Amazing Love~ In Christ, We are the Champions!

Blessing in the midst of suffering...

2008-07-26T17:40:00.001+08:00

In my previous post I forgot to mentioned that I was managed to be discharged from the hospital sometime ago, which was why the readmission. Really thank God for the privilege to be able to be outside the hospital environment, seeing and feeling something different for a change.

As of today I also really thank God that everything seems more stable and calm. I also thank God that there aren’t any heavy IV drips that needs to be put in today, which gives me some time and comfort to figure out what is causing all the side effects that are happening to me. Truth to be told I am still having the side effects I mentioned in the previous post, but by the grace of God I am managing to cope with it this time.

Also another thing to really thank and praise God for is that my blood count went up a little by itself today without any transfusion of any kind, will still need to continue to pray hard that it will continue to go up by itself steadily and not drop, and I know our God is faithful to hear our prayer.

Another thing I need to mentioned is that though this whole ordeal was tough, and I know not how long it will last, but I thank God that it did lead me back to a certain realization about the power of God once again and the purpose He has for my life, praying to God that I won’t lose this focus again and again.

Okay, that’s all for now, please continue to pray for me that the GVHD would be under control and the blood counts would go up so that I could be discharged, and most importantly I would do God’s will that He has for me.

In the need of prayer...

2008-07-25T00:00:00.004+08:00

I got readmitted to the hospital because the counts weren't going as well as expected.

Please pray really hard for me, that all my blood counts would be back up to normal, and that by the Lord's healing grace the GVHD would be under control.

This is because this few days I am really suffering a lot of discomfort here, anymore longer and I don't think my body would be able to take it. I mean, this time it really is hard to bear I must admit, with all the weird pains, numbness, tingling feeling, anxiety that I cannot explain, it's making me really down and all I can say is I cannot bear it anymore longer.

Still, I'll trust in the Lord, that He knows best, and He'll carry me through. For He's a loving Father.

Good day...

2008-07-06T18:38:00.000+08:00

Woke up yesterday and today without any significant pains from the knees, and I must say:

“Thank God for this wonderful blessing!”

It really is a relief and a great joy to be able to sleep in comfort, being able to twist and turn around in your sleep and knowing that you will feel A-okay when you wake up in the morning instead of feeling like an old man with joint pains.

Thank God too, that after so many weeks, for once today I had solid stools. Not too sure that this would be just a one off event, but… at least it means that my gut is still capable of doing some normal functions. I thought it would never get back to normal.

My glucose level also seemed to plunge way low this time around till the point I was “forced” to eat sweet things today. Ah, the instability of my body! Not a bad thing though, and I actually thank God for that as I was able to indulge in some chocolates right before the sun was up, and that would mean less insulin injections to come too.

Platelet count on the other hand is still low, at a count of 21 in fact this morning. The doctor (and of course, me myself) is hoping that this will be the rock bottom and it will start to bounce back up from this point on. The doctor is being very optimistic as the white cell counts are starting to drop to an average level of 6-7 compared to a way high level of 14 and above that it usually was the past few weeks, meaning it is looking to be stabilizing. Then again, depending on the Lord almighty to let everything come into perfect harmony, for our Lord is a Lord of peace.

And yesterday I had a slight migraine that haunted me at night, how I fear those pains. Feeling like another one is coming out right now as I am typing too, praying to God that it doesn’t become more severe as time passes. Well, eating Panadol will always do the trick, but I try not to eat any more drugs that I am already taking, seems like I am intoxicating my body way too much already.

Ooo, and I finally managed to watch Spider-man 3 on HBO today. Spidey movies rocks out of all the other Marvel superheroes movies I must say. Okay, this seems super outdated, but during the release of the movie, and all the good movies I must say, I was in the hospital for treatment… now to catch up with Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and all the other 3s that was out… last year was it? (Somehow I always catch up with these movies a year or 2 later, haha!)

All in all, I give thanks for all the blessings that God has given me for the day, for our God knows our every need.

In a world of pain...

2008-07-03T13:54:00.001+08:00

Having both your knees hurting really badly is unbearable…

… And the worst thing of all it was something that I could have avoided all along.

Well, you see, the doctor said that I need to do some light exercises in order to avoid muscle degradation due to the steroids I was receiving. The degradation was not a problem at the start, I could still walk normally and all, of course it was harder to do squads since some of my muscles had already degrade. To encourage me to exercise, the medical staff even borrowed a mini bicycle like thingy so that I would be able to do some cycling movement now and then in the comfort of my room.

But due to sheer madness (I think), I decided to go the extra mild and did more squads than usual and did some horse-stance jumping around the room, if light exercises are good, a heavy one should be better right??! Boy was I wrong, and this is one bad habit of mine that I could never learn when it comes to doing exercises --- I always overexert and thus hurt myself in the process for some weird reason.

With that now I suffer the fruits of my labour, it just hurts “oh so bad!” till the point that I wake up at night from the pain. Thank God that at least most of the time I suffer the most pain in the wee hours of the morning (when the acid builds up I think), and after a workout lesson from the physiotherapist, I manage to learn up some exercises that would be able to ease the pain off before noon comes. Though I am still trying to figure out why is it that sometimes only one knee hurts, other times both… position wise when I sleep at night perhaps?

That wasn’t all, due to my high glucose level and perhaps all the drugs and immunosuppressant that I am taking, my skin became rather thin and weak. And because of my knee pain, mom decided to put the tiger balm bandages on both knees and I must say it was a total relief for the pain on the knee cap, but somehow the medicines from the bandages manage to eat through my skin and formed a blister at my right knee. The scary thing though is that due to my high glucose level I think, the blister is taking quite some time to heal now. Ah, that’s what happens when you have a weak body… then again, thank God that it wasn’t both knees that got the blisters.

And pain wasn’t all the shocked that I received…

In fact on the same day I posted my previous post my platelet count dropped to a low count of 38, which got the doctor worried and immediately did a bone marrow tap procedure right that morning after he came to check up on me, though this time it was a much simpler procedure (something about not having to remove any small bone this time around; mom also took a video recording of it), in order to once again check if it’s due to the graft problem or leukaemia cells. And I thank the almighty God for His grace, as in the evening the doctor said once again it wasn’t caused by any leukaemia blast cells, and later on the flow test result showed that it was quite clear too.

But the platelet count kept dropping and by today as I am typing this post my count is at 25, another 5 less and I would definitely need a platelet transfusion. I must admit that it is making me all worried and a little frustrated… worried due to the platelet count being good and all at the start, rising at a pace faster than expected, now even with different kind of immunosuppressant put into the mix it just doesn’t want to go up; and frustrated due to being in the hospital for a little too long I guess, not being able to be discharged due to the platelet count.

Nevertheless, I am still trusting and hoping in the Lord that He knows best, for He’s the perfect Father. Never is He late, on the contrary, He does everything right on time. And as God’s word says in Isaiah 40:31~

“But those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.”

Alas, I am once again back to charting my input and output again, what a chore it is haha! The reason: my weight seems to be dropping constantly as each day pass, so they need to know what I am eating and drinking each day again and what I am passing out, as where I used to be 55 kg when I was healthy, it managed to drop to 46 kg over the pass few days, though thank God that as of today it went back up to 47 kg plus. The main reason for the drop of weight would be due to muscle wastage from the steroids, then in addition with my gut that couldn’t absorb nutrients so efficiently because of the damage from the radiotherapy/chemotherapy and perhaps due to the high glucose level, as the doctor says, when one have too much glucose in the system, it’s “hunger in the midst of plenty”. Besides all that, after a few bites of food I somehow get tired really easily and my stomach gets all bloated up, which prevents me from eating with ease the meal prepared before me. And when I mean tired, I get so fatigue that I just lie on bed and unable to move till the body somehow gets enough rest after half an hour or so. The trick to eating without feeling so tired is to actually eat in small portions over a period of time, but problem is that would make my meal cold, and that’s a problem seeing the meals that I take are mostly meat (can’t keep long cold). And since I try not to eat any carbohydrate meals, that cuts down a lot of my food selection that I can take over the day especially on snacks like cakes and biscuits.

Seeing that I am actually losing weight, and not gaining, it is logical that I eat more… right? Somehow mysteriously though the food that came each day from the hospital kitchen staff became smaller and smaller in portion. At first I rationalized that it could be due to the petrol price hike and like all other business in the world they reduce the size of the food too to keep up with the cost. Then later on the kitchen staff actually called up my room and said that I was changed to a diabetic diet… whoa kay… I know my sugar level is high, but it’s due to the drugs that I am receiving and not because I am a sweet tooth. But well, they are part of the hospital, and apparently they said it was advised by my doctor that’s why it was changed, so no arguing with them there.

Well, mom and I was confused, so when the doctor asked about my eating habits (which he always does everyday to ensure that everything is going well), we asked him about the reason why the food is getting smaller and why did it became a diabetic diet. The doctor himself was puzzled, first of all he said that I wasn’t considered to be diabetic as the high glucose level is due to drugs and I am not obese but underweight right now, I need more food, not less. The nursing staffs in the ward were also confused and puzzled too as they say they did not order the menu to be changed in anyway. In fact, everyone was looking at each other confused; no one knows how the order got changed at all haha! (Or perhaps no one wants to admit their wrong… who knows?)

I really thank God for yesterday though, as I manage to enjoy a wonderful dinner prepared before me with not much tiredness than I usually have. Need to thank my aunt for the food that she brought over, it sure was tasty.

Once again praying and depending on God that the platelet count would be able to rise up quickly, hoping that the blood test that will be done in the evening today will show a favourable result through God’s healing grace. And not to forget, my aching knees in the morning too, ouch~

~Thank God though, as I finished writing this, the pain from my knees are gone =)

Rejoice...

2008-06-27T15:44:00.003+08:00

A short note before I start:

I was wrong even about the short form for “TBN”, heh paiseh~! A direct reference from my cousin’s comment:

“I think what you were referring to is TPN (total parenteral nutrition); parenteral means a non-oral route, e.g. intravenous”

And there you have the real meaning for the space food I had, from a doctor no less, haha!

I don’t know if it’s just me…

But to be totally honest there are times, even with God’s blessing and love so significant throughout this whole process of recovery that I myself consider it to be a miracle, I still do get frustrated and start to complain whenever suffering comes my way.

And the worst thing of it all would be that this negative energy always seems to be aiming towards God. I’ll admit it’s one of the worst habits of mine and I really need to ask for forgiveness on this matter over and over again. It really reminds me of my schooling days, where whenever I get bad results for my exams I tend to blame God for not helping me as I have I prayed to Him about it, when in the first place I did not even bother studying at all. And we know that our good God give good gifts to His children; not spoil them by simply lavishing our request that most of the time we have no idea what we are asking for.

This came to me because of the hot flushes I experienced nearly every morning since the 6^th of June. It really is suffering and uncomfortable, as if my whole body was going to blow up from within due to the unbearable heat. I cannot think well as it makes me feel all anxious and nervous, my gut seems to be in a wrecking mess with the heat and I keep having the need to go to the bathroom due to that, my whole body hurts as it feels too hot then cold all of a sudden, and nothing seems to be able to ease the pain and make me relax at all. Initially it felt like it would get better as the days pass, as the heat seems to subside during the time I was sleeping from 2am to 6am, but later I realized that those hot flushes were altogether different from the one that I am mentioning right now, if am right, the hot flushes that comes while I sleep is caused by one of the immunosuppressant drugs that I am taking.

One day I just couldn’t take it anymore and asked God: “Why are you doing this to me? Can’t you just take these hot flushes away? I can’t stand it anymore!”

But it was then the Holy Spirit prompted me…

What is this compared to having an organ failed because of a serious graft versus host disease?

Compared to the leukaemia cells still being present even after the transplant?

Compared to the donor’s bone marrow not even grafting to my body at all?

Though this hot flushes feeling was a pain, at least it only lasted in the morning and by 12 noon or so, it’s gone like the wind. In fact, when the feeling is gone I don’t even think about it anymore till the next day when it all happens again, and with that I get scared and a little worried seeing how I could just forget the pain that I have gone through in less than an hour… it makes me feel really ungrateful I guess.

And with that, I am all the more appreciative of the love and grace of God, who send His one and only Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins, forgiving us not once but countless times as long as we repent and confess our sins to Him. Otherwise we are all eternally doomed, seeing how easily one can sin.

I’ll need to be humble and continue to grow spiritually stronger each and everyday, so as to not let the devil get a foothold. As to the above situation, I’ll really need to learn how to be content, just like what Paul says in Philippians 4:12-13:

“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

Boy am I glad God was merciful, as after this whole lesson that I have learned, God gave me light bulb over my head and figured out that the “hot flushes” could be caused due to the intravenous magnesium that I have been taking recently. So the first thing I did was asked the doctor to change the IV magnesium into oral tablets, and it sure did a major difference the next day as…

I did not feel the intense hot flushes anymore!!! Hallelujah!

It was a major relief. Sadly though, the most ironic thing is that I was the one who asked the doctor to change the magnesium from oral to IV in the first place. Why? Well, since in the wee hours of the morning I was already on some kind of drip, I figured out why not just save the effort of eating 3 big oral magnesium pills and instead drip it right into my body intravenously as it’s fast, effective and I won’t know a thing since I am still sleeping?

Yeah… right…

As of this published date I am eating four of these bio-magnesium pills orally 3 times a day, hard to swallow I must admit, but hey, it beats having those uncomfortable – I’m going to blow from the inside – feeling of intense heat.

I cannot stress this enough throughout this whole recovery, especially seeing from the example above about how I doubted God; that His love for us never fails, and He watches over us all the time. Our God is the perfect Father, and He will meet all our needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19).

Not that I deserve it, but God really made this whole treatment process a breeze. Yes, there are tough times, but as I always say, the amount of time I am inflicted with pain are considered short, compared to the time I am blessed with comfort and peace from our amazing God.

God’s amazing grace and blessing kept coming in waves:

On the 30^th of May, this was Day 18th since the day of my transplant, my platelet count started to rise up and its way ahead of the predicted time estimated by the doctor which was Day 25th. The platelet count raised at a really quick rate too and it was a very good sign as if the platelet counts go up, it means that the body is recovering at an excellent pace and it is a good indicator to check for any GVHD attack, as if the platelet drops at any time, it means I got an attack and the doctor can prevent it from advancing any further really quick. Besides that it also meant that I wouldn’t need any more platelet transfusions too, as I would need to bother more people for platelet and blood donors if my body does not generate its own platelets. In fact, around the same time too my haemoglobin count was rising slowly but steadily, plus around 0.1 a day and with that I haven’t had any more blood infusion as my body can sustain itself (sadly no one actually bothers about the haemoglobin ha-ha, but if it hits below a count of 10 I start to feel this weird headache, so it’s one of the counts that I know if it drops too low without seeing the blood report). Praise God! As though nowadays blood transfusions are relatively safe, I heard there are still reports on getting Hepatitis from it, and the allergy reaction that I may get from either blood and platelet transfusions are troublesome and suffering I must say, not to forget that transfusing blood takes a really long time too (and let’s not forget getting drugged off to la-la land to eliminate the allergy reaction, which sometimes don’t unfortunately).

I must say that after the transplant, with the donor’s marrow successfully grafted on my body, then no serious GVHD for the first few days, and after that having the test which ensured that my white cell count was 100 percent belonging to the donor’s, then the platelet going up faster than expected… I will have to say that I kind of got too over-my-head that I was going to be completely healed and have totally forgotten the fact on how close I was to death at the start of the relapse, thinking that everything is going to be just fine.

But it soon dawn on me that though everything seems alright right now, my bone marrow test result may still turn out that there are some leukaemia blasts in me, no one knows; medication and the doctors are the means of healing, but only God can do the healing.

The fear of how I may still get a relapse crept back to me when I heard from mom about another leukaemia patient who passed away due to infections then organ failure at a later stage. She was admitted to the same hospital as me back in Malaysia while I was under the first chemotherapy treatment, but gotten a relapse and was send to GH, and I guess the treatment didn’t turn out well. Hoping that she did receive Christ went mom evangelise to her.

Then there is this other Arab boy in the same ward as me who has a rare blood disease and has grown a tumour on his chest. According to the nurses nothing left could be done to treat his disease anymore as the medical staffs have given him the maximum dose of radiotherapy available, thus the parents could only give up and let the boy rest by going back to their home country and enjoy the rest of his days.

Not to forget, when I first came here to Singapore for consultation, the doctor said my prognosis for recovery was at 40 percent, that’s not even half for goodness sake! In addition to that, my transplant was done not under full remission due to the fact that the doctor thinks that my body would not be able to withstand anymore chemotherapy regimen, further reducing the chance of recovery. With all these thoughts I once again got really worried and anxious, and I remembered asking the doctor about the bone marrow tap procedure, whether such a thing could happen, that the leukaemia cells could still be stubbornly there.

The doctor smiled and told me that though it was, well scary to know the truth, yet one cannot escape from it. It is better to know if there are still leukaemia cells in the marrow than not, for if detected early they could at least do a follow up on the next step. And I myself know that on the other hand, if no leukaemia cells are detected in the marrow there will be great joy and jubilation.

And besides, like what I, my dad and the doctor say: “Even if it’s a 99 percent failure, if God put you at the 1 percent of success, you will still make it. Percentage is just an estimate.”

Well, I prayed really hard that God will have mercy on me for this, to bring a miraculous healing on me through the power of Christ and when for the bone marrow procedure.

