw it ourselves, we wouldn't have believed it if someone else told us. But he remained very weak until he couldn't even prop himself up on the bed and had to be helped by us when we visited. Worse still, he couldn't eat much. If we weren't there to help feed him, I doubt he would have gotten much help from the ward nurses. Yes, they claimed to have helped feed him but I very much doubt he ate much. Let's face it, there are so many patients in the ward and only a small number of nurses. How much undivided attention can a nurse give a patient? Moreover, the weaker he became, he more he slept. And he often slept past meal times. During visiting hours, we had so much difficulty getting him awake to feed him.

By the time the hospital moved him to Ward 11 on the topmost floor, he had become so weak and continuously in a deep sleep, and only occasionally opening his eyes for a few seconds before falling asleep again. Seating up was out of the question, let alone to stand by the side of the bed. We tried to ask some questions of the nurses in this ward but they weren't helpful at all, unlike the other ward. Their attitudes were dreadful. Where's the caring? Are they so impervious to the worries around them? I think to them, nursing is just an unpleasant job that brings good money home. They were certainly no Florence Nightingale. There was one whose eyes glared fiercely if you tried to ask her too many questions. I wonder how they could live with their conscience at all. We also tried to consult the doctors but our attempts proved very difficult. There were days when the doctor came on their rounds only once a day, attributed of course to those days being public holidays or the weekends. We were told that there was only one doctor working during the holidays and they had to attend to all in-patients and also including the emergency ward. Maybe my father-in-law was unfortunate enough to be hospitalised at a time when the country had too many public holidays. (Conclusion: Perhaps people shouldn't dare to fall sick during public holidays!!) But yes, I acknowledge that we did finally get to see the doctor at the end of the day. The prognosis was that my father-in-law's condition was not going to improve anytime soon if at all. He is sliding down the abyss with each passing day despite all the medication and tests run on him. His kidneys are failing him and with it, I fear his other organs will start failing very soon. Since my wife's family had already preferred him to rest at home and spend his last days, we stayed back yesterday to request the doctor to discharge him. The doctor said she would still like to run one or two tests on him but on a more personal tone, she agreed that taking him home might be a better decision. She started the paperwork at about 6.30pm and by 8pm, we had already received all the medication from the Pharmacy. I then arranged for a private ambulance to bring him home to my brother-in-law's house in Bandar Tasek Mutiara. He's there now, resting comfortably and surrounded by his other loved ones, but quite oblivious to all the attention and danger to his life. We are now arranging palliative care for him.

As an after-thought, I want to repeat what I told my wife a few days ago, and that is, in my opinion there is never a right or wrong decision when it comes to deciding on a final course of action regarding the life of a loved one. Never live with the doubts of whether your decision was correct or incorrect. I've experienced it with my father in 1996 and my aunt in 2013; I had to make two of the hardest decisions in my life. My father too had to make a difficult decision regarding my mother in 1985. Our conscience must be clear one way or another because we are simply the facilitator of an action. The patient's own kamma had already pre-determined the direction. Only when we accept this can we be at peace with ourselves.

Ajahn Brahm and the anniversary of my health crisis

My wife and I have just returned from the Mahindarama Buddhist Temple in Kampar Road, Penang, where we had attended the second of two talks by the visiting Ajahn Brahm from Perth, Australia. Arguably, he is one of the most popular speakers on Buddhism that I've know. His talks always generate a very big crowd among the Buddhist fraternity here and often, there would be people lingering by the staircase at the back of the hall because they couldn't come in to sit down. Yesterday, he was speaking about peace of mind and today, the subject of his fascinating one-hour talk was the ego. Your ego and my ego.

We have been going to the Mahindarama temple for so many years now just to listen to Ajahn Brahm's end-of-the-year talks, although we know that much of what he would cover are repetitions of topics he had covered in the past and in his books.

If one hasn't heard him before, the ideas he shares are pretty informative and illuminative, but for anyone who has heard him in the past, you tend to know after a while where he is coming from and where he is heading to. Still, we come and listen to him. We come to pay him our respect. It's a yearly ritual. Well, almost yearly because the only time that I can remember which he had given Penang a miss was in 2012. Boy, we sure felt his absence during that year-end.

