3rd day in hospital ... part 2 ...

As usual, a round up of today mean:

Breakfast: peanut, fishcake and minced pork porridge:

This is rather blend because no soy-sauce nor pepper. But the fish cake taste yummy as it is the only thing taste salty.

Lunch time is Pork Bratwurst with mushroom sauce.
You can tell that this is boil rather than grilled. Notice the generous serving of vegetables? And seriously, oil-less.

But it still taste good. If you let me eat like this, I'm ok ... how did they make everything to healthy and still tasty?

And ... dinner ... yes, you won't believe me: Mutton Bryani on banana leaf.

OK, though the mutton is, yes, boil but the curry is tasty, not very spicy. Except for less oil, everything taste just like my favourite Mutton Bryani.

Went for CT-Scan this afternoon at 4pm, I think the result will be out tomorrow morning. The CT-Scan basically is to have visual on my lower abdomen to determine the cause of the pain and bloatedness when hungry and after food (last for an hour).

Senior Surgeon Doc. Selvam has indicate that he will contact a gastric specialist on the CT-Scan as well as a Liver Specialist to determine the function level of my liver. He is more relieve as he spoke, as if to tell me everything should be fine and if there is anything wrong, it can be fix.

This afternoon before I leave for CT-Scan, a hospice nurse visited the patient directly opposite me. Like my mom, he has liver failure, and the doctor is saying that chemo, resection and medication can no longer help him. He is 57 years old and once his fever subsided, he will be discharged.

The hospice nurse spend a lot of effort to introduce the subject of death to him, and he readily acknowledge the un-desire. He finally request in that fateful moment, he want to tubes, no opt and only pain killer to enable him to leave in certain level of comfort, among his love ones. The nurse promised, "it will be so, we can do this."

Mom's final stage of liver failure carries sign of swollen hands and feet, jaundice on the eyes as well as whole body, literally turn yellow and pain on the back. Than she went into a stage of confusion and character changes, totally lost control of her behaviour and bowel. This is the most trying period. Shortly she slip into coma, but can respond to conversation by movement of hands and feet. This is the period where doctors will administer heavy dose of morphine to eliminate any pain. During this stage, her eyes literally turns into jelly and you know life is leaving her. The coma stage can last very long depends on the will of the patient, mom lasted close to a week. But on a particular day, I woke up at 2am, took a cab to SGH and talk to her till 6am. I am close to mom, I will be the one translating the English TV programe for her, and she loves animal documentary. By 6am, she no longer respond to my conversation, and the muscles are less tense. I told her I need to take a nap and go to work and will be back at night to chat with her again. Shortly after I left for work at about 8am, mom left us.

To date, liver related diseases were given the lease attention in medical research. Partly because most patients are Asian and from the poor countries of the world. Doc Lee Wei Leng once criticised A*STAR on The Straits Times for giving little to no attention on liver diseases related research which is one of the main killer disease in Singapore. She express disgust on a national funded body performing only profit base research on medical areas that does not critically concern Singaporean. I can't remember if A*STAR retorted her criticism. Today, Liver disease is still the lease research area and mortality rate is a high 70%.

If you have not take your Hep A & B vaccine, please do immediately.

My prayer goes with the man opposite me ... may all his sincere wishes comes true.