The first news I heard the next day was… GOOD! The doctor did a microscopic test on the marrow and found out that the marrow was clear from any leukaemia blast cells. Oh, for your info, the doctor have to actually go through slide by slide individually to check for any leukaemia blast cells for this microscopic test haha, thought they do it by machine or something (man, that’s hard work, I remember just looking at those plant cells in bio class during high school and that’s a pain). Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! For if even by eye one could see the leukaemia cells, the condition must be really bad I must say. But nevertheless, I still couldn’t really breathe a sense of relief as previously after my salvage chemotherapy (the one prior to my transplant treatment), though microscopically I was clear, but through a “flow” test there was still some leukaemia cells lingering around (a “flow” test can detect a million more cells compared to what the microscope does, as it’s a machine, therefore very much more accurate, sadly Malaysia still doesn’t use it). With that, I continued to pray, as the bible says:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

On the 7^th of June when I woke up in the morning, if there was any news that I consider the best over this whole long treatment, I guess I would have to say is this:

Doctor: “We have received verbally from the lab on the flow test results, and there are no traces of leukaemia cells in the marrow.”

Should be me: (JUMPING FOR JOY) “YAHOO!!!! Thank God for the good news!!”

Well, why did I say “should be me” you might ask? Sadly, due to the effect of the “incredible supreme hot flushes that was going to bust open inside out of my body” that I have mentioned above, I was using all my energy just trying to stay in control from all the heat and keeping my thoughts from getting too anxious and nervous.

Due to that, I couldn’t express my joy and celebration and gratitude somehow, which made mom thinking why in the world do I not look happy at all, haha, when this is such good news. It really makes me think how futile we humans are… a little disturbance to the nerves here, changing the level of hormones there, putting some drugs into the system and our human body system are all mess up. Or perhaps I was just too shocked with the good news that I couldn’t get a hold of myself…

Nevertheless, when I got back to stabilizing my body system again and every now and then in quietness (to be honest, only after a few days later from getting this good news do I seem to realized the significance of it all haha, when my body became more normal), I really still can’t believe how great the love of God is, to allow me to sail through this whole transplant. It is one thing to “know” about God’s love, and another thing to “experience” God’s love and see it first hand the power and might of our living God who hears us, who hears our every prayer. As James 5:16 says:

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

I remember I taught this verse to my Sunday school Inter class on one of the prayer weeks, and it was the memory verse for the week too, but apparently I never really know the true meaning of it all. Sometimes we pray just for the sake of praying, and most of the time, as for me, I realized I pray for my own gains and not for the sake of the Kingdom of God. But God hears the prayer of the pure in heart, the righteous and humble; whose heart has no malice, for their only focus is for the glory of Jesus Christ our Lord. I know I am still not up to that stage yet, as even now I realized there are times where I lose focus and once again pray for my own selfish gains, but all thanks to God for His love and grace, that He did answer my prayer to save me from the pits of death.

On the topic of prayer, I also cannot stop thanking everyone who has prayed and are still praying for me, from my brother and sisters in Christ from Canaan Baptist Church, to my relatives and even their church members, to the church in Singapore who has never even met me before and yet through the love of Christ not only pray for me but donated their blood, and not to forget all the prayers from my friends both locally and abroad too. I used to wonder what is the difference between one person praying compared to a whole crowd on one same prayer request… God still hears right, whether it’s one person or a thousand?

At first I used the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) as one of the reasons: If the cruel judge couldn’t tolerate the widow because she keeps pestering him and thus grant her request, how much more our loving Father if we all cry out to Him? Later on I realized from Matthew 18:19-20 too:

“¹⁹Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. ²⁰For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

Well, I always hear verse 20, but seldom do I hear verse 19 somehow. Now it seems obvious to me on the reason of corporate prayer, but weirdly this verse 19 doesn’t seem to exist at the back of my mind even after reading the whole book of the bible once. I guess that’s why one has to keep doing their quiet time, for the bible is a book that needs to be taught and inspired by the Holy Spirit constantly.

Thank you Lord Jesus, for giving me another chance to live and I am truly grateful for this breath of life. I guess all I want to say to express God’s great love, His amazing grace and everlasting mercy shown to me throughout this whole treatment, to you all, would be like that of Paul:

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19)

God really do loves us so very much, that He send His one and only Son to die for our sins, to set us free from the clutches of sin and death. And that’s more than enough to thank God for all the days of our lives.

So now with my body stabilized I can joyfully say:

“THANK YOU GOD THAT THE FLOW TEST RESULT IS CLEAR FROM LEUKAEMIA CELLS!!! HALLELUJAH!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!”

Of course, though I say smooth sailing, the ship still need to hit some waves in the deep blue sea.

On the 11^th of June, my platelet count that was steadily increasing at a nice pace suddenly dropped to a count of 72 from a count of 90 plus. The doctor suspected it to be a GVHD attack and ordered another blood test to be done in the evening for a recheck. Thank God the platelet count went back up to an acceptable margin that day, and with that the doctor didn’t worry much.

But on the 12^th of June the platelet count once again plunge slightly and this time it did made the doctor quite worried till the point he ordered a bone marrow test to be done in the afternoon the same day, reason being he needs to know immediately whether the slight plunge is caused by the leukaemia cells or the GVHD attacks (as I have mentioned above that the rise and fall of the platelet counts are related to it).

Weirdly, this time around I wasn’t all that worried. Perhaps this time I was confident that my God will carry me through to the end, for He is the perfect Father, and His peace was upon me. And as children of Christ, I always remind myself, that whether good times or bad, we must trust in the Lord and lean not to our own understanding, for Jesus doeth all things well.

Ah, but sadly on the 12^th of June it was my full-moon celebration from the day of my bone marrow transplant ha-ha! My mom bought those red eggs, cakes and snacks to celebrate this day with the doctor and nurses in the ward, while I am dozed off due to the general anaesthetic from the bone marrow procedure. Boohoo… at least I manage to get a slice of the cake. Oh yeah, remind me to write up about all the celebration here in the hospital ward haha, it’s really different here compared to Malaysia.

The next day on the 13^th of June, the doctor immediately receive the bone marrow flow test from the lab, one of the quickest actually as normally it takes around three to four days. The urgency exist because the doctor needs to know whether to cut down the immunosuppressant to let the graft fight the leukaemia cells if it’s due to a relapse, or increase it if it’s due to the graft fighting me instead (come on graft, we are your friends!), it’s a crossroad of one way or another.

And once again, I breathe a sense of relief when the doctor says it’s a mild GVHD attack as the flow test shows that there are once again, zero leukaemia blast cells. All glory and thanks to our living God!

At first glance it seems like a disaster, an attack??!! Oh no!!!! But in reality, it is a good thing as it means that now I am “confirmed” to have a GVHD attack at least once. Previously in the last post I mentioned about the diarrhoea and that it may be a cause of a mild GVHD attack but it wasn’t a 100 percent sure thing to be honest. With this the doctor can safely say that the graft is quite active, and thus increases the chance of recovery for if the leukaemia cells do return, the graft will attack it and keep my body healthy. Now that’s what I call a blessing in disguise haha! It was confirmed even further after the doctor increased the steroids to suppress the graft and resulted in the liver function dropped (apparently the higher the liver function, the more active the GVHD is) and platelet count started to increase a little.

Through this, I can see that God actually answered all my prayers. Firstly that I get to go through the chemotherapy/radiotherapy without suffering any terrible side effects like vomiting and the nauseous feeling, mouth sores, fever (which I thought I could never avoid) and any infections; for the donor’s marrow to be able to be grafted; that I would not suffer any serious GVHD, but a mild one just to ensure that it’s active against the leukaemia cells; and finally for the body to be free from any leukaemia cells. It’s a miracle!!! All glory to God in the highest!

As of the time of writing though, my body is still trying to harmonize with the donor’s marrow and thus the platelet counts, liver function, glucose level and all are fluctuating. Thank God that as of now it is still acceptable and still counted as stable, but will need to pray continually that it will eventually reach to a equilibrium. From all the counts mentioned the platelet would be the most important, if that count could rise steadily, that would mean all is well and the doctor would let me be discharge out of here and being treated as an outpatient instead.

Oh, on my glucose level, it is rather scary to know that I am at a count so high that I need insulin injections to control it. Not that I am a sweet tooth, but the steroids that I am taking to control the GVHD is making my blood sugar level sky-rocket up, even to a level of 17.7 once. But after taking the insulin injection and sugar control pills it is able to drop to a low 3.4 and that made me all light-headed instead (though it does give me a chance to eat some Time-Out chocolate, yummy). Now the usual count is around 7 to 9 something, which is still quite high, but acceptable seeing how I am still fed with steroids… my body really is out of control ughh… At least on the liver function side, it is consider to be a really serious GVHD attack if it reaches a count of 500 plus, and as of right now it’s still under a count of 100, so that’s something less to worry too much about.

Hmm… now I understand the anime Naruto… though the kyuubi seems to give him incredible strength and power to defeat all his foes, yet it takes a lot of pain and effort just to control it or it will destroy him. Same goes with me, the graft helps me to defeat the leukaemia cells, yet it destroys me too if I don’t control and suppress it. Wait a minute; scrap this, what am I talking about??!

On the 20^th of June, my dad, younger brother and maternal grand-parents came over to Singapore to pay me a visit. Well, I must admit I sure was glad to see them all, it’s not often I get to see anybody else here and when dad comes he’ll cook some home cook meals, something for a change.

I think the first thing they got really worried about (younger brother was laughing out loud though) was when they see my face bloated up like a round moon. Funny thing is that they did see this before… way during the first time I was diagnose with leukaemia haha (I guess some of you church youths saw it too back during Chinese New Year 2006, when I came out for like a second before I went back in to the comfort of my room to rest again), and even then the steroid level was way higher too apparently. Dad says I look like an alien hahaha! Though for a baby this steroid side effect makes them really chubby, seeing how my neighbouring baby friend looks like (from a photo through the nurse though, I never came out of the room since being admitted into it).

Hope they did enjoy their time here too besides just visiting me, otherwise I feel kind of guilty that they came all the way here just to see me. At least they did visit the night safari over here, haha, and it is the grand sale now you know.

Humans always want more.

For a person who earns 10 dollars a week, getting 100 dollars all a sudden is a gift from heaven;

Though for a person who earns 10,000 dollars a week, 100 dollars are just mere tips to those who serve at their tables.

Even while just playing a computer word game with my mom, mom also realized that when one has achieve a certain level of points, those measly 500 point words just doesn’t cut it anymore compared to the thousands that one can get, though it is through those measly points that one could only go to the next level initially.

Going through this whole trial really teaches me to enjoy the simple things in life that we normally take for granted, not once, but over and over again, seeing how the process keeps repeating itself for me, and learn to be content. Reminding myself yet again not to be overcome with greed and want more each and everyday, for God will always supply all our needs in the glorious riches of Christ Jesus our Lord.

Having to go through the side effects of chemotherapy almost every time, making me not being able to sleep well, eat well, doing my business normally; getting fatigue so easily and even the restriction of my daily movement due to various reasons… I guess nowadays I really thank God and feel very appreciative whenever I could yet again experience the comfort of doing these simple daily functions like a healthy person.

That was why on the 25^th of June I was really glad when I was free from writing and reporting my input and output that I need to do daily to ensure that what I was eating and drinking was coherent with what I was passing out too. The doctor says that the food and drinks intake and output seems stable, which was why it can be stop. I tell you, it really is a relief. Imagine more than a month having to measure your urine in a urinal all the time and reporting what you ate always as the input and output cannot be too far apart in reading. And if it does they will inject some kind of drug to force you to urine, and somehow they do it at the worst possible moment of time haha --- they will inject me during the time where they will put the drug that will make me sleepy to reduce the allergy reaction during platelet or blood transfusion --- somehow sleepy and being all drugged out plus needing to use the bathroom don’t mix. But thankfully this time around they only use this “force urine” drug initially for a week or 2, and I thank God for that as it wasn’t too bad in a way compared to… last time… (Though this time around I did a lot of “estimate” on the urine when I pass motion… I mean, how can one not urine when he does his big business? And you expect him to measure it?)

I guess all I can say that it really is a pleasant joy… to use the bathroom like how a normal human does when one has to do his or her business and not having to use the urinal; and not to forget that you don’t need to crack your head every now and then and have someone keep pestering you what you had for breakfast, lunch and dinner all the time.

I also really thank God that this time around there were less intravenous drips to be put up and it wasn’t really needed constantly after a week or 2 if I remember. Compared to last time where I explained the Christmas tree look-a-like infusion pumps that I need to push around due to too many drips, God has been really gracious to me and protected me from any infections throughout this whole transplant treatment plus the donor’s marrow was quick to grow white cells to protect my body, thus the antibiotics were changed to oral rather quickly instead of having it intravenously. If I am correct, I only had fever once throughout this whole treatment, and that was due to the body not being able to adapt with the protein that I was receiving to suppress the donor’s marrow. Praise God for that! Not being link to any drips is another true joy of freedom I must say. Not only does it make you feel sick being link to drips, it makes you rather frustrated as you feel really trap, and once again going to the bathroom is a big issue I must say… pulling a whole machine along all the time.

As of the time of writing I thank God that I can do and enjoy most of the simple joys in life, though of course it still isn’t the same yet, as I still feel some mild hot flushes now and then when I sleep, my stomach seems to be a little haywire but it is getting better I guess (you can hear the sound of wind and water in it constantly like a loud speaker, and it’s never really solid), I seem to still get tired easily just by eating… but all in all, I still thank God that at least I am able to enjoy these functions more normally as each day passes by, compared to being bed-ridden or having my stomach hurting so bad that I can’t eat or sleep.

Alright, that’s all till now I guess, will try to write some other fun stuff that did happen over the days I am here in Singapore.

Hope that you all will continue to pray for me, especially on the matter that the donor’s marrow will be able to harmonize with mine, and allow the blood platelets to rise up quickly, as truth to be told, I really want to be discharge from the hospital too. Oh, not to forget, give thanks to the Lord for all the great things He has done too! Always give thanks.

Then again, I guess in good times or bad, I’ll need to continue to trust in the Lord, for He knows best.

All your base R belong to us...

2008-06-10T09:06:00.000+08:00

This is just a log of the things that happened in May. I hope this update wouldn’t be too confusing, as when I wrote this I kept putting myself in between the present and past image/thoughts of myself.

17^th of May

I have heard from the doctor and nurses here that this treatment of radiotherapy plus chemotherapy plus transplant would most probably make me ill to the point that I may need to be fed intravenously. The main concern would be that the mouth linings degrade so much that it sores and bleed in which it would make me impossible to put food in my mouth as it is too painful. I guess the doctor and nurses here didn’t see how bad my mouth degrade prior to the relapse (till the point where I need to clean a lipstick of harden blood every morning and mouth linings coming off everyday), but if then I could still force myself to eat my daily meals, I thought this wouldn’t be a problem. Nevertheless, in my mind I still hold on to the idea that the mouth degradation that they mentioned is way worst than what I had experienced before in order to get myself ready if anything happens… hoping for the best but expecting the worst as they say.

With this hope, I thought I would never need to be fed intravenously at all during my battle against leukaemia; after all, if it’s the pain from the mouth I could always gulp down a few nutritious drinks to sustain myself during that period of time. But I guess when the pain and discomfort comes from the stomach, it was just another thing altogether and I had to give in and accept being fed intravenously. *chuckle~* The weird thing was that the day before I was feeling really well and all and could eat quite a lot (my gut felt quite uncomfortable for the days prior to this, but still bearable then), which I really thank God for as days like that don’t come around so often nowadays, but at night my stomach hurt so bad that I had trouble sleeping. And I thought it was suppose to be a sign for better things to come.

They call the food TBN, which I think it means “total body nutrition” (someone correct me if I am wrong, haha, just a wild guess). Due to the radiation and chemotherapy my gut seems to be, well, like what the doctor said, asleep or becoming lazy, and thus causing the food I eat to be processed and digested at a snail pace. Being so slow the bacteria’s in the stomach starts eating the food instead and form lots of gas, causing my stomach to hurt and feel really uncomfortable.

If you want to know how it feels, imagine this: your whole gut is filled with gas, but you can’t pass it out… at all… from either side. IT’S GONNA BLOW!!!

Yeah something like that.

The slowing of gut movement also caused diarrhoea, which was kind of a hassle as I am always connected to the drip, making trips to the bathroom much harder, but at least I thank God that it wasn’t the kind where you have no control over it.

So I stop eating due to the above reason and was fed intravenously. What was my first impression being fed by TBN?

“Hey this isn’t so bad at all, now I am free from the stress of eating!”

I say “stress” because it takes quite a lot of strength for me to eat apparently and it’s more of a chore with my body being “not” so normal. Being fed with this TBN, I feel more relaxed and free as the responsibility to “need” to eat is gone. Now not only does my gut can rest from digesting stuff, my mouth lining wouldn’t get damage either as I don’t put any food in it, and the best thing of all would be that I somehow never felt hungry at all (though once in awhile KFC’s advertisement will tempt me and that heavenly food documentary on Discovery Channel made me build up quite an appetite--- for that moment at least --- for I know if I do eat I am going to have to pay the price of a really uncomfortable stomach yet again).

18^th of May till 23^rd of May

Praise the Lord! For though there were some sores starting to form at the back of my mouth and throat, which hurts a little comparing to what I have gone through, those sores didn’t became worst and on the contrary subsided in a few days. I really thank God for His grace and mercy, for allowing me to get treatment here in Singapore and have access to a drug that could protect my linings, and even so the doctor says that it may turn out disastrous but yet God delivered me from this pain.

My diarrhoea also subsided for the time being and became soft stools instead, it still was troublesome in a way as I needed to use the bathroom quite often to do my business, but well at least I am not losing fluids so easily and the doctor says it isn’t something to be of concern of due to my weak gut, haha.

24^th of May

It has been about a week since I survived just eating “space food” (which was what my mom and I call the TBN as it was white in colour, like a bag of milk, though taste-wise I have no idea), so I decided to try and eat some food to enable the gut to be able to be at least be a little active and start functioning again.

Well, took some Locker’s biscuit and a cup of tea… I think… and all was well…

…till evening came.

I had uncontrollable diarrhoea, not like those mentioned above, but the kind where if you don’t go now, someone’s going to need to do the dirty job (No, not Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe in Discovery). It was also different in a way that I had minor cramps from my stomach as I pass it out, the stools became a really scary dark brown in colour, and I was really tired after the whole event ended. And I went twice.