And what we'd normally do at the end of a session is to go up and meet him, to exchange a few words. This year, when we went up to him, I informed him that exactly one year ago, after attending his final talk at the Mahindarama for 2013, I was hospitalised for two weeks. In hospital after a severe bout of diverticular disease. And I told him tonight that I was glad to see him again because it marked the anniversary of the beginning of my health ordeal. He must come back next year in order to mark the second anniversary. We had a good laugh.

Hopefully, last words on my hospitalisation

Just for the record, I was asking my wife what exactly happened on that fateful evening of 28 Dec 2013 when I was stricken at home. The time was around 11.30p.m. I had already gone to the toilet three times to pass out watery stools laden with a lot of blood. The whole toilet bowl had been bloodied each time and I was feeling very faint and giddy.

My wife had called me out to the computer to seek my input on answering an email. I just sat there next to her and slowly, my head started leaning forwards. She asked me what was wrong and I told her that I felt faint and needed to lie down. So I slowly moved to the bed. She noticed that my face and lips were very pale.

A few minutes later, she came into the room and asked me to go wash up. I told her that I couldn't move properly as I had lost a lot of blood. She tried propping me up and I slid down onto the floor. My rectal muscles started relaxing and some bloodied stools passed out again. I think that I did black out momentarily and the next moment, my wife was bending over me and calling out to me to wake up. According to her, my eyes opened and I was looking blankly into her. That much, I remember. She was looking into my face and tapping me on the cheeks, asking me to wake up.

Of course, I couldn't get up. I told her that I needed to lie on the floor to clear my head and in the meantime, she had rushed downstairs and called my neighbour, Henrizohn Cheok, for assistance. He came running over, saw me on the floor and told my wife to call for an ambulance immediately.

So that was what had happened during that critical night. Strangely enough, when I was supposed to have blacked out momentarily, I seemed to go into a dream-like state. I felt very calm and I clearly recollect that some long dream sequences were going through my head. I was moving in and moving out of several scenes. Unfortunately, I cannot remember now what I was dreaming about but there was nothing fearsome about my dream. I felt so ordinarily calm during those few seconds.

Diagnosed as diverticulosis and what happened next: click here.

I was discharged from the Lohguanlye Specialists Hospital on New Year's Day. The surgeon had given me the "all clear" sign. My wife and son came, and we even went to nearby Rangoon Road for lunch. But definitely, I still felt very weak. My haemoglobin level on being discharged from the hospital was still hovering above the 10-plus mark.

At home, I was moving about gingerly and even had time to water the plants and receive some visitors. A very uneventful evening had come and gone.

The next morning (on 2 Jan 2014) at about 5a.m., I felt the urge to pass motion again, twice. Unsurprisingly to me, there was still a lot of fresh blood among my stools. I called out to my wife and decided that I wanted to be readmitted to the hospital. Luckily, my son had stayed back for the night and he could move me immediately to the hospital at about six o'clock.

Immediately on arrival, I was wheeled into the emergency ward and the medical officer and the nurses swung into action. I remember no pain as they extracted blood from my arm or when they attached the peripheral cannulae into my veins on both arms. Soon afterwards, I was wheeled into the High Dependency Unit (HDU) of the hospital. As the HDU shares the same ward as other patients who were in Critical Care (CCU) and Intensive Care (ICU), this is an indication of how serious my condition had become.

Sodium lactate compound was dripped constantly into the right arm from a bag hanging above my head. An oxygen tube led into my nostrils and an oxymeter was attached to one of my fingers in order to measure the amount of oxygen in my blood. All sorts of suckers were attached to my chest as my heartbeat was also being monitored constantly with an ECG machine. A blood pressure cuff was placed on my upper left arm to take readings automatically every 30 minutes, even through the night. I don't know how many bags of nutrients were fed into me through the intravenous drip but I remember that there were two bags of blood as well.

By nightfall, I was considered alert enough for the oxygen tubes to be removed and I could breathe freely. In the morning, I was well enough for the nurses to allow me to walk to the sink and freshen myself. By the afternoon, I was wheeled out from the HDU and into my own private room on Level 3A of the hospital's old wing. A third bag of blood followed as my haemoglobin level was still considered low. And that was where I remained until my discharge on 13 Jan 2014.

For some of my thoughts during the first few days after my re-admission to the hospital, click here.

And here is what I wrote about being poked, probed and pricked. It was at this time too, on 7 Jan 2014, when I decided that I should perhaps seek a second opinion about my condition as amidst going to the toilet, I had noticed that there were still some blood among the little amount of stools I was passing out. 