At first I thought it was due to the fact that I once again started to eat and my stomach was not use to it, but from the doctor’s perspective it could be a graft versus host disease (GVHD) on my gut, which caused this diarrhoea to be different. Not leaving anything to chance, the doctor decided to put me on steroids to control the GVHD, in addition to the normal anti-diarrhoea pills.

Though this seems like a terrible thing, I was actually grateful to God and hoping that it IS a GVHD. As I have mentioned before, it’s better to have an attack to ensure that the donor’s marrow actually does its job to fight off the leukaemia cells in my body, and not be a gentleman that would just let these bad cells walk pass the door and cause the whole problem yet again. And if it was a GVHD, at least I am not suffering a weird attack of diarrhoea in vain. Better go through a GVHD with something mild like diarrhoea than a kidney or liver failure which is way too drastic even for me to imagine.

25^th of May and 26^th of May

Thank God that the uncontrollable diarrhoea didn’t come again after that day with all the drugs administered, though I couldn’t pass any motion at all after that since I was taking the anti-diarrhoea pills.

The doctor says that it is good indicator that it is a mild GVHD attack as the diarrhoea did not came back after steroids was administered, which I pray to God that it really is, as it gives me a higher chance of recovery.

On the 26^th I was also starting to feel a pulsing pain from the pelvic bone (the place where my bone marrow is normally drew out). But the pain being bearable, I just concluded that it was just a case of the steroids side effects and didn’t bother much of it, as most of the time while taking steroids some part of my body bounds to get aches.

Oh yeah, and on this day too I also had my blood drawn for a test to check the percentage of the donor’s white cells compared to mine in my body, since the white cell count in my body was at a desirable level to take the test, around 4 I think. Was praying hard that the results would be 100 percent of that of the donor’s marrow, for then it’ll be a better result for recovery, which would be explained later.

27^th of May

The pulsing pain from the pelvic bone doesn’t seem to get better but worst, and that’s when I asked the doctor for help. The doctor told me that it was normal (phew, breath a sigh of relief), and that it was due to the white cells expanding in the marrow at a really quick rate which causes the pain. I am not one who normally submits to taking pain killers, but this time it was that painful. Nevertheless, always trying to stand to my anti-painkiller stand, I decided to start of with something mild – Panadol – to relieve the pain.

~~Weapon~~ doesn’t seem to have an effect.

So I took a stronger one – Panadin (or once again… something like that, pardon my blurness)

No effect.

And finally I took some weird looking pill which seems to be quite a high grade painkiller.

At least some effect… but my pelvic bone could still feel the pulsing pain.

Guess I have to bear with it.

On this day I also finally manage to do my big business, though it seems rather insignificant to a normal human being, yet it’s a great deal here as finally it’s not the diarrhoea watery kind, but just well… soft muddy kind? The colour changed from a scary dark brown to a normal shade of brownish, which I do hope is the normal colour of a good stool… hmm… why am I talking about this anyway. Some parts of my body were also starting to recover too, which was a good sign that the body wasn’t going to degrade any further.

Ah, and I guess I didn’t explained why the white cell counts were going up so fast. Apparently because the donor’s marrow didn’t go through the radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment, it grows at a normal rate when it successfully grafts onto my body (which I thank God for that, as if it didn’t even grafted I wouldn’t even be writing anything about this right now as there are no white cells to talk about), compared to my other tissues that were stressed and damage by the treatment. I was like: “yeah horh, how come I didn’t think of that before.” In a way the donor’s marrow got “jump-started”, plus the Neupogen that they give daily to spur the white cell growth in my body, it shot up pretty quick. And this is another thing that I am very grateful to our Lord Jesus Christ, as in my mind I thought one needed at least like 3 months for one to be able to recover their white cells after the transplant, and it was not so. All glory to God!

28^th of May

The pulsing pain still didn’t stop and that leads me to giving up my macho stand on painkillers and just cut to the chase, asking them for the strongest they got. At least this time it did manage to quell the pain after eating the pill, but yet the pulsing feeling kept haunting me… as if the pain is going to jump and surprise me anytime.

And today I finally was also able to stop eating the “space food” since I was able to eat once again on my own and my gut was able to process and digest food without any pain, though it still was a little sluggish, which means more soft muddy stools to come… and which also means more trips to the toilet. Ah, the horror for a lazy person!

But I guess all these discomfort and pain seems really petty when one receives a really good news~! I’ve got the result from the doctor that the donor’s marrow has taken full control inside the body, a 100 percent result. And there I was thinking that the last thing I could ever get 100 percent for was my math’s exam during form 3, and even then it wasn’t by my power but God’s too (I tembak 2 questions right, ah, and the truth is revealed).

The significance of this? It means that the white cells in my body consist of entirely the donor’s and not even a single of my own, which in a way could be deduced that the leukaemia cells are no longer in the body, since those count as my own.

Hallelujah!!! Praise the Lord!!!

I guess it’s only a deduction, but nevertheless, if this wasn’t at 100 percent the next few test wouldn’t be that much of a pretty picture. The next test would be the bone marrow tap, and from there the doctor would be able to verify if I am in complete remission or not. I am still praying hard that my whole body will be free from this disease in the power and mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord, for it is only through Him, that I can only be completely healed now.

And with that, the donor’s marrow says:

“All your base R belong to us’

Day 3...

2008-05-15T16:51:00.000+08:00

Hmm…

Things aren’t going easily as first of all, sleeping seems to be a little of a problem with the constant heating up of the body from either the radiotherapy/chemotherapy side effects or the control drug that I am taking every day (at least there isn’t the anxiety that comes along with it with the change of the drug that I took --- that feeling can make you go crazy, you can’t even make a single decision at all).

Eating is also becoming a problem as in addition to my not so good appetite, my mouth lining seems to be degrading too and apparently it’s only going to get worst.

And I don’t know what’s causing it, but my head seems to get dizzy real easily. And my stomach feels nauseous at the worst possible moment --- when I want to eat.

I guess all I can say now is that my body is really really tired. It doesn’t come as a surprise as the radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment that was given is strong enough to kill my own marrow.

Then again, it is… in a way easier than I have imagined. I remember clearly what I have read and it says after the transplant it makes some people bedridden for like a week or two and need to be fed through drips. Well, at least now I still can eat with my own mouth and wake up and stay awake without feeling any fatigue for at least an hour plus. And I also read that one would be prone to infection for at least like 3 months, but the doctor said that around 10-14 days the donor’s white cell will start to be produced in my body and that eliminates it. Though of course, with that comes along with it the graft versus host disease, but let’s leave that for later.

So, in a way I thank God that it isn’t as horrific as I have imagined. Staying in the same room for 3 months and being haunted by almost any infection will make anyone insane I guess.

Counting from the day of my transplant this will be day 3, with day 0 being the day of my transplant. The condition of my mouth degrading and all will only worsen till day 6 and after that it will start to get better with the donor’s marrow kicking into high gear; but with the donor’s marrow active that causes the graft versus host disease to start too. Really need to pray to God on this as only now He can do the things we can’t control at all, which is to allow my body to sustain and not degrade, especially my mouth lining till pass day 6. And after that I will need to pray that God will keep me from any harm, especially from the graft versus host disease, that it will be just a mild one to be in favour with the treatment.

Nothing left to do but to hope in the Lord, who knows our every need and is faithful.

Transplant...

2008-05-13T15:20:00.002+08:00

I thought I was the only one who was going to say this, but apparently even the doctor had this thought in mind as once he entered the room he said:

“Happy Birthday!”

Well, my second birthday that is, as I had my bone marrow transplant done yesterday, starting at 9 at night. Woo-hoo! More presents for me!

I guess the only thing that looks a little more special during the transplant would be the icebox that they put the marrow in (which is the normal blue icebox we take to the beach)… for the bone marrow itself doesn’t look any different than a normal blood pack cell. Oh, and I kind of felt like a VIP that day as most of the nurses and doctors were there to erm… “Celebrate” this day ha-ha! Too bad I was having that drug that made me drowsy, only allowing me to catch parts and parcels of what all of them were saying before I knocked out, dampening the “celebration”.

I really thank God that all went well:

~From the point where the donor gets ready to donate, where he must be healthy and all till the day of the transplant (and being there to donate and not run away).

~The bone marrow from Taiwan was able to be delivered just before news of China being hit by an earthquake was reported in CNN, which apparently also affected the neighbouring countries.

~I did not develop any serious reactions during the bone marrow transfusion.

There was one frustration though, which was that I couldn’t have any shut-eye because many observations had to be done during the marrow transfusion, where every 5 minutes the nurses will need to check the blood pressure, heart rate and oxygen level. And when all that was done, I was having those hot flushes whenever I try to sleep, making me toss and turn non-stop till I requested for some sleeping pills.

The ironic thing was, in the morning today I had a slight headache because of apparently “too much sleep”, but I was feeling sleepy… but I couldn’t sleep because it worsens the headache… so at the end I had to drag myself out of bed and take some breakfast despite the little voice telling me to just lie down again.

And voila, what do you know… a little discipline in my system and I was feeling very much better. Nevertheless, I am always reminding myself to be content always and give thanks in all circumstances, especially since God really has given me so much grace throughout the whole process.

I would also like to take this time to thank everyone, and I really mean thank you with all my heart, especially to my church members and my cousin’s church members that were praying for me during the night of the transplant. It’s through your prayers that everything went well. I am confident that God will hear our prayers because He is a living God, an almighty God, a living God, and most importantly a God who loves us so dearly. And I know He won’t let our prayers be in vain, for He is compassionate.

*Chuckle* Somehow now I feel indebted to a lot of churches for praying so dearly for me while on the other hand I have this couldn’t care less attitude when it comes to praying for someone that we don’t really recognize. What more with Pastor Swee Kee’s church members donating blood to me in Singapore, and I haven’t even met any of them in person yet! Ah, the feeling of being in debt…

And I guess I got to thank the donor too, for giving me another chance of life. The doctor said that he had to undergo at least 100 punctures to withdraw the amount of bone marrow I needed (1.5 litres) *ouchies* and he still wished me a speedy recovery too. The feeling of guilt comes to me yet again as I haven’t even donated so much as a pint of blood.

Then again, this ultimately reminds me of the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. We didn’t do anything at all to gain salvation, yet Jesus died on the cross for our sakes, so that we might have eternal life, free from sin and shame. And that really deserves all our thanks and gratitude, as we can never be able to pay back this blood debt with our own hands.

Please do continue to pray for me, that the grace of God and His peace will continue to transcend upon me. First of all that the donor’s marrow will engraft on mine and my body won’t somehow reject it. That His mighty hand will be able to prevent any high risk graft versus host disease to happen, but at the same time, allow a mild graft versus host attack to improve the chances of recovery from leukaemia (as it indicates that the donors white cell will attack the leukaemia cells too)(in layman terms, like an aunt said: “it’s like a happy marriage, you have to be close to one another, but once in awhile there’s quarrels that bound to happen, just don’t let it get to severe that it causes a divorce). To allow me to sail through easily this whole time of recovery till my blood counts go back to normal, free from infections and any complications. And most importantly, to be finally free from this disease at the end of it all.

P.S: A huge salute to women out there who could bear with the menopause side effects: 2-3 days of me having hot flushes and anxiety through the side effect of an anti graft versus host disease medication almost make me go crazy.

Oh listen to the radio...

2008-05-07T00:44:00.000+08:00

Heya! First of all, I would like to say a big thank you for those who wished me a birthday greeting last month, really appreciate it.

And secondly, would like to inform those who are reading my blog that I am currently undergoing a radiotherapy and chemotherapy session this week, with the first radiotherapy session started today --- which I must thank God for as so far it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Well, another 2 days of radiotherapy, another 2 for chemotherapy, a rest on Sunday, and the transplant procedure will start on Monday.

By the way, just to clear things up, I don’t need to undergo any kind of surgery for a bone marrow transplant, it’s intravenous, by drips that is, though on the other hand the donor would be considered “less” fortunate as he needs to undergo one to harvest the marrow. Guess I really need to thank him some time in the future, and thank God that I don’t need to go through another painful experienced too, ha-ha!

Oh, after things has settle down I guess I will write in more detailed what has happened, starting from the last post and all. But don’t keep your hopes up too much, ha-ha, even till now I still haven’t completely written the journal on the month of October, November, December… last year.

Continue to pray for me, especially for the transplant to go well. And if all goes well, this would be the last hurdle I’ll need to overcome.

Better than life...

2008-04-12T23:27:00.003+08:00

Alright, I am going to try to recap everything that had happened since the day I came to Singapore for treatment, as the other post was written a little hastily and missed out a lot details (that, and I have forgotten what I have written in that post). Well, if you’re too lazy to read just skip past the part that you think you have read ha-ha! And if you are too lazy to do that too, just skip to the 3rd [*], that’s the important part… I think.

*

On the first day I was admitted to Mount Elizabeth Hospital (13th of March, Thursday), I had to undergo a minor surgery to insert a new line on the left side of my chest and remove the chemo-pod on the right, for back then while I was treated for relapse in Malaysia I was having an unidentified cause of fever for quite some time and at the end the suspected cause was an infection in my chemo-pod. The long wait for the fever to subside during my treatment in Malaysia, which didn’t of course as one needs to remove the chemo-pod first, was the reason for the delay in me going to Singapore to seek for further treatment.

Back to the minor surgery, I thought it wouldn’t be much of a problem at all as the general anesthetic makes you go soundly asleep and the next thing you know, voila, all is done when you wake up. Perhaps some pains later from the surgery, but nothing to worry about I thought. But this time around the general anesthetic gave me an incredible nauseous feeling the moment I regain consciousness and this is not something I expected, as normally for me having general anesthetic seems like taking some nice drug which allows you to sleep nicely and all (then again, those “drugs” give you a massive headache afterwards too ha-ha). But this time around when I regain consciousness I was struggling hard just to control not getting nauseous, and yet the nurses were pestering me to wake up and asking me to do something or another which was all a blur then to me. If I could talk then I would have just ask them to let me sleep in peace… I mean come on, I just undergo a surgery!

The next day I was scheduled for a cardiology test to check if my heart was strong enough to take one of the chemotherapy drug that was suppose to be given to me later on in the day. The moment I woke up I realized something wasn’t quite right, as I was still feeling dizzy and I was sure the general anesthetic effect should have been gone by now. Though the hospital treatment and technology here is generally much better compared to back at home, while I was being wheel chaired down to the cardiologist department I realized one thing better about Gleneagles Hospital back in Malaysia compared to this hospital:

Back in Gleneagles the patients and hospital staffs have their own service lifts, around 6 to 8 in fact that takes you from the ward to all the facilities in the hospital (surgery room, x-ray, etc) and is located away from the lifts used by visitors, meaning that the patients will almost never see any outsiders in their path; over here though there seems to be only one service lift and this lift is located together with the visitors lift (they use a key to enable the usage of that one lift), and not only that, the corridor to the facilities (that’s including the surgery room) is the same as where every outsider/visitor walks through and flow. I don’t know about you guys, but it seems really weird to me to see a Coffee Bean stall just beside you while you’re being push to surgery room or wheel chaired into some department. It’s like you are in some shopping mall, but I am in a hospital! Is my mind playing tricks on me?!!

So having the dizziness and headache I went through the cardio test half asleep, once in awhile being awaken by the cold gel-like substance on the detector. I tried to take in as much data as I can about what was going on though, as it was my first time seeing my heart pumping on a screen, which was kind of fascinating I must say, ha-ha! The test result of my heart turns out that it wasn’t strong enough to take in the chemotherapy drug mentioned, and with that, the doctor decided to cancel that drug from the treatment plan as it was better to let the heart rest and get ready for the transplant than risking it getting anymore weaker than it is now. Hmm… I wanted to go: “YES! Less chemo drugs!” as less drugs meant less side effects and stress on my body, but… at the same time the treatment being less potent may have it’s negatives --- less effectiveness perhaps. Then again, the doctor said that the gain is much more than the negatives, and since doctors knows best, I guess that’s one less chemo-drug to worry about.

With that test result out I then started my 5 days of salvage chemotherapy treatment, which involves a chemo-drug that runs for 20 hours and administered for each 5 days, and another one that last for 45 minutes (I think…) for 5 days. In all honestly the chemo-drug that runs for 20 hours was a real pain. Maybe it’s just my mentality, but having chemo going into you non-stop makes me feel like I am drinking poison slowly over time and thus make my whole body feel really sick and uncomfortable. And with 20 hours my body can’t even take a break at all as the chemo just keeps coming in. This is the reason why “sometimes” I prefer those stronger chemo-drugs which takes around 15-45 minutes to completion as even though they have stronger side effects, I seem to be able to rest sooner and not be dreaded by the thought of chemo going into my body. And back then while I had that chemo-drug that ran for 24 hours for ONE day I thought it was really suffering, imagine 5 days of 20 hours now.

And it wasn’t soon before long that I realized why I was still having the dizziness and headache even after resting for a day since getting the general anesthetic side effect. Once again the headache and dizziness was caused by the instability of the cerebral fluid or something like that by the lamba puncture procedure, which I had experienced before previously. It got worst with the chemotherapy and that made me stay in bed the whole day as even if I just lift my head any higher than the sleeping position, it will give my head a great deal of pain and dizziness, and with that dizziness it makes me nauseous (nauseous from the dizziness, not the chemo). And though I was protected with many anti-nausea drugs, which I really thank God for, yet I could still feel as if the chemo-drugs are swelling up in my brain which makes me hard to sleep and rest, especially since then I “was” always in a sleeping position. I had to switch my head position often just to find the perfect spot where I could sleep peacefully, as weirdly each time I position my head differently on the pillow I am able to get some sweet rest.

Even though eating “should not” be a problem, as I wasn’t feeling nauseous at all (though appetite wise, it wasn‘t really good during the first week where the chemotherapy was administered), I can’t eat solid food as I can’t stay longer than 5 minutes sitting up. Thank God for nutrition drinks which could sustain me then, as one can gulp down a cup in less than a minute, therefore sparing me from having to be fed through IV drips.

To add to my problems of immobility and pain from the headaches and dizziness, I developed a severe rash on my body on the 5th day of my salvage chemotherapy treatment… just when I thought I could avoid this side-effect which was mentioned by my doctor, as he told me that I may develop rashes from this chemo-drug. It seems really mild at first, just like the allergy I have when I transfuse blood platelets which was just itchiness and some bumps growing on the skin, so I was scratching my back (which was the starting site of the rash) and thinking that after a while it will go away. It didn’t --- instead it started to crawl up towards my whole body and eventually most of my whole body was red with rashes. Eventually the rashes that were formed on the palm of my hands and sole of my foot were the ones causing trouble, as they hurt when you exert pressure on it (though in my opinion the rashes on my arms were the more scary looking ones). And later on I realized how severe the rash was on those spots when the skin on them started to peel off, like it got burned or something.

And the problems of immobility just doesn’t stop there. Back then in Malaysia when I had two infusion pumps I was already like: “Woah, so hard to push!” Right now I have a total of a maximum of four infusion pumps to push around if I ever need to move about. There are four of them this time as they needed to run in the hydration, the chemo-drug, the antibiotics all at one go. The toilet having a badly designed ramp into it isn’t helping much either --- for a sick person to push all that weight over a bump to enter the bathroom seems almost impossible, which was why I need to trouble my mom to stay overnight here with me in the hospital in order to take care of me. With all those pumps running at one go, and red and green lights blinking on it all the while, it seems to lit up like a Christmas Tree at night. The other reason why I needed my mom to stay overnight with me was the fact that over here you need to calculate the input and output of my body quite accurately; because of that, even with a nice toilet here I seldom use it as most of the time I urinate inside the erm… bottle like thingy to do the measurement. I guess it’s a blessing in disguise as pushing the pumps all the way into the bathroom seems more of a hassle anyway. Then again, it really gets annoying when the nurses keeps asking you about your input and output all the time, especially if you can‘t remember what the volume was or when you take in a lot of food and you need to start thinking about what you ate one by one. If the input is very much more than the output they will inject me with this drug that would induce me to urinate, and that causes me to need to use the bathroom… I mean bottle… about 3 times in a row in a span of 30 minutes or so, and to add to my problems they do it while I am still sleeping in the morning… of all the times. Thankfully the nurses were more considerate later on and gave me the drug only when I am wide awake.

~Oh, a side note. the doctors here in Singapore somehow always seems to tell you the worst case scenario of everything that they are doing. For example, before the surgery for the insertion of the new line the surgeon told me about what he was going to do, then later on to what may go wrong, then to the worst case scenario, which was that they need to put in a pipe through my lungs as the needle they are going to put in my veins may penetrate through them and go in the lungs, making it puff up and they need the pipe to pull the air out. Kind of scary when you hear it, but then again, it at least allows you to be prepared and not get shocked when you wake up with something other than what you expected. Same goes with the hematology doctor, who told me all the side effects that I may get prior to giving me the chemo: severe rash which I have already mentioned, mouth sores and diarrhea, just to name a few.

And talking about diarrhea…. This was one of the side effects from chemotherapy that I had never experience before even after like 18 cycles of chemo previously and now that I had it, it happened in a really embarrassing way. I think it was in the wee hours of the morning and during then my physical condition wasn’t really good, everything seems rather chaotic and my body doesn’t seems to be in sync with my mind (I think I was about to get a fever… if I remember that is). Well, I decided to pass out some gas and because of the confuse state of my mind then, I just decided to go all out without erm, like testing… if you know what I mean. Instead of the usual *woosh* sound, a loud *splurt* was heard and the first thing in my mind was: “Awww man, all the mess that I have made!!!!” Remember that I was still having the severe headache and dizziness, and it really was a hassle just to go clean up in the bathroom and trying to hold in the pain from the headache. Not to mention the mess I made on the bed for the nurses to clean up… ughh… it makes me feel like I am some kid who doesn’t know how to use the bathroom.

By experiencing diarrhea in this course of chemotherapy, I think I had experience almost all the major side effects there is for chemotherapy found in the book of childhood leukemia that I have back at home, except for pneumonia that is. Praying to God that I don’t have that as it seems the hardest to get through and cured compared to all the others.

After a few days I was able to sit up long enough to be able to eat normally, yet there came another problem --- the food that enters my mouth doesn’t have any taste at all (or drinks for that matter). Apparently it’s another one of the side effects from chemotherapy and I if I am right this should also be a first for me too. I am not sure if it’ because my tongue isn’t that sensitive to taste anymore because of the chemotherapy or perhaps of the mucus like thingy that seems to be all over my mouth that is causing almost anything to feel tasteless. Unless the food has an extreme taste -- either too sweet, salty or perhaps bitter (thank God there wasn’t any food like that as of now) I would only be able to taste them.

*

Well, writing up to this point you can see that I started out my chemotherapy treatment this time at a pretty bad shape and even I myself expected that it would go all the way downhill as then I still had some white blood cells to defend my body, imagine what happens when I don’t have any left --- first thing that came to my mind was the pain from infections, the fevers that I need to suffer day by day and perhaps severe mouth ulcers --- that was what experience told me from going through heavy chemotherapy like this.

But by the amazing grace of God, and I really really mean AMAZING! The hardest part of this chemotherapy was only during the starting of it all, during the administration of the chemo-drug and perhaps plus minus a few days after that, where I was feeling quite tired and all. After the end of the last chemo, my headache and dizziness got better really quick, each day I could stay up longer and longer and eventually it wasn’t there anymore (took around approximately 3 days after the end of the chemo). After those short dreaded days, everything seems to go just fine and getting better each day instead. So fine in fact that I wish it would just stay this way so I wouldn’t need to face the fear of the next chemotherapy treatment *chuckle*.

I really thank God that He hears our prayers. I remembered the Sunday before I left for Singapore, where the pastoral council came and prayed for me, I brought out the prayer request that the side effects from the chemotherapy treatment will not be present, or at least kept at a minimal so that this treatment would be easier to go through… though in my human wisdom I was kind of expecting the worst in all honesty. But give thanks to God that though I was doubting in His power to deliver me from all these sufferings, yet He showed His grace upon me and allow me to rest in comfort and peace, peace that surpasses all understanding in Christ Jesus.

And God really works in a wonderful way. Though I was suffering from some of the side effects from chemotherapy and at first it seems like a pain to have it, yet God used these side effects to prevent me from getting other side effects that are even worst and which I fear even more. For example:

~Diarrhea was one of the side effects that I didn’t had before and by all means I don’t want to have it… I mean like who wants to get sick right? But by having diarrhea, it in a way prevents me from getting the opposite extreme of it which was constipation. The problem with having constipation is that since my platelet count is so low and the stool is so hard, I bleed almost certainly when I do my business and that gives me an infection when my white cell count is at a zero. Out of all the pain I suffered I must say that the pain from getting an anal infection would be one of the worst I have ever experienced. It’s one of the only reason where I hope my white cell count doesn’t go up as once my body starts to fight the infections on it’s own again the pain comes. The pain feels like someone is trying to tear your butt apart sideways and it wouldn’t be much of a problem if one only feels the pain once in awhile, but constantly 24/7 without any rest… that will really drive anyone insane. Not only that, there’s this itchiness inside it that makes you go crazy too, couldn‘t sleep because of it last time. By having diarrhea, my stools are soft, which prevents bleeding when I past motion and with that completely avoiding the possibility of me having an anal infection. In fact, this is one of the times where I don’t even need to worry about the risk of constipation when I do my business compared to the other times when my white cell counts drop to an all time low, as it’s always soft. And before you go: “Yeah, yeah, but what about the trouble of having to keep using the bathroom continuously and the lost of so much water causing dehydration?” By the grace of God, after the day where I made that mess on the bed, most of my motion are more on the soft side, yet not liquid enough (hope you guys understand my description, ha-ha!) to be considered as diarrhea anymore, to me at least. So in a way to summarize, I don’t have to face the trouble of having to use the bathroom continuously because of diarrhea, yet I have really soft stools (even till today) that prevents me from getting constipation, and with that sparing me from the horrible pain that I thought I would have to face. I guess the only trouble would be since the stool is so soft, most of the time when I want to urine, I seem to always need to do my motion too, ha-ha, but that’s a price I am definitely willing to pay.

~Besides that, the other side effect I mentioned was tastelessness. From what I think, it was caused by a layer of mucus that was formed in the mouth lining which makes me unable to taste anything, but… this mucus in a way also protected my mouth from getting sores as it’s quite thick. It’s thick enough that when I drink hot water apparently it becomes cold when it reaches the mucus (the mucus are at it’s thickest at the tongue and the tip of my mouth). With this mucus, my mouth couldn’t become dry at all and thus avoiding my mouth from tearing apart and bleed, as the chemotherapy destroys the mouth linings too. It also prevents food from scratching the linings of the mouth, thus causing less damage, and with that preventing ulcers from happening.

With that, you can see the two side-effects that should be troublesome turn out to help me in return by the grace of God. And God’s love and care for me just doesn’t stop there. In my mind I readily expected that when I undergo this chemotherapy session I would need to at least suffer a week long of fever. Not trying to be a pessimist here, but when I had the chemotherapy in Malaysia for my relapse it was quite a strong one, and then I had fever… what more now where I am having a chemotherapy treatment that is 12 times stronger than that. I was prepared for the worst, and it didn’t help that the fever started even when my white cell counts weren’t at rock bottom yet, just pass a few days after the 5 days of chemotherapy administration. Yet again by God’s grace the hospital treatment here treats fever really differently compare to what they do normally back in Malaysia. In Malaysia, when I get a fever the doctor put on antibiotics and does a blood culture and all that, but the fever still stays there… and I will need to take in the suffering from the fever till my white cell count goes back up again and my body could defend for itself, which would mean around a week plus. Over here on the other hand, when there’s a fever… well they still do the same thing such as giving me antibiotics and do a blood culture… but weirdly the fever actually gets CURED instead of lingering around till my white cell counts are back up again. So in short, whenever I get a fever, the doctor will start to administer antibiotics (viral, fungal, bacteria) and make sure that the fever goes away as soon as possible, which is normally just in that day itself where the fever won‘t reoccur anymore. The idea here is that the fever has to settle down as that means there isn’t any bacteria left that are causing the infections… I am wondering why in Malaysia that isn’t the case though, you mean they put all those antibiotics yet they still can’t kill any of the those bad bacteria at all? Nevertheless, I really thank God as with that, I don’t need to suffer day after day having to bear the effects of fever --- extreme shivering, then excessive sweating, then a short moment of rest, rinse and repeat… ouchies…

For once I am glad that I was wrong in my prediction and that the worst part of this whole treatment was at the start, and it got all the better as time passes instead of worst even with the white cell count down. I guess I got to ask God for forgiveness as in some ways I was actually doubting that He could carry me through this trial easily and give me rest and peace that is more than I could imagine. But God still showed His love for me by letting me enjoy in comfort more than the days where I need to suffer from discomfort and pain.

I can say that I am enjoying in comfort so much that I am actually using up my energy getting frustrated at trivial matters instead. The first would be getting mad at Window’s Vista, as just trying to set it up and making it run without any glitch or errors seems like some kind of miracle. I guess I used up one whole week with my blood boiling just trying to set this operating system up and at the end it turns out even worst than it started. Thankfully for Dell laptops there is this function to set it back to it’s original factories setting, and by resetting it back to square one, voila, somehow it “seems” better… though the laptop still hangs every now and then even till now. At least after the factory reset I got my built-in microphone to function once more, was wondering how come MSN says that I don’t have a microphone installed when it already is built in it. Hmm… then again, I lost all my Hillsong collection in my hard drive as I reset the whole thing, and a few days worth of updating and installing… but hey, at least my game programs were saved in another hard disk ha-ha, so not too bad.

The other thing that kind of bothers me is that though there are 30 channels to watch here, only around 7 channels are “watchable“… the others are foreign channels which I have no idea what they are talking about as I think they come from the middle-east. And even with the 7 channels that I “could” watch, I don’t know why but the same shows keeps on repeating and repeating and repeating all over again. I mean, if you can see the same episode of American Idol 3 times in a span of 6 hours something is wrong here. Besides that, in Singapore they seem to monopolize the live football events (except the local Singapore league) and with that you can’t watch any live soccer on ESPN, only replays and more replays in order to fill the gap they took out from the live shows. Now that I think about it, Astro really is generous as they let you see every football match there is on the sports channel where else over here you need to pay a separate one just to watch it, and that doesn’t include the upcoming Euro Cup too I think.

Ha-ha, not trying to be an ungrateful brat here, but this is where I started to realized that when I actually could “feel” bored or frustrated from things that has nothing to do with my treatment, it means that my body is running just fine. And with that, nowadays I thank God whenever boredom comes to my mind or getting frustrated with trivial matter such as the channels on TV instead of being gloomy and all, as that means His grace is so sufficiently poured out to me that my mind focuses on other more… erm trivial things, ha-ha! For when the chemotherapy treatment is really tough, most of the time my mind would be focus on just trying to get past the day as quickly as possible and I do that by sleeping all the while, not being to do anything else at all (besides praying to God, which is the one advantage when one suffers).

I really thank God that this time around I came to Singapore, as the treatment and facilities here is way better than that in Malaysia. I know, I know I mentioned it a thousand times already, but it really is that good. Firstly I am in an air-filtered isolation room so that the air I breath in here isn’t contaminated from the outside (well, back home there also was 2 of these rooms, but apparently they are also used by other people instead, over here there are much more isolation rooms to be spared). In each room the hospital also put all the equipments such as the syringes, Micropore (those white color band aids), alcohol swabs, etc inside for my own usage, so it isn‘t generally mix with all the rest. The mechanical gadgets here too are better, back home the infusion pumps always seems to be faulty and if an error do appear they pop up as weird numbers which you must interpret, over here though the pumps work more efficiently and at least the screens show words in English what the error is if they do occur (though because it‘s more sophisticated I can‘t activate the machine on my own). In terms of treatment I guess one had a glimpse of how good it was by them being able to sustain my fever where else in Malaysia they couldn’t. They really pamper you here: Like for the injections they actually ask me if I wanted the anesthetic cream so that I wouldn’t need to feel any pain; I could have my Neupogen injections (to raise white cell counts) as IV drips so I don’t need to suffer the pain (now I am back to having it injected as the effects are better, compared to 1 dose last time now I have 4 doses, injected at 2 intervals though); the doctor administers a certain kind of drug that protects my mouth lining and stomach lining (doctor says they are connected, meaning if the mouth lining tears apart so does the stomach, and most of the infections are caused by the guts apparently) at the beginning of the treatment, which was why the mucus appears I think; and not to forget the continuous hourly Zofran that prevents me from feeling nauseous at all. It’s like as long as there is something that is making you uncomfortable, and you tell the doctor, he will try to find a drug or a way to counter react it, unlike back in Malaysia where it seems that I must toughen up and bear with it as even with some of the drugs given it doesn’t seem to work. Nevertheless, with this great and careful treatment it also comes with a price, no, not in terms of money, but it’s just that they will keep bothering you with all the check-ups (checking my temperature and blood pressure hourly) and procedures (administering more drugs for example) whenever there is a complication like having a fever or perhaps when my blood pressure went up higher than normal. The check-ups are so frequent, they keep coming in and out of the room, that I can‘t even catch a wink of peaceful sleep for a moment… and I was so fatigue then when I have the complications. And even when I am feeling alright, I guess they still bother me with all the asking about my input and output (I even need to describe how my motion was in the bathroom: soft, moderate amount, brown…). Not to forget, the nurses here are strict too, mom couldn’t heat up the food with the heater we brought unlike in Malaysia because of the fear of causing a fire and somehow the nurses here like the air-con to be at super cold… so even when I put it to my liking they will tweak it back to the coldest without my knowledge--- so cold that it feels like winter, with the reason that it could prevent from certain infections… anyone can confirm this? (thank God that now I manage to get use with the cold, as in a way it prevents me from sweating when I sleep). And there is also this thing that annoys me somehow, if the nurse check my blood pressure when I am sitting up and it’s alright, then the next time I sit up but the counts are at a low side, the nurse will ask me to lie down and check again… now doesn’t that make the calculations a little inconsistent, there is a different variable in it right why all the trouble of checking again? The nurses will keep rechecking the blood pressure on both my hands, asking me to change my position, changing from the automatic machine to using the manual to check the blood pressure --- till the blood pressure is at what I normally have, otherwise they will have to report to the doctor and once again they administer some drugs to raise the blood pressure. Maybe it’s just me, as back in Malaysia they don’t really bother when it comes to the results of the blood pressures, so to me over here it seems like they are just so fussy and they make a big deal out of it (but I got to know that it is that big of a deal as it tells if I am getting an infection/complication or not… apparently).

Then again, I guess it’s with all these troublesome check-ups and extra strict care that prevents me from having to suffer even worst consequences from the side effects and infections. Hey, I should be thankful to God that they take all this extra trouble in order for me to not get sick instead of complaining, ha-ha!

Thank God though that as of now I am able to sleep more and more soundly as each day pass. I am getting less and less “interruptions” at night nowadays and even if I do I can immediately go to sleep again in peace and comfort, unlike earlier where the best time to sleep was weirdly in the morning as the nurses bother me less compared to during the night, where drugs are constantly administered and all.