The new surgeon decided that there was no necessity for me to undergo any surgery. Instead, he ordered that I be given some fresh frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate on the next day in order to help stem the blood leaks. These were administered to me through the intravenous drip in the afternoon. Let me say that there was some tense moments during the process. First of all, during the hour or so, my body temperature and blood pressure were being monitored every 10 minutes. While my blood pressure remained quite normal, my body temperature rose slightly above 37 Celcius. All in, two small bags of cryoprecipitates and another two small bags of fresh plasma were given to me.

And the day finally came, on 9 Jan 2014, when I was taken off the drip. I was allowed a soft diet but more importantly, I valued the freedom to move about without thinking about the drip again. Nevertheless, I was still feeling rather guarded about my stools every time I had to go to the toilet. It didn't improve my pride much when the surgeon came every morning to poke his finger into my you-know-where. But finally on 11 Jan 2014, he gave the welcomed prognostication that there was no more blood in my rectum. I could have been discharged on the next day itself but instead, I asked to remain until Monday just to ensure that my condition was really well enough.

All in, except for that brief time on 1 Jan 2014 that I was at home, I had spent 14 days at the hospital, and I sincerely hope that this will be the first and last time I do so.  My two in-patient bills added up to slightly more than RM17,000 and this amount still does not include the post-hospitalisation reviews as an out-patient. There will still be a few hundred ringgit to pay. I went for a first review on the 16th of this month and will have a second and final review on the 27th.

A deep appreciation

(This is a computer-generated collage)

An appreciation to my friends and family who had visited me during my 12-day sojourn at the Lohguanlye Specialists Centre in Logan Road, Penang following my re-admittance on 2 Jan 2014 for diverticulosis:

My family - parents-in-law Lee Soon Chye and Seh Chew Hong, brothers-in-law Lee Lai Seng and Lee Lai Kuan, sisters-in-law Lee Saw Bee and Lee Saw Choo, nephew Lee Chean;
My relatives - Lee Seang Aun and family, Choong Teik Hong and Alice Lee, Roland Choong and his brother-in-law Boon Sun;
My chess friends - Jimmy Ng from Singapore, Lee Ewe Ghee, Ung Tay Aik and Eric Cheah;
My former colleague from Ban Hin Lee Bank - Tang Long Kin;
My former colleagues from JobStreet.com - Ted Targosz and Jeffrey Chew;
My friends from The Old Frees' Association - Tan Heng Swee and Alice;
My neighbour - Dato' Dr Ooi Eng Hock;
My old school buddies - Kee Thuan Chye, Lim Eng Siang, Lim Teik Wah, Ooi Ling Heong, Dr Tan Kok Hin, Yeoh Oon Hup;
My Kongsi brethren - Quah Chin Sun, Quah Chin Chuan, Quah Teng Hin;
My Rockwills friend - Ricky Khoo.

In addition, my appreciation too to relative Lily Lee, old school buddy Lim Siang Jin, former BHLB colleague Loh Soo Chin and chess friends K Nanis, Chong Kee Kian and Hamid Majid who couldn't come but had telephoned me, and text messages from Ooi Chen Khoon in Chicago. All the well wishes that I received from the scores of real (not virtual) friends through facebook.

And needless to say, a final appreciation goes to the doctors - Noel Yeoh Theam Lip and Lim Teik Mau - and staff of the Lohguanlye Specialists Centre at the High Dependency Unit (HDU), the third floor ward staff and those from the 3A floor for their constant care and monitor during my stay. I must mention too dietician Mah Lee Ping and customer relations staff Juenndze (June) Lim.

I love you all...

Why Lohguanlye?

One of my old secondary school classmates -- he visited me in hospital last week when I was just beginning to recuperate from an excessive loss of blood owing to a condition known as diverticulosis -- was very curious.

Being a doctor, he asked why I had chosen to come to the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital in Penang when there were so many other private hospitals on the island. "Why Lohguanlye?" he was so curious to know.

I'll tell him why here. You see, the name has long been ingrained into my memory. This has been the one private hospital that I have been familiar with since 1976. It was in that year that my dear mother was sent here for an operation. For a long time, she had been seeking treatment from the Penang General Hospital for a pain in her abdomen but nothing much were being done by the doctors there. And in the meantime, her abdomen was getting more and more distended.