Hmm… oh, and there’s this weird drug that almost got me addicted to it. The drug’s original usage was to protect me from getting reactions from a certain anti-viral drug that I was taking, but it has a drowsy/sleepy like side-effect whenever it was administered into my body. At first it was a huge problem as they administer the drug just when I wake up in the morning, which of course, makes me go back to sleep again almost immediately. The feeling is like getting a dose of general anesthetic, but not enough to make you doze of straight away just yet, thus in a way it gives you that weird, floating-sleepy feeling that seems quite… pleasant (or should i say, really pleasant). It actually reminds me of the time back in Malaysia where the general anesthetic was not strong enough to put me to sleep when they did the bone marrow tap, making me feel really sleepy, no pain but at the same time still awake. So… being the smart guy I asked the doctor if it’s possible to put the anti-viral at night just before I sleep (I guess you don’t need a smart guy to figure this out though), so that it wouldn’t trouble me in the morning. The doctor agreed, and for a time I actually kind of needed that drug just to fall asleep. And I know I was a little addicted to it when the doctor said one day that my body had no problems with the anti-viral drug thus it’s okay to remove the “weird” drug. In my mind I wanted to say: “Noooo… let’s just be cautious and use the drug a few more days…” but I know if I do that it would mean I was dependant on that drug to sleep… but that drowsy feeling is pleasant…. Arghhh!! Thankfully, I was still able to sleep normally the day it was removed though, phew.

*

Okay, now on to what is currently happening around here.

As I have mentioned in the previous post, the bone marrow bank managed to find a perfect match donor in Taiwan, who was a male at 34 years of age. Though he registered himself as a donor, yet this guy has every right to reject donating, and disappointingly this dude is one of those guys. Apparently from what I heard from the Sister (they call the personals that help the doctor in this way I think) his parents… yeah, you got that right, his parents object him from donating. Weird right… I mean you are 34 years old already lorh., still need parents to decide meh. It really was bad news, that was the only perfect match donor I have left, without him I would have to resort to cord blood which doesn’t have a complete match and I need 2 of it. Funny thing is, then I wasn’t afraid at all… maybe that’s because I know God knows what He’s doing; coming to this point where you know human wisdom and power can‘t save you anymore, you will depend only on God and God alone too.

And what do you know, before I could even respond to that news the Sister than continue saying that they manage to find another 2 potential perfect match donors in Taiwan instead, the only problem would be that the bone marrow results for these two are at a low resolution, meaning that there may still be a chance that it wouldn’t match perfectly. Woah, what a turn of events! Even the doctor said that it could be blessing in disguise that the 34 years old donor didn’t donate, as in these 2 new donors, one of them was a male at the age of 21 (the other was female), and the doctor said that a younger donor of the same sex would have a better outcome (the doctor said if it's a female it will cause more problem --- all of us laughed as it seems like a really sexist joke).

The good news just doesn’t stop there. By evening --- the same day --- the Sister came again and told us that the donor had decided to donate and he can donate at any day of the year except June the 25th to 30th. Now that was quick, and instead of giving the days he could donate he just gave the date where he couldn‘t donate, how awesome is that! The first donor didn’t had any news at all for more than a week, this one took just 2 to 3 days to respond! (They found the news about the new donors days before, but didn’t told us just yet as the doctor went for a conference in Italy, thus the confirmation at the same day we heard the good news itself).

And if that is good hear this --- just yesterday the doctor got the blood results from the donor and found out in high resolution that the new donor was not a perfect match (what da, you call that good??!) BUT… the only mismatching part that was found in the donor, according to the newest research he says, is better to be a mismatch as it will give a higher chance to help to fight off the leukemia cells (this is section C). The other important part (section DR) that needs to be a match are matching and apparently for this section they say mine was a bit to the uncommon side, so at first I thought I heard the doctor said it was a mismatch for this section… but how come he seems to be smiling (he was wearing a mask though, but could see that he was happy), then he said: “No, it’s a match.” Phew! Now what do you say about that?! God’s love and ways are amazing! He do hears our prayers when we cry out to Him.

Our God really is better than life itself. If you get too lazy to read everything above, I’ll just summarize what I want to say: That the love of God is so great that no pen and paper can ever describe it completely. Just see the testimony above, and I haven’t included the love of God showed through Jesus Christ His son yet and all the other blessing I have experienced too. He has really given me a so much peace, comfort and joy here that sometimes I just feel guilty to call this a trial when I explain it to others. Not counting the sufferings at the start of this treatment, I must still say there are still some tough moments with the fever, but those are really minor compared to the vast amount of days where I can relax in comfort and peace. Oh, and before I forgot, the food here is good too and with the great appetite that God has given me, I guess you guys wouldn’t need to worry about my eating here (though my weight has been fluctuating with water retentions, manage to retain 4kg of water at the early stages of treatment, making my weight go all up to 54 kg. Now I am more stable and back to 49 kg, with each day adding 1 kg then minus it again… never seems to be stable).

Nevertheless, I still hope that you all will continue to pray for me, especially as of now I need my white cell counts to go up fast. Not because I want to go home faster, ha-ha, but apparently if the white cell counts doesn’t go up, it would be one thing or another: either my marrow is weak, which would be a good thing, or that the leukemia cells are still in the marrow disrupting the recovery and that‘s bad. Previously if I have the Neupogen injection and the white cell counts start rising it will double up day after day, unfortunately now it goes up at a constant rate instead and sometimes even drop, and this is with four times the dosage. I will need to do a marrow tap and the outcome from the marrow will decide if I will need to undergo another chemotherapy treatment or just go ahead with the transplant. Thus I will need your prayers that the leukemia cells would be gone from my bone marrow, as it will also decides if my body would be spared from having to undergo radiotherapy treatment before the transplant too. Besides that I would need your continued prayers for the donor too, as even though the marrow is matching now, to be able to donate he needs to have a healthy body and one that is free from diseases (hepatitis for example), so as to protect both the health of the donor and my own safety. Oh, and also do pray and thank God for all the good things that He has showered upon me too!

Alright, to update you guys on what will happen to me next, after the white cell counts goes back up I will need to undergo a harvestation of my stem cells to serve as a parachute (or backup in layman terms) if the donor’s bone marrow fail to graft into my body. This is to save myself as before the transplant I am going to completely destroy my own bone marrow, making me unable to produce any cells on my own anymore and with my own stem cells stored I would be able to have something to produce those cells in case the donor’s bone marrow refuse to cooperate with my body. Well, I would also have to go for a bone marrow tap as mentioned in the paragraph above to check the status of the marrow and a lamba puncture too to prevent the leukemia cells from attacking my brain instead. Ughh… will need your prayers that the lamba puncture wouldn’t give me that massive dizziness and headache yet again.

Phew and with that I finally finished updating my journal! Sorry for the wait… as I have said long ago somewhere in my blog (or did I tell it to someone instead), that if I don’t write for a long time it is either one thing or the other: either I am suffering so badly that I can’t even write, or that I am enjoying so much that I am too lazy to write, ha-ha. Thank God that it’s the latter, though sadly it’s when I am suffering I tend to write more frequently… it should be the opposite right?

Well, to end this post I will just have to say:

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good; His love endures forever. (1 Chronicles 16:34)

Indeed, our God is better than life.

Tired... and happy Easter too =)

2008-03-24T22:37:00.000+08:00

Tired.

I guess the only time I am not that tired would be in the morning when I just wake up. Then I’ll start to run out of energy as time passes. By the time dinner arrives I could only force a few bites of food into my mouth then I’ll get just too tired to go on. Ha-ha, eating and going to the bathroom seems like a chore all a sudden.

Nevertheless, I really thank God that as of now I don’t few any pain or discomfort, and that’s a relief. I really prefer having to sleep all day as it beats having to suffer pain any time.

My cell count has dropped to 0.1. The doctor estimates that it takes around another 10 days to get it back up to a safe level. Guess I got to depend on God’s mighty hand to keep me free from infections till then.

And right now I am still trying to figure out how in the world I added 2 kg in just one day. Since knowing what goes in and out of my body is a priority here, I get my weight check everyday, and somehow it just went up from 50 kg to 52 kg today, should be a good thing I must say. But maybe that has something to do with the bloated tummy I am having right now… hope it’s nothing serious.

Sorry for the randomness, but my head somehow seems like a blur today.

Oh, and happy belated Easter guys! Our Lord has risen, and He has risen indeed! The one true God who loves us so much that He send His one and only son, so that we will not be condemned by sin, but justified through faith by His blood on the cross. And it’s with this salvation that I have peace in Christ, though everything seems so chaotic and uncertain around me.

New blogs...

2008-03-20T11:06:00.003+08:00

Something light today…

Realized that all the younger youths in my church… okay, maybe not that young right now as everyone has grown up, (admit it Ju Liang)… are creating blogs.

It’s an interesting read as I get an insight of what those people are thinking. And best of all, they write it short and sweet, unlike mine, which makes it an even better read (except Clement’s blog that is).

Well, something fun to read to past my time haha! (And a link update too)

Difficulty level: Hardest

2008-03-19T17:54:00.002+08:00

Alright I’ll skip the entire time I was in hospital in KL (February) for a later date as the time I can be sitting upright is limited. So I’ll just be updating the things that are happening now.

As of right now I am in Singapore, Mount Elizabeth Hospital for treatment, currently going under 5 days salvage chemotherapy (and of course at least 3 weeks of recovery), and hopefully a transplant later.

Okay, thanksgiving first:

It was a bummer that they weren’t any donor match in Singapore as that would be very much easier to be managed, but still I really thank God that they manage to find a full match bone marrow donor from Taiwan, but, that’s not the end of the line as the donor can have the authority to reject donating because of… well, any reason he or she wants actually. Now I understand why they don’t tell you the name of the donor immediately, as one who has a grudge against the donor for not donating can track the person down and you know, take the marrow forcefully, haha. That, and they have to make sure the donor does not have any kind of disease that could spread to me, (HIV, hepatitis, etc.) so much prayer needed.

Another thing to thank God for would be that I finally manage to get through the 5 days of salvage chemotherapy! Though I must say with much difficulty (especially at night, where I keep having déjà vu’s. Apparently the same thing keeps happening: My head feels like exploding; I look at the clock (which seems a blur to me without my specs); the nurses are putting in more antibiotics or taking blood -- and with that I sleep better during daytime than at night). The other hard part was that one of the chemo drug last for 20 hours and have to be administered on each of the 5 days, and back then I was thinking that 24 hours for one day was bad. But the grace of Christ was evident in the sense that the side effects didn’t come all at once:

From the first day I was having a bad headache from either the chemotherapy or lamba puncture. Whenever I sit up I’ll get a headache.
Just as that was starting to get better the fever started acting up.
On the 5^th day of the salvage chemotherapy I developed rashes that hurt if I put pressure on it.
And as of today (which is the 6^th day) I had diarrhoea. But by today my headache wasn’t all that bad anymore, which is why I can write down something on the journal.

Oh, and I really really thank God that they have a great way to prevent nausea and vomiting. Hourly Zofran! (and another 2 anti-nausea/vomiting drugs). But even with what seems like an overkill I still felt nauseous and had some dry vomiting, though compared to last time this is very much better.

As you can see God was really gracious as the rashes and diarrhoea were caused by the chemotherapy, and that ended just today. Imagine what it would be if it started at the 1^st or 2^nd day. Ughh, the worst part would be the fact that I am really immobile: I think you will need to be a super human to push 4 infusions pump to go to the toilet over here as their ramp in the toilet seems a little, badly plan I must say (imagine those self made bumps on the road in Malaysia). The nurses were all saying: “No, no, all patient also can push in,” Yeah right, I tried pushing with one hand and it wouldn’t even move, what more with my dizziness and diarrhoea, I think I would have crap in my pants before I can even successfully open the toilet door.

That, and the thing is this hospital does things at the finest details. I have to measure every single cup of water I drank and everything that comes out of me (except when I pass motion of course, not sure how you count that) and record it down. Without mom staying here with me I am a goner, would need to keep pressing the call bell for the nurse for help. Besides, this doctor of mine plays well, defensive medication, if there is such a term, as he gives medication for every single infection that may come my way (I never heard of having a portable X-ray machine here back in KL, just to make sure I don’t get pneumonia I think). I guess the advantages would be that fewer infections would happen meaning less sufferings to bear, but having to put all those antibiotics, doing all those procedures and eating pills seems like a drag though. Then again, we must do the best on our part as we humanly can, while the things that can’t be control we leave it to God. You got to take care and love your own body, as your body is the temple of God.

Oh, and yeah, I took off my chemo-pod… only to be put in with another line at my left chest (Weirdly, taking out the chemo-pod doesn’t hurt as much as when I put it in). Well, in all honesty I still prefer the chemo-pod compared to what I have now, as this line needs a higher maintenance as it’s always exposed unlike the chemo-pod which was under the skin. But well, infection wise this is better as you can just remove it without going to the operating theatre. At first the doctor thought I had this line instead of the chemo-pod, so on the first day of meeting he said: “Alright, let’s take out the line now and put in a new one tomorrow.” I was like: “Wow, Singapore’s medical technology has advanced so far that they can take out chemo-pods that easily?! Amazing!” Well, later he found out it was a chemo-pod and with that, I gained another day before having to be admitted to the hospital. (Hoo-ray for me)

But besides all the complains, this hospital is top notch I must say: their bathroom can be said to be better than the one I have at home; they have a plasma TV (well, a small one though); and their infusion pumps don’t make sounds when they are working unlike back home. The way they take blood also seems different: it’s like they just put in a needle with a line, then they start drawing blood after blood in 6 tubes under around 30 seconds, wow! And being here you feel like you are not in Singapore at all: apparently most of the nurses here come from overseas, and the patients too. Not that I can say anything, as I am a foreigner here too. (When they ask for your ID during payment, they will ask for either your passport or identification card, I don’t think you hear “passport” from the hospitals here in Malaysia).

It is really tough this time though. I have just started the chemotherapy and I am already suffering with all these side effects. And that’s with the reduction of another chemotherapy because my heart, according to the doctor, was too weak to take it. The worst has yet to come, which is when my white cell count drops.

But well, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And if it wasn’t for the supernatural peace that transcends from Christ upon me, I think I would have give up long ago. And besides, our God is an all loving, almighty, and holy God. He definitely knows our limit, and would not let us suffer in vain. All I can do now is to trust in Him, knowing that He knows best.

Well, I guess I’ll just have to:

Run, run, run the race

Keep, keep, keep the pace

Run the race, keep the pace

Keep your eyes on Jesus.

Just bring it...

2008-01-27T13:44:00.000+08:00

Okay, I am not one to rant and complain about life, but I’ll just write it down because it’s my thoughts on the whole thing.

Well… the post that I was suppose to post up should be a happy one, one about what happened during October, November, December and perhaps some things here and there in January. But, the only reason I am posting today is to let anyone who’s reading this to know that -

I got a relapse… and I am not joking at all.

Even as of now it’s rather hard to take in all that is going on. I must say honestly I feel kind of betrayed, frustrated, and hopeless even… as all the suffering I have gone through for 1 and a half years seems to be in vain. I mean, I suffered 1 and a half years just to rest 6 months and now I need to go for an even more terrible ordeal!? No way!

I don’t know why, but all this while at the back of my head I knew I’ll definitely go through a relapse at least once. Of course, it’s not like I wanted it to happen and say: “Hey guys! My spider-senses were right! Hooray for me!” as by all means if it didn’t happen I’ll be way happier.

I hardly felt anything ‘physically’ was amidst prior to the relapse….though my stomach was acting funny as I keep feeling nauseous; I had internal bleeding when I play futsal after erm 2 years? And my head always have this painful compression whenever I woke up. All could be dismissed due to the chemotherapy pills that I was taking. The usual symptoms weren’t there: severe headache, swollen lymph nodes, extreme tiredness (I did manage to play a game of futsal), which is why this news of relapse came as a total surprise.

Imagine the irony: Sis. Patricia asked me if I could play bass this Sunday for worship. I agreed at first, but remembered that I had the monthly check-up, which by all means I know something will definitely pop up one way or another, though not to the extend of something terrible like a relapse. Because of that I messaged her saying that I won’t be able to make it. She replied if everything was okay and this is the part where it gets ironic. I thought to myself: “Nah, small matter, don’t need to ask for any prayer request lah”, exactly the same thought I had after the dance rehearsal where Ainah asked the dance team to pray for me for my swollen lymph node which I thought was nothing then. And surprise, surprise, both was equally more shocking then expected.

Now that I think about it, it was pretty silly too. I was more worried that both my doctors won’t be able to do both LP and the bone marrow tap at the same time which would be a real hassle more than the thoughts of the fear that the check my turn up as a relapse. Well, I did told my parents that this 2 were the fears I had on the way to the hospital, but I thought in no way I was going to have a relapse, thus the more trivial fear seems scarier then.

But in some ways, I knew something like this was coming. God has a weird way of telling me that a really hard trial is about to come my way. Most of the time when I hear Christian songs just for fun I won’t have much of and emotion or anything, but… when something like this is about to happen somehow tears will always flow out of my eyes whenever I hear or sing out the lyrics. It was the same thing before I first got admitted to the hospital for relapse: imagine crying to Hillsong’s “Tell the world”, which was suppose to be an upbeat praise song. This time around though I was hearing 2008’s VBS songs (don’t ask me why I am hearing it that early though).

On the day I was admitted for my check up 2 days ago, which was a Friday, I knew something wasn’t quite right when the atmosphere seems… different. The nurses sounds funny, no one was in the room at all to tell me what’s happening, and this is what I dread the most: having the fear that something bad is going to happen, but no one to confirm it and take the fear away. The waiting part seems to be the killer. But by evening around 6 I got the news from mom, and as anyone could expect, I was really devastated. I didn’t want to accept the news; I keep telling myself that it must be some kind of mistake: that it should be an overdose in the chemotherapy pills that I am taking or perhaps the doctor read the information wrongly. I didn’t wanted to accept the news at all (my mind was thinking about what ifs for the whole night) till I heard it from the doctor myself the next day, and that’s when I started to stop struggling, for I know then nothing can be changed anymore.

To tell you the truth, this time around I was scared to death. And I mean really really scared. It could be that last time at the first week though I was scared, I was too tired to think, and besides God’s peace was upon me somehow through grace to give me a head start in the race thus making the fear bearable at that time. But I guess later after courses of chemotherapy, though I know I had to depend on God very much to go through leukemia, somewhere in the back of my head was also telling me that the odds were favoring me. Everything seems to be above 50 percent success. In a way, I guess it feels like I have a fail-safe device and I could juggle between God and human’s wisdom. In a way it makes it easier to not think about the consequences too much, and in that way I didn’t rely too much on faith. On the other hand, now that I have a relapse, the odds are against me. It is harder to go into remission; I am forced to do a bone-marrow transplant, and every thing I read up seems to be saying that the chances are about 50 percent at its max and no higher. That, kind of freak me out real bad yesterday, and I took a whole lot of time just sitting there thinking, and thinking and thinking. If it was like the first time I guess I would be able to keep my cool, but it’s not, the situation is very much harder and different. For once I realized… how hard it is to actually just live by faith alone and have no way for humans to interfere.

I really thank God for the time I could speak with Teacher Derek yesterday night, comforting, reassuring and telling me the fundamentals on how to plea to God for my case. After chatting and discussing, I realized once again, that I’ll need to take a leap of faith this time. One for trusting in God that I’ll be delivered from this relapse for His glory, and secondly to put my trust in Him alone for my future, which I discussed with Teacher Derek, but won’t be writing this down as of yet. For I realized how fragile the world is around me with this sickness I have, that any earthly gain can just go with a snap, because I won’t be able to hold on onto them when I get sick. I just hope that Teacher, you’ll remind me about this if I do decide to change my mind, to bring me back on course.

My chemotherapy has gone underway immediately the next day (after Friday), to prevent it from spreading out of control. I really thank God as the nauseous feeling was controllable till the point that I don’t really feel it. And I pray to God that it is possible to stay that way… at least it’ll give me some comfort in this time of trial. Especially since this time the doctor is in no way going to show any mercy and is giving me a real intensive course right now to bring me back to remission.

Phew, after all the complains up there, I must still say that I know that God’s will is still the best way. I won’t fall back on my words and deny God, for that’s something even worst than death itself. And how could a God who so graciously gave us salvation through Jesus Christ as a gift to all mankind, not deserve our thanksgiving and praise for eternity? And besides I always hold on to these words: That to live is for Christ and to die is gain, being a Christian we never lose either way. I guess I’ll have to put it this way too: some people run the 100 m race, but I am running 4000 m (if there’s one) because God knows I could sustain it. And I know God is a gracious God, and He knows what’s best for me, my strengths and my weaknesses. I’ll run the race to make Him proud and to be a testimony to all mankind.

For:

I know my God is real

And nothing will change how I feel.

I’ll give Him my worship and I always will

Because I know my God is real. (taken from My God is Real, VBS 2008)

There is only one thing I must say I’ll regret if I couldn’t finish the race… and that would be not using my testimony, at all. I don’t want it to go to waste, and though now I am very timid, I pray to God that one day I’ll be courageous enough to use this powerful testimony for Him, to tell others how great is our God.

I guess that’s all in my heart that I want to say. For anyone that is reading this, please uphold me in your prayers, I would really appreciate it, especially on the matter of preventing infections, getting back into remission and the bone marrow (having a perfect match and beyond the transplant). On a lighter note, if you guys are wondering what happen to the post ‘that should have been’, I only write it till October, and procrastinate till, hmm I don’t know how long, ha-ha. If I am free I’ll definitely continue writing it, that’s if I could remember it too though by then.

Merry Christmas 2007...

2007-12-24T23:37:00.001+08:00

Merry Christmas guys!!!

And yeah, still writing… still writing…

I am hoping I could at least complete “the” post before I leave Australia, and that would mean before the New Year arrives. Get ready for a long post then --- that’s if I finally manage to write it and not drag till the end of January.

Ah, hoping I was back in Malaysia so I could attend our church Christmas service; to enjoy the Christmas atmosphere together as members of one body and not to forget ---most importantly --- to take this time to thank God for sending us His son, thus bringing us salvation. With our flight back to Melbourne on Christmas day in addition with me and my brothers’ bad habit of waking up after 12, plus another hilarious reason which I would reveal later when I finish writing December’s post… I guess I wouldn’t be able to attend one here. Arghh…

Looking forward to Boxing Day for shopping sales!

Once again, Merry Christmas and God bless!

2nd Anniversary...

2007-12-22T23:43:00.000+08:00

Oh my…

Just writing to let everyone who reads my journal knows that I am still in the process of writing the November post (which has now dragged on to December --- sorry for that), and not to worry. Ah, and there I was thinking that I would at least make it a once a month affair at the least.

Well, besides the information just given, the reason I “need” to write this post is due to the reason that this is my…

2^nd Anniversary!!!...

…of getting admitted to the hospital and going for chemotherapy treatment~ (belated anyway)

I must admit that I kind of actually forgotten about the date where I got admitted till I reread my previous post… was thinking that it was today, and realized that it was on the 21^st instead. Wake up Ju Liang!!! Now I am so embarrassed.

Hmm… well, just want to thank God that all has been going well with me, that through His grace I am able to enjoy much of my time after treatment, including this holiday that I am having in Australia while writing this. And doubly true with the fact that the pills isn’t all that hard to take right now, and I am getting used to them through His grace (the weekly pills still packs a punch, but it has been much much better compared to last time where I can’t really do anything after eating them).

Still I must admit that in all the enjoyment (and busyness…), there are times where I kind of “forgot” about how gracious God has been to me and take it all for granted, even though it has just been less than half a year. When I am enjoying and not suffering I tend to take God’s love for me throughout the process for granted, and only during the stillness of the night do I think back about this and know how blessed I have been. Yeah, I know that I have written about this previously, but I can’t stop feeling guilty somehow… The other thing that bugs me is the fact that I am not using my testimony to spread the good news of Christ more than I should and I am feeling rather guilty about this too. Especially since once I was there complaining that there isn’t much interesting things happening in my life that I can share of.

To become like Christ is an on-going process, which is why I need to remind myself to keep striving forward towards the goal in Christ and not fall back, constantly reminding myself that whether in good times of bad, I need to fight the good fight, not losing sight of the goal. Especially since I have experience how great God has been in my life.

Woahkay…

Nothing to regret right now but to focus on the future! And hope that I continue to grow more in Christ, and not just by writing in words but actually doing it.

Thank God for the great time holidaying here in Aussie! Rest assured I will write about it… after the November post that is.

And it's October...

2007-10-14T09:55:00.000+08:00

Kay, I will be splitting to parts so that it’ll be easier for me to write and not jumble up all the thoughts that were gathered in my mind.

And it sure took me a long time to find some leisure time to type away.

10^th of September to…

Just when I finished writing the previous post and was starting to mourn for myself as I needed to go to the hospital the next day for my “possible” lamba puncture procedure plus pill eating again (with the latter being the main reason for mourning), I received the superbly good news from my mother the moment I woke up that the doctor requested me to be admitted only next week. Why? I am guessing it’s because he calculated the days from my records where I actually needed to be readmitted for the lamba puncture, as previously me and my mom just did a rough estimate. I really thank God for these ‘surprises’ as this isn’t really the first time things like these happens, where God fulfills the wishes of my heart even though I never asked of it. God’s grace, eh? As it’s not like I deserved anything to have my wishes fulfilled. The normally super groggy me when I just woke up suddenly became super charged up, the sky wasn’t gloomy anymore, the food tasted twice as better, the… well to get to the point, I guess when your mind set changes to a happy mood, everything seems… good, haha. Though, there was one thing I didn’t really enjoy about this extended break (or any other break for that matter) which was the feeling of regret that I am not using this precious time wisely. And to top this guilt up, time passes really quickly, and I mean real quick, the next thing I know after I wake up is that I am back to bed again and it’ll be another day when the sun rises. Guess that means I am really enjoying my time off pills then, time always goes to warp speed when you’re enjoying, sigh…

18^th of September to…

As stated, I got admitted to the hospital for my lamba puncture and my bone marrow check up. At first I didn’t really thought of it as a big deal, just another visit to the hospital was all I thought, but when I realized that there was going to be a bone marrow check up… gulp. Not because it really hurts or anything, in fact, I thank God that till now I haven’t felt that much of a pain from the bone marrow tap, but, I was afraid that the results wouldn’t be good from the check up. The thought of a relapse really haunts me and it’s not something I can shake off easily; at one end I believe through faith that God can heal me completely, though at the other end I also believe that God’s way is the best way, how can you question God?

As usual, the lamba puncture procedure was delayed because: “the drug wasn’t prepared earlier” which I am starting to doubt as this reason was used one too many times. I mean, if that always happens something could be done to counter this problem, right? I thank God though, that both procedures went smoothly: I wasn’t half awake this time during the bone marrow tap, and there weren’t any complications for either of them. I also really thank our Lord Jesus Christ that both of the results turn out good, which was a huge relief to me as my mind could be put to rest as of now. Well, I actually only receive word for the lamba puncture and didn’t hear anything for the bone marrow, but no news is good news right? If something did happen I guess I would still be in the hospital. Or perhaps ignorance is bliss? Hmm…

Both of the doctors, the hematologist and the neurologist, are Christians, and they share a testimony or two went they have the time. The neurologist who does my lamba puncture though, has a higher frequency to do so, to put it that way. This time around he shared with me a healing testimony that just happened recently in his church. He told me about how his relative (I think, if it’s not that it’s one of his church members, sorry for the fuzzy memory) had stomach cancer and was said to be incurable and had at least a few months to live. Well, one day in the hospital bed this man felt that someone’s hand was going in his stomach and the next day the doctor’s were surprised that the cancer was gone! He also told me that this man also had a vision one day where he saw his father with a rabbi sitting in a house, and his father who was already deceased asked if he wanted to join them. The man declined, and with that I guess he didn’t pass away instead, haha. Sometimes I get pretty envious when I hear of these testimonies, it didn’t really matter much to me last time, but now when I had gone through a severe illness it makes me think: “why didn’t God just gave me a miracle healing like those other people? It’ll make things so much easier for me.” I guess I myself know the answer to that, which is because God wants to refine our faith through trials, for if things were too easy, we tend to takes things for granted and thus become stagnant in our faith. There was another thing that popped up in my mind too, why do we normally hear of these kinds of things from charismatic churches and seldom from the others?

Because of the delay from the lamba puncture I was --once again-- needed to stay for at least a night in the hospital. Most of the time I don’t worry much after a lamba puncture, as a mild headache was all I got and I would be better the moment the sun rises. So after resting for 5 hours and a half lying on the bed, it was already midnight and I decided to have a light dinner. Everything seems okay at first, I was getting a slight headache as usual and I was happily eating while watching the TV. But… after a few minutes I realized that the dizziness wasn’t settling down, on the other hand, it was getting worst. I guess tilting my head and watching Disney channel made my headache worst and right after I finished my dinner I couldn’t move anymore and just had to lie on bed to sleep. With all the food chunks still around me and me not even brushing my teeth, I couldn’t care less anymore as the discomfort was too much, and rest was all I craved for. Then again, I was always dirty to begin with, ha-ha! Apparently the dizziness was cause by the difference in pressure of the cerebral fluid due to the lamba puncture procedure.

The next day the dizziness was still there but thank God that it got slightly better. Thus, without hesitating I decided to go home and rest, who wants to stay in the hospital anyway? Mom also managed to “negotiate” with the doctor to reduce the amount of pills that I needed to eat before we went back home, this was due to the fact that I was getting infections too easily and the pills also gave me too much discomfort, so it was reduced from 12 pills weekly to 10. Well, to be honest as of now the discomfort part still feels the same, though because the pills are less it seems kind of easier to take it down, I hope it gets better as time goes by.

The day after that though, everything seems just fine with my dizziness gone the moment I woke up and I thought that was the end of it. But, weirdly the next day the dizziness returned and persist for another 3 to 4 days, making me miss the mid-autumn festival outreach program held in church on Saturday that week (which I heard there were some really interesting lantern display there). Uggh… the bad thing about this dizziness is that you get kind of bored not doing anything, since you aren’t particularly sleepy, but you are forced to lie down, and when you sleep you get dreams instead as the mind is still very much active. Reading books, or as for me, comic books while on bed, wasn’t much of a help either as my hands ache after awhile and I prefer to just doze off instead.

Then again, I thank God that it wasn’t too bad, as the dizziness can always be cured off by just lying on bed, compared to say *chill* nausea. The mornings then was a hard time as I didn’t wanted to wake up in fear of getting the dizziness, and that fear was amplified by the fact that my head felt like it was going to explode even when I am still in bed. Weirdly though it actually becomes better the moment I wake up. Then again, I cannot be sure of that as in the past that wasn’t the case, so it’s sort of like a gamble, on one hand if I wake up I can be feeling ten times worst than when I was on bed or the other way round, but I thank God that most of the time for this case it was the latter. The dizziness slowly became better as the days pass and soon I was back to normal once again. Well, the dizziness did have one good thing, it helped me buy 2 days of being pill-free, but it wasn’t that good of a deal seeing what had happened. With that week over, I officially restarted my pill eating days again. Arghh!

1^st of October to…

I went out for a light lunch with a secondary schoolmate of mine as I promised her that I would meet up with her when she came back from Europe. With all the hic-ups and me myself forgetting about it during the short periods when I was okay, today was already the last day before she goes off to Bangkok for voluntary work. Thus, now I understand why she wanted to strangle me. Anyway, I was quite surprise that I was able to talk to someone face to face for 3 to 4 hours as I was quite worried at first. Most of the time I have trouble thinking of topics to talk about, and what more talking to a girl. But surprisingly there was an endless flow of topics to talk about and before I know it, it was already evening.

Then again, it’s not like I never actually talk to this friend of mine so much before as back in the days when I was still using the ICQ chatting program, myself, her and a form 1 classmate of mine used to talk till the sun goes up (well… it was about to reach day break). Though during our PMR years we stop doing those crazy stunts and since then I find it hard to start up a topic with anyone through those instant messaging programs. Of course, being behind a monitor and talking face to face was another matter altogether, as being behind a monitor gives you an endless time to think, while if the person is right in front of you, waiting too long creates an awkward silence and all you want to do next is hope the person says that he/she has to go so you don’t need to face the embarrassment of using that line instead to escape. I am kind of glad that I actually manage to be partially cured of the talk-to-girls phobia thingy after years of training, otherwise today would be a disaster. Then again, if the person is a good friend of mine it usually surpasses the phobia.

Well, we talked about many things: cultural difference in Europe, her volunteer work in Bangkok, how I have spent my time in the hospital, etc. But there was one topic that reminded me of something: when she talked about a Christian friend of hers. She mentioned that she was impressed by the faith in Christianity that friend of hers possessed; though there were major peer pressure in her campus (most people prefer to be free from any religion), that friend still manages to live up to be more like Christ and not being afraid of persecution from her peers. I mention this because I truly believe that Christians ought to be able to spread the fragrance of Christ wherever we go. Not by flashing a big cross around our necks or raise our hands when they ask who are Christians in the group, but through our actions that are like Christ. This is one thing that I am quite embarrassed about as there was one time when I was having a conversation with a friend during high school where I mentioned something about Christianity, and she was like: “EH?! You’re a Christian ah?” When I said yeah, she told me the reason she was surprise was because I was very like the rest of the crowd and thus assuming I am a buddhist. Ouch~ and there I was being satisfied with how I was.

The other thing is that I am really afraid of is standing up for my faith, which makes me all the more impress with this person. Back then when I was in primary school I remembered my headmaster told all of us students during moral class that Jesus was just like any ordinary man, and so is every important person in every religion. Okay, that really is harsh, and sometimes when I think about it, I should have stand up and told her wrong. There were many instances like that too, when friends of mine were saying that the bible is a myth or a story book and all I answer was just a smile or saying: “no-lah,” and then shrug them off, hoping they change the topic. And what was all of that worth for? Yes, it was all just to be accepted by your peers. And that is why I really pray that God would make me be able to say “yes” to Him when it comes to choosing between living comfortably or choosing Christ and suffer, or worst comes to worst dying, as once that answer is made there’s no turning back anymore. Most of the time we prefer to deny Christ for the small matters because of convenience sake, but I wonder when the real thing comes would we be able to do it, since we get so comfortable denying.

Well, back to the topic on the conversation with my friend. If you are reading this I hope for all the best for your time there, and that you may gain a wealth of experience by volunteering. I also hope that you get to know the joy of Christ someday too.

6^th of October till…

A friend of mine asked me for a favor to help him with something. It wasn’t anything hard; in fact, it’s something I do enjoy very much. Problem is, during then I realized how selfish our human minds are, that most of the time we tend to help others only if by helping them it actually helps us back in return, or at least, gives us some advantage. If by investing our time helping a friend does not gives us a single gain at all, we tend to not lend a hand, for what does it benefit us? I had this thought was I was getting frustrated trying to figure out the problem as I am not that musically talented, and it made me think why in the world am I getting so frustrated for and wasting my time on this thing, it’s not like my burden right? I guess I need to ask God for His forgiveness and humble myself, knowing that God Himself gave Christ so freely even though we don’t even deserve it. And if we Christians have this kind of thinking, what makes us any different than the rest?

With that, I thank God for the timely reminder, and I all the more thank God for giving me some extra musical knowledge through all that. Now I understand how in the world those musicians know what chords are they in a scale, and there I was simply banging the strings hoping something sound right. It kinds of make me realized how I wasted 7 to 8 years learning piano and not even knowing anything about this. Sigh…

11^th of October till…

My guitar lessons has finally resume after 2 weeks because the centre was shifted to another shop lot for a better environment. Not that it’s anything significant, but the way I got there was, well, significant to me.