It reached a point where her condition grew so critical that my father and my maternal grandmother decided that the only option left was to admit her to a private hospital and have her operated on. There weren't many private hospitals in Penang then, and the Specialist Centre (as Lohguanlye was known then) was the closest to our home in Seang Tek Road.

So he admitted my mother and she was operated on almost immediately by the hospital's gynaecologist, Mr Loh Hun Yu, who was Dr Loh Guan Lye's son. It was really a matter of life and death, and there was little choice. If he had not opened her up, she could have died. There was really nothing to lose by operating and he removed a huge growth from my mother. When it was shown to us, I was visibly shocked to see that a Milo tin was just big enough to hold it. That was how big it had grown. Since then, my confidence in the public health system took a big dip.

My mother survived another nine years. During this time, we had moved from Seang Tek Road to Lorong Zoo Tiga in Ayer Itam and finally, to the Siakap area of Seberang Jaya on the mainland in 1980.

By 1983, my mother's health began failing again and she grew thinner. No amount of modern medication or faith healing could help. We knew that we were losing her slowly. In April 1985, her condition had worsened. One day we saw that she was barely conscious. Alarmed and very worried, I tried to carry her to the car by myself, and I failed this very basic test. Then a very helpful neighbour came over and with almost complete ease, alone carried her into the car. I drove all the way to the ferry terminal -- at that time, there was still no Penang Bridge -- and thence to the Specialist Centre.

My mother was warded immediately in very critical condition. Her blood pressure had fallen dangerously low and she was put on drip, half-conscious. I stayed overnight at the hospital but I cannot remember how long I was there in the room before my father arrived to relieve me in the morning. Not long after I arrived home, we received a telephone call from him to say that my mother had breathed her last in the hospital. I was numb but I remember my aunt bawling away.

That was how my mother had passed away at the Specialist Centre. We appreciated the great job by the hospital and their staff to care for her on both occasions. So do you see why Lohguanlye's hospital was so firmly ingrained in my mind until it was the automatic choice when I had to go for treatment myself? You just can't think of any other when you are in a crisis mode.

Still guarded

My elation was guarded yesterday and I had every reason to feel that way. Just because the surgeon had ordered the intravenous drips removed from my arm and my return to eating did not mean that I was already out of the woods. It is too soon to tell. The observation period following my transfusions of fresh frozen plasma and cryoprecipitate would determine my health status. Frankly, I dread this period....

UPDATE 1: The surgeon came in and told me that until I clear up everything, I cannot be discharged. And the reality was, there was still some blood among my stools. But the bright spark was that the surgeon said it wasn't fresh. (Confirmed when he stuck his finger up my you-know-where again.)

I asked him whether being on the drip  for so many days could have affected my internal organs. In particular, I was concerned about my kidneys. He said no, but added that he would order an abdominal ultrasound to check on my liver, kidneys, bladder and prostate. Personally, this was good for me; I looked forward to this check.

UPDATE 2: Ahh, just came back from the ultrasound check. Had to wait so long as I had to fill my bladder till the point of bursting. Then after I achieved it, I had to wait for the radiologist to do the procedure. And at long last, my turn came. Maybe I spent 20 minutes with the good doctor? And at the end, he told me that there was nothing serious to worry about. All the organs are in good order for a man of my age.

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.]

Poked, probed and pricked

Both my arms are sore and aching all over from being poked with all types of needles. When I was re-admitted into the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital last week, two peripheral cannulae were inserted into my lower arms for the intravenous drips.

Two days ago, one of them was removed from my arm when the flesh around it became swollen and tender. This morning, I had the other removed because it had become tender as well. But because I still needed to be on the drip, a replacement cannula was inserted into my arm. Ouch!

Apart from this, I've had been subjected to countless attempts to draw blood from my body. My haemoglobin level has to be monitored daily and I really dread having to face the lab technician every morning. Ouch, ouch!

And as if all this poking were not enough, there's the time that I had to subject myself to the nurses pricking the ends of my fingers in order to test for blood sugar. Three or four times a day, I've lost count. Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Last afternoon, I decided to seek a second opinion from the other surgeon at this hospital. I just felt that I was going nowhere with the first one. Already, this is my seventh day at the hospital and being monitored like what I've gone through so far, there must be something else that can be done. He had recommended surgery - and it would be major enough - but it was not what I wanted.