Well, 2 post back I was writing about how I tend to do seemingly impossible things when under forced circumstance (the dentist post), and this was one of them.

You see, I was expecting mom to fetch me to the music centre but after calling out a few times I realized that she wasn’t home. Check out the front and the driver wasn’t there either. I could just ponteng and let one lesson pass but thinking of how 20 ringgit just disappeared away like that makes me think otherwise.

It was then I realized:

My mom’s car was outside.
I can drive, though not really good (and I really meant it).
I do have my driver’s license with me.

Well, being in a forced situation, I braved myself and drove to the centre. Hooray for me! Of course I was a little nervous, but it’s not like I am driving more than a kilometer right?

Still, now that I think about it, it was kind of dangerous for there were times when I should have looked more carefully but I didn’t, and only when I passed the junction did I realized: “Woah! I should have looked to the right there before turning!”

Not that I don’t enjoy driving, but I hate the hassle of finding a parking spot and actually do the parking (double the trouble if you need to park really far away), not to forget that I actually “ need” to concentrate when I am at the wheel compared to just sitting at the back and listening to the radio. With that much waste of energy, I prefer to just be a passenger.

Though, when I came home and wanted to give a piece of my mind to mom only did I realized that she was at home all along and was cleaning the fish pond outside, which was why she didn’t hear me at all. Arghhh!! Wasted effort for the lose.

Hmm… but this isn’t my first unsupervised driving though. There was once when I just got my license where suddenly I had this urge to… *drum rolls*… buy Playstation 2 games. So I asked my younger brother to accompany me (kind of con him that he could choose a game, though at the end I bought the games I liked only) and off we go to Endah Parade without telling anyone. It was really silly as I actually spend the first 5 minutes trying to get the car out of my driveway. Don’t even know what made me do it, my parents were at home too, and driving out to buy games doesn’t seem that noble of an idea. (I still remember the games I bought then: Full Metal Alchemist, one of them was an action an RPG while the other was a beat em up with the same title)

14^th of October

And time for some random rants on a Sunday morning…

Being alone at home really gives me a lot of time to think of many questions, some of them really random, some of them downright no sense, and of course, some of them are really serious. It can get quite frustrating at times for if I don’t figure out those questions it’ll just stay in my head and pester me till I get it done. And no, using: “there is no answer to that question” doesn’t really help at all. The worst thing would be that if I don’t put the question to rest I can’t seem to be able to do anything at all, and I would be stuck there stun trying to reach to a conclusion. Of course, with all this I manage to find a way to trick my brain into giving false answers to put my mind at ease.

Some questions/thoughts are:

Why is it when you pedal at reverse the bicycle wheels doesn’t move?
Why is it when you stop pedaling but the bicycle wheels still move?
How does the Nintendo Wii sensor works?
Why does a warrior in Warcraft deals less DPS in raids compared to a rogue even though they chop our heads off in a battleground?
Why is music only DO-RE-MI-FA-SO-LA-TI-DO?
Why do some shirt collars look better than other shirt collars when they are both shirt collars?
Tons of questions concerning God.

Well, most of the factual questions/thoughts can always be answered through checking the internet though being me, I was too lazy to go check so I force myself to be smart and figure it out by myself (which always ends up wrong when I do check it up). Though on the other hand those theological questions makes my mind blow up, as I need a pastor to help me on that, and most of the time I am afraid to ask them because I don’t know how to form the questions properly in words, and it becomes really weird instead.

It really makes me miss the times when I was still a little kid and not have any doubts in my mind about Christ. There weren’t any thoughts or doubts about free-will, how did the bible came to be, predestination, etc. and all I did then was truly believe that Jesus loves me and was always there for me in times of trouble. No doubts, no questions, no what ifs, but just simple faith. Perhaps that’s why God says: I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. (Mark 10:15)

Hmm… all the time being at home also does makes me really lazy. So much so that I forget that I should be thinking of studying once again and not expecting another year of “rest”. But boy, I sure hope that I don’t need to study or work at all, as I just can’t seem to stand the pressure from assignments, datelines and presentations. I also seem to have the problem of choosing what to study now, as I am thinking of doing something that I actually enjoy doing, and not something that pays well but doing the actual work is a real drag. Arghh… need to be discipline once again to get ready to enroll for university (pre-entrance exams comes to mind).

Oh yeah, my flu that has lasted for like 2 months is officially cured! Hallelujah! That was soo long that it made me quite worried. I better make sure that I don’t get too close to people with any infections… but that may be harder than I thought. Most of the time, I feel like I’ll offend that person if I suddenly sit away from him/her, it makes me look like as if I am some snob who’s too revered to be with anyone else, but if I don’t do that I am the one who’s going to suffer. Sigh, the dilemma.

Alright, so there goes the 1 month post, done in 2 sittings, with 75 percent done on the posted date. I better start preparing for church now especially since I am playing the bass for Sunday service today. And if I go early I may be able to see how Sunday School is after a 1 and a half year absence.

Of suffering and quietness...

2007-09-10T05:53:00.000+08:00

Bah~

Wanted to update my journal about what has happened since last~ last Wednesday but knowing me, I know I’ll most probably write another long essay just to try and jot every single detail down which wears me out in the end. Thus, I keep procrastinating to avoid myself having to do all the writing. “Well, there’s always a tomorrow,” I said to comfort myself, not knowing that the more I delay, I’ll have even more things to jot down. Guess that’s the reason why I could never start a diary even when I so desired it during high school, as I am just too lazy. Though thinking about it I sure hope I did, as with a diary you are able to reflect about your past and see how much you’ve grown so easily as you have written it down in ink, and it sure is fun to see how “weird” you were last time.

I really need to learn how to write English articles short and sweet, a habit which I don’t have since entering secondary school. Note, I put “English articles” because if it’s any other language, especially Mandarin, it won’t be much of a problem as writing basic facts was already hard enough, and if I try to elaborate it I guess it’ll be a major disaster. So I really keep things short in order not to get deduction of marks from writing errors in mandarin (but it didn’t really matter in the end as I always did get a big fat zero for the many unavoidable “spelling” errors, giving me a huge disadvantage in marks whenever I write Chinese essays, as I always mix up the different words that has the same pronunciation).

Or… perhaps in other words I should just go straight to the point… in which I have already broke this rule with all the ramblings on top. But I guess it really isn’t much of a journal if I don’t write about how I think or feel, it’ll be more like summiting a military report if I just write down important details.

Alright, enough about that, on to what happened last week.

Well, to be exact last~ last~ last~ week Zhi Yong “suddenly” messaged me and asked me how was I doing. Usually I would just answer with the “Oh, I am fine” line but during then as I have mentioned 2 post earlier I was starting to get paranoid so I asked him about lymph nodes and stuff, how to detect if something’s wrong, etc. After that he also asked me how was I doing spiritually, in which I told him that it “didn’t” seem to go well, with the reason that sometimes when I am not going through suffering, I tend to forget about God and His greatness, only putting Him in during say, devotion time? Zhi Yong did comfort me with erm… some words that have to do with remembering our final goal in Christ… I guess. Ha-ha, can’t really remember the whole thing, but at least I was able to put it to rest then.

Imagine the irony then on Monday (27th of August) when I went for an unexpected check up at the clinic. I was told that I required to be admitted to the hospital… what?!! Imagine the horror! And there I was talking about how I need to “suffer” to be reminded about God’s greatness and love.

As I have said, it was an unexpected check up as the main reason I wanted to see the doctor was the evil intention to see if I could avoid taking the chemotherapy pills, since I was suffering with the gum plus thumb infection the week before and I wanted to see if I could cut some slack and relax this week with the reason that I was still having the flu after almost a month. Thus, if it is possible to stop eating the pills in order to allow my immune system to recover back to normal and let the white cells do their job of getting rid of the flu. It is a legitimate reason after all… but I didn’t expect that my white cell has dropped real low; it was at the count of 0.9. The plan backfired, and the doctor wanted to admit me to the hospital in order to inject Neupogen to boost up my white cell count quickly to keep me out of danger.

I thought I was being smart by trying to negotiate with the doctor, telling him that the slow and steady way was still as good, that I would be alright as long as I stop eating the pills (I was still really stubborn in eating the pills), though it’ll just take a liitttllleeee longer. Well, the terrible count was also partly due to the infections that I got, and since it was 80 percent cured why worry? The doctor once again used that funny expression in his face that always makes me think that if I don’t listen to him I was going to threaten my very own life, and seeing that I had no chance to argue with him, I just gave in, no point delaying the inevitable anyway.

Sometimes I guess I need to keep my mouth shut, as somehow those weird requests actually comes true. Before I was diagnosed with leukemia I was kidding myself and said that:

“Hmm… perhaps I should try being bald once in awhile”

(Because of dandruff problem and my hair being like a bird nest most of the time)

“Man… I sure wish I had a year long break”

(I didn’t wanted to enter university so fast as I wanted to enjoy sometime before all the hectic schedules begins again)

Well I was bald for 5 times, and I had a 2 years break, woo-hoo!

So this time I was like jokingly saying to myself: “I guess it’ll be for the best if I got admitted to the hospital, at least I’ll get closer to God.” And on Monday (the day for the check up) I was having this tingling senses the moment I woke up telling me that I was sure to be admitted, and jokingly told my mom to prepare my stuff to bring to the hospital (which she thought was silly)… and viola! I was sitting on the hospital bed watching the same old TV channels I used to for the whole past year.

I’ll be totally honest with you; this time being in the hospital wasn’t too bad or torturing even. At the beginning I expected to stay at least for a week to allow everything to recover (being disappointed each morning with no improvement in my blood count comes to mind), but I remembered that this time I wasn’t under the side effects of any heavy chemotherapy. Sure enough after putting the Neupogen, my white cell count went up to 2 the next day, 3 the following and got discharged. The Neupogen, though I really dread it (even the nurses tease me about it as they know I am afraid of that injection), I guess I kind of got used to it this time, as it didn’t bug my mind non-stop for the whole day and made me worried. Though the fact that you can’t estimate how pain it is each time it’s administered ups the “Wow!” factor.

But if I am not really suffering, doesn’t that defeat the purpose that I wanted? To draw closer to God? That, I can’t say it’s true.

Surprisingly, though I didn’t had any severe pain or discomfort in which I need to cry out to God for help and thus being closer to him, I still managed to be closer to God, through the quietness in the hospital. Well, of course I don’t mean quiet as in quiet till you can hear a pin drop quiet, the hospital is quite noisy at certain times, but I guess what I mean is there aren’t so many distractions around you and most of the time you put your mind on God. The television set in my room had a sound defect (it was so soft even at max volume); I didn’t wanted to bring my laptop as I don’t want to pay 20 Ringgit just to go online for 2 hours; and my Playstation 2 wasn’t any help either as I needed a walkthrough to advance in the only game that was brought there. So most of the time I was on bed semi sleeping, and semi thinking about why God does this and that, which of course we human can never fully understand God’s plan. Fasting from doing things in our regular busy schedule (okay, I am not proud in saying how I am busy, as I don’t study nor work, so go figure) once in a while can let us keep things in perspective, as sometimes in our busyness we tend to forget about God’s goodness and grace, and His will for us.

When we are suffering it draws us closer to God and really put our all on Him because we realized how weak we humans are and know that by our strength alone it’s impossible, thus humbling ourselves, acknowledging that we need God’s help. The letter Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 clearly explains it: But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

But… I also realized that sometimes even when we are suffering, satan still has tricks up his sleeves to keep us out of track. Keeping us physically and mentally busy to think about God; telling us that the problem is just a small one and we don’t really need to put God in the picture…

I can say this because when I was writing the journal, I realized something that didn’t quite fit the picture (well, most of the time it’s this way as I drag myself from writing for so long that I jumbled up the timeline, but this is different) . The day I mentioned when I was chatting with Zhi Yong was also the day when my gum and thumb infection started to hurt quite badly. If you have read the previous post you should have realized how I suffered that week but weirdly… I didn’t remember what I said to Zhi Yong; the whole thing about suffering to remember about God, till I thought I may need to be readmitted to the hospital. It makes me think: “How in the world did I forget about that?” I didn’t even mention it in my previous post, and for that few days till I wanted to see the doctor I didn’t even have a slightest clue of what I’ve said. This also reminded me that if we are ever not careful and do not have a strong relationship in Christ, the devil is going to pounce on you and make you sin against God. The devil doesn’t need to do some full scale attack like making you go kill hundreds of innocent people to make you sin, but he has many ways that seems “insignificant” to fulfill his evil desires and slowly make you go astray.

Thus, I thank God for the second chance in the hospital to give me a wake up call. I also really thank God that this time around the stay in the hospital really was a pleasant one: after all the time over there I finally manage to hang-out at the ground floor at night and eat dinner at a proper place instead of on the bed. Well, most of the time I either can’t come out of my hospital room because of my low white cell count and need to be isolated, or I am just too weak and can’t be bother to go down at all. This time I was neither of it, so I manage to go with mom to the newly opened Dome café and ate dinner, which I must say is really delicious and later “lepak-ing” at the ground floor observing how things go at night, which I wanted to try at least once since being in the hospital.

I was scheduled to see the doctor the next week after being admitted then for another check up and boy time sure flies when you are enjoying it to the full. Since I wasn’t taking the chemotherapy pills for awhile I felt the burden lifted up from me, no more slightly nauseous feeling or slight dizziness or anything bad of the sort, and it sure was good. But why must those few short days go by so quickly!!?

Remembered how I say that sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut? Now I am reconsidering it as on the day of my check up, I was saying to my mom: I sure hope the doctor says: “Your white cell count is too low, let’s postpone another week for the pills.” Well, imagine my smile when the doctor told me the exact same thing, ha-ha! The doctor was like saying to my mom: “Ehh… I know he’s very happy…” as it’s suppose to be a “bad” news. Yeah, so I had an extension holiday from the pills. (Oh, by the way, this was what I wanted to write mainly about last~ last~ Wednesday as mentioned in the first main paragraph, about how I got admitted and later the joy of not eating the pills, though through the process many things came to mind as written above.)

Because of my laziness in ~~typing~~ writing, I have delayed the post so long that tomorrow is the day where I’ll need to go for another check up to see if I could eat the pills again. Phew, after all those negotiations, the doctor finally agrees to lower the dosage of the chemotherapy pills because it seems too heavy for me, though I am still worrying about how I am going to adapt to the pills again after enjoying so much freedom from it. I suppose I am scheduled for another Lamba puncture around this month, too, since it has already been 3 months since the last chemotherapy treatment.

I really thank God for this experience, though of course it isn’t as grand as the other things I’ve gone through, it did remind me of certain important things. It’s wonderful to see how God uses seemingly random situations in our eyes to make something that will help us grow more towards Him. I also thank God that my infections were cured really quickly (the last time I felt really pain on my gum was actually the day I saw the dentist), that I was able to enjoy the stay in the hospital and come out just in time for my college mate’s gathering. I guess I also need to thank God that as I am writing this post, my flu seems to be very much better (after a month), though somehow in me there’s this lingering feeling telling me that if the flu gets cured I am 100 percent going to need to eat the pills when I pay the doctor a visit, which of course, I dread.

And yeah, before I forgot, during the time when my gum infection started, which was around the 20^th of August, Monday, the hair on my head finally started growing again. Though I have been accustomed to this bald look, I still thank God that the hair is growing again. I myself was quite fascinated that in just one day my head was filled with black dots instead of the usual white shiny parchment. Mom herself confirmed this when she came back from her Vietnam trip and was surprised herself. Younger brother said that probably because the cells in the body were busy making hair cells, that there weren’t any defense when the bacteria came and attack my gum and thumb… I hope my body doesn’t do that again.

Alright, so once again I wrote another looonnnggg essay, which I hope I could learn how to cut short and also not leave it day after day till I need to write this much of an amount and crack my brain hard just to remember the time line of the things that happened. Hmm… maybe I should just try the report method.

Report of what happened since the August 25^th post.

21^st of August: Chatted with Zhi Yong about suffering to remind you about God.

22^nd of August: Visit dentist for gum infection; didn’t remembered what I chat yesterday.

26^th of August: Thinks and says to self that I may need to get admitted to the hospital. Suddenly remembered about what I chatted.

27^th of August: Went for check up; white cell count very low; admitted to the hospital. Sad.

29^th of August: Discharged. Happy.

31^st of August: College mate’s gathering.

4^th of September: 2^nd check up; white cell count considered low; don’t need to eat pills. Happy.

10^th of September: Finally finish writing report. Realized all that has happened.

End.

Now ain’t that short and sweet?

Motivated by pain...

2007-08-25T01:55:00.000+08:00

Even though I am 20 years of age I still don’t have the guts to go visit the doctor or dentist by myself. Maybe that’s because I am not sure about the procedure and all to meet them, and would probably make a fool of myself in the process. That… and the fact that I need to talk to someone whom I don’t know seems… really scary.

On Wednesday though, I finally broke a personal record by going to the dentist alone. I guess pain and suffering has a way to drive you to do the impossible, the totally unimaginable.

I had a gum infection at the bottom left wisdom tooth. It started on Sunday morning and initially I thought it wasn’t a big deal as I could still chew at that area though with minor pain. There doesn’t seem to have any open wounds or the like which made me think that it could perhaps be those minor pains I have in my gums every once in awhile when my white cell count is at the low side, as the gums tend to swell and hurt.

It didn’t get any better and by Monday I could see a wound at the side of my teeth, which made me go: Uh-oh, it’s another gum infection. Yeah, “another” as during college I once had a gum infection too near April (I think I did mentioned it in the blog somewhere), which was a double bummer as first of all I couldn’t enjoy food on my birthday and during then I had an English “interview” like oral. My teacher wondered and commented on why I was mumbling all the way through it when she was giving out the result. She was surprised when I said that I had a gum infection and asked me why I didn’t told her so then, which was exactly what I was thinking in my mind.