Luckily, I remembered that I do have an old schoolmate working at another private hospital here and I sought his advice. I told my friend that changing hospitals now may not be an option and he replied the next best thing to do was to consider a different consultant to look into my case. Luckily, he recognised that there was a seasoned second surgeon at Lohguanlye who was quite an old hand at this sort of thing. And this is why I made this decision. After all, it is my health at stake.

I was quite surprised that the first surgeon so brusquely removed himself from my case. A patient, he said, cannot be under the care of two surgeons and if my decision was to have a second opinion, he would no longer be caring after me immediately. And as far as I could make out, he was driving as he said that. A rather abrupt response from him, devoid of any warmth, I should say! Anyway, I asked the nursing station to make the necessary changes and so, I am now under the second surgeon's care.

The second surgeon came last night to see me and ordered some blood tests before he could decide the next course of action. I hope it is all smooth sailing from here. I really do want to be out of this hospital as soon as possible.

Visits from relatives and friends

I'm not getting any better physically fast enough to be taken to the next step of recovery but visits from several friends and relatives have certainly perked up my spirits.

Although I was unable to take more photos than I wanted, I would like to thank Lee Ewe Ghee (president of the Penang Chess Association) for bringing along Jimmy Ng from Singapore to visit me at the hospital on Friday night. Tan Heng Swee and his sweet wife, Alice, and Tang Long Kin have visited me several times since my hospitalisation, as well as Lim Eng Siang who came to my house on Wednesday.

My wife's side of the family has been very supportive and I have received visits from my parents-in-law, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, as well as cousin Roland Choong and his parents, Choong Teik Hong and Alice Lee. Chess pals like Ung Tay Aik and Eric Cheah had turned up, as well as friends Ricky Khoo and Dato' Dr Ooi Eng Hock. Another old friend, Jeffrey Chew, turned up with a bouquet of flowers.

But the biggest fillip must be when four old school buddies - Yeoh Oon Hup, Ooi Ling Heong, Lim Teik Wah and Kee Thuan Chye - came to give me some cheer.

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of everybody but here's one with my school buddies (Thuan Chye, Ling Heong and Teik Wah) together with cousin Roland.

Parking at Lohguanlye

I've a helpful hint for people parking at the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre in George Town, Penang. Just some surprising revelations, after speaking to one of the hospital's customer service staff, that could save everyone a few ringgit here and there.

First of all, parking at the hospital is available at either the car park at Logan Road opposite the old wing or the multi-level car park at the new wing. A ticket is issued automatically at the entrance into the car parks, and the parking fees are calculated based on the length of time a car is parked there. However, if the motorist leaves within 30 minutes of entry, then the parking is free.

Next, outpatients at the hospital can always get their parking tickets stamped at either the pharmacy or the respective floors where they see their doctors. The stamped ticket will ensure that a standard rate of RM2 is charged upon exit. And if outpatients then decide to leave the hospital and come back later to see the doctors, by producing the old and new stamped tickets together, only RM1 will be charged on the new ticket. So effectively, the parking fee will be RM3.

And finally, family members (and, shhh, friends) who visit inpatients at the hospital can get their tickets stamped at the respective nurse counters - if they can identify the patient and the room number - and only RM1 is payable upon leaving.

Helpful hints that are generally not known to people but which came to my knowledge only because we asked the customer relations staff this morning. But if you can save one or two ringgit, why not?

Hospitalised

Today marks the fourth continuous day that I am warded at the Lohguanlye Specialist Hospital in Penang. I am bored.

With me still on the drip and limited to drinking small sips of water, there is nothing else much that I can do except to be in the ward bed, watch television and surf the Internet. Even then, the hospital's Internet connection was down on Friday evening and for most of Saturday, and I had to rely on whatever limited access through my mobile. And the television channels ... limited channels too with the box fixed on the sports channel or AXN.

I've been diagnosed with diverticulosis, a condition arising from an inflammation of my colon. A colonoscopy procedure earlier last week had revealed this inflammation and thus, the source of my internal bleeding.

I was first discharged from the hospital on New Year's Day but had to be re-admitted when I bled again on Thursday. And this time, the surgeon has said that I should give my alimentary canal some time to rest and recover. It is because of this that I've been put on the drip with nothing by mouth.

The drip means that my mobility in the ward is rather curtailed. If I need to go to the washroom, I shall need the hospital staff to disconnect me from the drip stand temporarily. But thankfully for these short episodes of freedom, I've been able to wash myself, tidy myself and take short walks outside the ward.

The drip also means that I haven't gone hungry despite not eating. I'm surprised that a simple sodium lactate solution can do this to me. There is no hunger but if I were to have the drip disconnected for about a half hour, I can certainly feel some hunger pangs returning.

How long will I remain on the drip? Frankly, I do not know. I would think that even when fluids are given to me eventually, possibly from today or tomorrow, my condition will still be monitored closely. I can only hope that recovery is fast, the bleeding does not resume and I can then proceed to some solid food.

And finally, I'd like to say that being hospitalised means that I have been cut off from the real world outside. However, I am sure that when I do get discharged eventually, I shall face a world of inflated food prices. I've been hearing from friends and relatives that food prices in Penang have increased by some 50 cents for each plate of hawker fare. For a retiree like me, this is surely unwelcomed news.

New Year's eve drama

What a way to end the year: laid out on a hospital bed. My first time staying in a hospital as a patient, something which I had managed to avoid for 59 years of my life.

The problem started on Sunday night. At about 9.30 p.m., I was stricken by a bad bout of diarrhea. But I was startled by the amount of fresh blood in the toilet bowl. Three times I had to run to the toilet and three times I had to endure the sight of fresh blood. By 11p.m., I was completed wasted.

My panicking wife wanted to send me to the KPJ Specialist Hospital on the mainland, not the most ideal choice but it was the nearer of two private hospitals to our home. However, the KPJ hospital said they were full and could not send any ambulance around to our house.

The alternative was to send me to the nearest government hospital which would be the Bukit Mertajam Hospital. The ambulance picked me up and delivered me to the emergency ward. I vaguely remembered blood was taken from my arm and an ECG machine hooked up to me to discount the possibility of a heart problem. That turned out normal.

After about two hours, the attendant doctor said that I was well enough to be discharged but initially, my wife wanted me to stay back in the hospital for observation. The doctor, however, cautioned us that the condition in the third class ward may not be acceptable. "You can go see the place for yourself before making up your mind," he suggested. We took his word for it and opted for discharge.

On reaching home, I felt very lightheaded again. No, home was definitely not the place for me to stay but with KPJ and the BM hospitals definitely out of the question, the alternatives left was a private hospital on the island. There were a few for consideration but I chose the Lohguanlye Specialist Centre. It was either that or the Gleneagles or the Adventist hospitals for me. (Going to the Bagan, Pantai, Lam Wah Ee and Island hospitals never ended my mind.)

So my brother-in-law lent his assistance by driving me to Lohguanlye. As an aside, we were stopped at four police check points. I don't know how many he encountered on his way home to Bandar Tasek Mutiara in Simpang Ampat but I'm sure that there must have been one or two too.

Check-in at Lohguanlye was relatively quick and easy, and pretty soon I was warded. The next morning, the surgeon arranged for both gastroscopy and colonoscopy procedures for me on Tuesday. So for the whole of Monday and much of Tuesday, I was put on drip in order to prep me up for the two procedures.

Luckily, my hospitalisation expenses were covered by my wife's medical card from her place of work. That provided my peace of mind. But still, there were some uncertain moments from the insurance company. They wanted to know my medical history, which even annoyed my surgeon because he said diabetes and hypertension had nothing to do with my present condition. However, the questions still had to be answered before the insurance company would give the go-ahead to pay for my procedures.

The approval for payment was received finally after 12 o'clock and the nurses then began preparing me for the appointment with the surgeon. Bearing in mind that this was my first stay in any hospital and the procedures could potentially uncover some serious conditions with my alimentary tract, I was remarkably calm. The sedation worked quickly and before I knew anything, the attending nurse was already trying to wake me up. By my reckoning, the procedures had taken about 45 minutes to complete. By 3p.m., I had been wheeled back to my room, and by 5.30p.m., I was already tucking into my first meal since arrival at the hospital some 36 hours ago.

But I am not discharged yet. That will only come tomorrow morning. So one more night to endure at the hospital. I shall be looking forward to the discharge. Home will look so welcoming after an experience like this. Here's wishing everybody a very Happy New Year.