Back to last Monday, I still insisted on not going to the doctor as I could bear the pain. Tuesday it became worst but I was still as stubborn as ever. Perhaps the other factor that made me not want to go to the dentist was because my mom was out on vacation (meaning no one to “teman” me), and I didn’t wanted to bother dad to take me to the dentist since he’s working, ~~and most probably he’ll just ask me to “be a man” and~~ ~~go see the dentist alone,~~ and being me I was too afraid to go alone.

On Wednesday though, it was so painful that I woke up half way in my sleep and that’s when I thought, alright, enough is enough. It’s time to be a man! Thank God that my dad didn’t off his phone when I called him and was able to ask him to give me some money and borrow the driver to take me to the dentist. Thus, started my quest to search for a dentist.

It was easy to find a dental clinic, but trying to meet the dentist is a different matter altogether. The first place I went to was closed on Wednesday (Oh, great!). The second one was open, but they said they were filled to the brim with appointments, suggesting me to come tomorrow and gave me their business card that look like it drop into the longkang and got picked up again. The third one, which I skipped pass it initially to go straight for the second because it looks so ancient (it looks the same since I can ever remember staying in Sri Petaling), was also filled with appointments but was free at 4 in the evening. There was only one more left and if it closed or filled with appointments I would need to search further or just bear with the pain for another day. Thank God that this one was open AND willing to accept poor old me.

Thinking about it, I just can’t understand those receptionists at the dental clinic at all. If I come and visit you without an appointment it must mean an emergency where I am in pain right? And there they were asking me to come the next day or several hours later. Okay, maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt that “some” really health conscious people come unexpectedly to check their teeth so they won’t mind making an appointment if the doctor’s schedule is full, thus making them not sure if it’s an emergency or not. But… when I came into the clinic, the second one only had one man, the third one was empty… couldn’t you just spare 10-15 minutes to check up on me? I bet the waiting time when one patient comes out till the next one goes in takes around that much time anyway. Then again, if their schedule is so hectic that would mean the dentist is really good, and that would me the one that I went to… hmm… let’s forget about that.

Oh, and for the first time in my life, when filling up a form I need to tick that I am a ‘cancer’ patient. It feels… weird in way, like you feel special, but at the same time very vulnerable. Just a minute after filling the form I was able to meet the dentist, and to my horror she said because I had leukemia and was just off treatment 2 months ago, she couldn’t do anything for the gum infection like what she would do for the other patients as I may bleed uncontrollably. Arghh… so you mean you wouldn’t do anything? Well, at the end all she could do was clean the wound with cotton, and prescribe me with some painkillers and antibiotics, not to forget a bottle of mouthwash especially for my gums.

Back home, I had another dilemma. I couldn’t decide whether to eat the pill or call my doctor to know if it’s okay to eat the pills that was prescribed. The antibiotics were fine, but the painkillers may interfere with the chemotherapy pills that I am taking. Even after checking the internet I still couldn’t find a solid answer, I couldn’t call my doctor as I don’t have his phone number, and calling mum wasn’t much help either as then she oh-so-conveniently went out of the mobile phone range in her area.

After thinking 30 minutes between being safe or relieving from the pain, I chose the latter. Thank God that as of now I didn’t collapse or anything, though I am sure if I visit my doctor again, I am going to get a scolding if it really is dangerous.

That wasn’t all, when I saw the amount of painkillers there were in the packet, I started to get a little worried. It only had 10 pills, and I need to eat 2 “whenever I feel the pain”. Last time when I had the infection and went to Wilson’s clinic I needed to take painkillers every 8 hours or so, being optimistic and say the infection last another 2 days? The pills couldn’t even last me to the last day! Or perhaps… these pills are different and could last me for at least a day. Thank God though, that after eating the painkillers once, I didn’t suffer that much pain anymore and didn’t need to eat another one.

Well… as of today, there’s still pain lingering at the infection site, I am still having flu, and another skin infection at my right thumb. I guess the combination of all 3 got me really worried as it may mean I need to stop the chemotherapy pills because my body was going on overdrive and could collapse anytime, which I couldn’t decide then. Then again, after reassuring myself that I have went through all of those before, there isn’t much that I need to worry about. Besides, why worry so much if all I need to do is pay the doctor a visit and more importantly, leave it to God?

Phew, really hope that all these infections would be cured, at least that would give me a piece of mind. Though, this is one experience to remember, at least I finally went to a dentist, alone… and boy, now I know why people wouldn’t want to be sick when they are working adults, medical fees are the bomb.

The business cards from the dental clinic. The middle one is suppose to be the one from the longkang, but due to my bad camera, it looks fine here.

Terrible...

2007-08-11T03:47:00.001+08:00

Having your immunity suppressed really is… terrible.

This is the first time in 20 years that I got flu… while I am still having flu.

Well, you know when your flu is about to get well when it starts turning sticky green instead of the white watery liquid that constantly flows out, right? Apparently since my immunity was suppressed, a complete recovery that should take around a few days when that sticky green stuff appears took more than a week. I guess during this long recovery time I somehow got another flu from someone (since everyone seems to be having cough and flu this few days) and my flu turned into the white watery liquid again… which means my body had to start from square one to recover… bah~ Not only that, I guess the infection spread and left me coughing a little.

Thus, I have been suffering flu for 3 weeks and I guess it will continue for a few more days. When to the hospital doctor 2 days ago because I couldn’t afford to let my body’s immunity system do all the recover by itself (when you rub your nose so much that the skin seems to wear off and it starts bleeding, you know your body needs help)… didn’t wanted to eat any medication at first as I was afraid it may interfere with the chemotherapy pills, and who would expect a simple flu could last this long.

The flu not only attacked me physically but mentally too. I was starting to get really paranoid, thinking that I may have a relapse and all seeing that my body was getting tired easily again and thinking that my lymph nodes were getting swollen, which when now I think about it… duh, of course you get tired more easily when you are sick.

That was why before I went to the doctor’s clinic, I was praying really hard that it wasn’t a relapse. Some of you may think… wah, got so big of a problem or not worh? But to me I learnt that every thing shouldn’t be taken lightly, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you at first, as many things aren’t what they seem. I remembered back then, before I was admitted to the hospital for leukemia and I was still going for dance practices for the coming Asian Baptist Youth Convention then, I remembered telling my dance instructor, Ai Nah, that I may need to go for surgery as a worst case scenario to remove the swollen lymph node, but if it’s nothing serious it would just be a virus and eating pills would suffice. I happily told the entire dance team not to worry as I would only get admitted after the youth event was over if it’s a surgery. When we ended the practice and was about to leave, Ai Nah said that we should pray for the swollen lymph node. I just shrugged them off telling them: “Aiyoh, nothing lah, just swollen only mah, what’s the big deal.” At the end we did pray, but back then in my mind I was still thinking why they would pray for something so insignificant. And there you have it, the worst case scenario wasn’t a surgery but I had leukemia. Sometimes I wonder if during then I did seriously pray about it would it be any different… would it become just a viral infection instead? Nevertheless, I guess God knows best, for He doeth all things well.

Thank God though, that after the blood check in the hospital’s clinic, all my counts were normal (normal for an immunity suppressed individual that is, it’s almost like half of everything you guys have, but still safe enough to sustain me). Praise the Lord! I let out a sigh in relief, like those who just saw their exam results and found out that they manage to pass subject. The doctor prescribed me to take some antibiotic pills and assured me that it’s okay to take the flu medicines.

When we were about to leave the clinic, the nurse who was working there wanted to go to Times Square to meet up with some old friends of hers, since it already was time for the clinic to close. Well, being such friends with mom and I after a year plus, we decided to give her a ride, and being the person who would make use of every opportunity, I decided to lepak around Times Square, too.

After all these years, this was the first time I entered Times Square. My first impression of it: “Eh… why everyone say this place full of sea food smell (LaLa)? Quite class wert.”

Just then elder brother called from Aussie and even before I could start telling him how wrong his perception of the place was, I started smelling the scent of seafood after ascending a floor or two. “Wah! Like Endah Parade only!?” I said to my brother. Well, if you just stay in middle and don’t stray to the sides of Times Square, you would say that it’s full of class (they even have a theme park! So why not!), but when you start straying to the sides… aiyoh… really… like pasar already. The majority of people I could see there are either secondary school students that just finish classes (or ponteng) and tourist, I guess it isn’t that good of a shopping destination compared to Midvalley and other places which I guess the local shoppers know it, I could be wrong though, but the thought of having to travel so high up just to see different shops and the pasar borong feel makes me think otherwise. So after having lunch in some Hong Kong fast food restaurant, I had to rush back for guitar lessons.

I guess the paranoid issue won’t be gone so easily, and would the thought of relapse might pop up every now and then to scare me… till like maybe 5 years plus which normally is the time period where a cancer is considered cure. Then again, in the world, there are no guarantees. The only guarantee in the world is in Christ. I wouldn’t say that having this thought of a relapse haunting me is a bad thing, on the contrary, it always reminds me that my life is in God’s hands, that I am not as in control as I thought I was. Thus, humbling myself down, knowing full well that God is in control. Besides… it makes me treasure every day even more… just being able to live another day normally never seem so good and special.

Alright, time to eat my flu medicines. Don’t know why, but whenever I eat it, it makes me sleepy but at the same time my brain is so active as if I am rushing for a train or something. The contradiction is… terrible.

Wee! A Wii!

2007-08-08T01:14:00.001+08:00

I have no idea what made me buy a Nintendo Wii.

It started out with my brother asking the price for a Wii (after I bugged him) when we went there to check if the new PSP was out. The man said it was RM 970, which surprised me because most of the next-gen consoles are above the 1000 Ringgit mark. When mom finished her shopping and we were about to go back, I saw another game shop and ask my mom (don’t need to bug) to check the price for a Wii there, and found out it was RM 950. Whoa! Even cheaper than before.

After that day, whenever my mom goes shopping for groceries at our friendly neighborhood shopping centre Endah Parade, I would ask my mom to inquire about the Wii from the first shop we went as mentioned, since most of the time we buy our Playstation stuff there and get really good deals, telling my mom to see how much price cut she could get from there and what deals are there in the package.

I was kind of surprised actually that my mom didn’t object me from buying it, as most of the time if I were to buy something that isn’t clothes or educational thingy’s she would object and ask me to get it as a birthday/Christmas present some other time. Last Wednesday though, when she wanted to change my younger brother’s school uniform from Carrefour, she just asked me: “Eh, so you want to buy the Wii or not?”

“No, don’t want.”

As if I would say that! Instead, I was more like: “Thank God! It’s a miracle!”

Since I already did my research and all about the product I finally decided to follow mom and go buy the Wii. I am sure that the shop owner must be really frustrated as mom just kept asking so many times and did not buy anything at all. The price of the Japanese version of the Wii which the man was willing to sell cost RM 900 from RM 950 after many price cuts, but after some research I wanted the US version as the menus would be in English, while the Japanese version would be in Japanese and I don’t understand a single word of it. Though in the long run it would be better to have the US version, it cost a whopping RM 1370 (manage to get a RM 30 discount though), goodness… and just because the language is in English and they give one free original game…

And that’s not all, apparently since the voltage system of the Americans are different than us Malaysians, I need to get an adapter, which cost RM 80; and not to forget another Wii controller and Nunchuk, which cost RM 280 a set… arghH! All together it became RM 1700 plus RM 30 for the credit card charge… ouch!

Went home, immediately open the Wii box and started playing the free original game which was “Wii sport”. The first thing I realized was how true when they say: “It’s a whole new gaming experience that attracts the whole family”, as my mom was actually enjoying a game of virtual tennis and not complaining about which buttons she should press, etc. The Wii controller that has a motion sensor really lures people who aren’t hardcore gamers to play the Wii as playing for example, sport games, is so much easier when you could just follow the exact movements to hit the tennis/golf ball while holding the controller, no more complicated button pressing or joystick moving anymore that hinders the older generation. It was also relatively easy and smooth to point at things on the screen with the motion sensor controller. And there I was at first, worrying about the difficulties I might face just to point and press a button, of course though, you can’t compare it to the pixel perfect accuracy of the computer mouse.

I was kind of dumb struck as this is my first time playing a next-gen console. Having no wires connected to the controller from the console, able to hook up to the internet to receive news and weather reports from its inbuilt wi-fi system, heck, even loading the games seems pretty cool (there’s a channel and all to load games). I still remember that even though the Playstation 2 announced that it has the capability to go online with a network card, nobody really bothered over here as it’s a big hassle and it seems really unstable at that time with not many game companies developing this feature. And now in front of me this console has an inbuilt wi-fi that isn’t much of a prototype but very usable (you can send messages to another person with a Wii, too). How time flies, eh?

So, after playing it what do I think about this gaming console?

Well, one thing about this machine is its ability to play party games (4 or more player games), which I guess Nintendo is good at doing. Most of the games on the list for Wii seem to be party games; even the Sonic game I bought has a Party Mode built in it. As if have said, the fact that you don’t need to press buttons to activate a complicated move, do a combo or super attack or just run around helps those who aren’t so good in gaming to have a fair advantage over those hardcore gamers and thus puts the fun factor in.

The Wii is also especially interesting when it comes to sport and action games, as you could use the Wii remote to be any sport equipment or any weapon, giving you a different and more realistic way to play those games. And it really “is” sports as it makes you sweat with the workout (believe me, it’s enough to make my joints ache).

Unfortunately, as an RPG fan, the downside of the Wii would be its lack of well… RPG games. I guess it’s nothing to be amaze of as if you play RPG, the only thing you need would be just to mash buttons and it gets the things done. Then again, I might be wrong and somehow RPG developers may start venturing into the Wii console to create a whole new way of playing RPG games. The other thing would be that many Wii users are overrating the old console games (SNES, Gamecube, etc). They are really fun to play, yes I admit that, but shouldn’t those games be left to their old consoles and just be a plus that the Wii is able to play it instead? Oh, and not to forget, the Wii isn’t much fun when you just want to lay back and enjoy a game without moving any muscle except your fingers as most of the time, you need to position yourself and at the very least use your whole arm for most of the games.

Hmm… thinking about it, I guess the other reason I bought the Wii besides the lower price was because I was more certain that the Wii is completely different than the X-Box 360 or the Playstation 3. Let’s just say I saw the Wii as neutral when it comes to the console wars which created sides in the gamer’s community (Playstation, X-Box, the Wii, and those crazy people that buy all 3, all predicting/claiming which console would be one to reign supreme, though I am pretty sure which one will through my observation). Though if possible I would love to get a PS 3 as I am sure most of the Japanese developers prefer that console and I don’t really enjoy the games out in X-Box as of now. Then again I maybe wrong, perhaps there’ll be something that’ll attract me there? Who knows?

All in all, thank God for my parents that I was able to buy the Wii, shouldn’t be complaining about other console or stuff now, ha-ha!

Alright, a few pictures of my Wii, forgive me for the poor quality pictures as the best camera I have at home is the 1^st 3G phone out for Sony-Ericson.

Adults...

2007-07-24T18:40:00.000+08:00

I realized that I have been interacting with adults more often than people around my age during the course of my treatment.

I guess it’s not a surprise at all as first of all most of the time I am either at home recuperating or in the hospital for treatment, and secondly a majority of the people my age are busy studying or out strolling among shopping malls I guess. Plus the fact that I am not sure of my own treatment schedule because of the unpredictable side effects and all means that I can’t plan when people can visit me or not either.

Either that… or perhaps I am just getting older that’s why I’ll naturally mix with the adults… since I am not a teenager anymore. But I guess I’ll just stick to the thought that the amount of conversation I had during treatment was less than 1 year of college worth, thus making this whole observation a failure.

Then again, it’s not like it’s a bad thing mixing with adults. On the contrary, it really is interesting talking to adults as if they are like your age… if you get what I mean. No, it’s not like the: “YO! YO! What’s UP my HOmie??!!” kind of way but more to the topics that they talk to you. Instead of being all serious and totally the no nonsense kind, they actually converses about erm… regular stuff. It really amazes me when they talk about their teenage years and how they thought about stuff then, their dreams and all which makes you go… WOAH??!! You mean they once thought like us too!!! How come they are all so serious and “adult” like now? But when you think about it, everyone was a teenager once too, and one day we are going to be like them.

One example of me mixing with adults more often would be joining my uncle’s band. Well, it’s a band form by a group of, well… uncles, from the same cell group for the purpose of performing during Father’s Day in church this year, to show that the uncles could still do it (the uncles are average 40+ years old I guess). They realized that it was so fun jamming together that they still jam for fun every now and then on Sunday at my place.

I was pretty sure something like this would happen as my uncle used to be a band boy, and when I started to play bass and his son played the drum, I guess the band boy spirit kicked in and he wanted to jam one day… problem is he couldn’t find any members of his age to form a group. Till this year I guess… where he managed to find some guitarists and a drummer, thus a band was form. I decided to join as the bassist as there was a spot, and it would be a good opportunity to tune up my bass skills instead of letting it rust like that, especially since my uncle isn’t the kind that have the “tidak apa” attitude when it comes to playing music, so no slacking.

Maybe I am just not open enough, but I always find it very fascinating and amazing when adults play rock & roll. Perhaps that’s because I have the thought that adults hate rock music and the like and would immediately complaint, asking their children to off the music and not forgetting to comment on how we could enjoy “noises” like these. But… thinking about it, it was during the time when these adults were teens that some great rock music came about (Deep Purple comes to mind), so sometimes I wonder why they complaint so much on those rock music.

The skills that some of these uncles’ have in the band are really jaw dropping. In our modern age we can normally get guitar scores from the internet or have music teachers training us to play the music we heard on the radio but these uncles play by ear, as during their era internet didn’t exist and going for music training isn’t exactly cheap either. That is why the way they hold their chords is pretty different compared to what most people do, and there are some chords which they themselves don’t even know as it is their own creation (it sounded right, so they stick to it). Really neat stuff, and even more so when they do guitar solos.

Of course, when I jam with them they don’t go all out rock, instead we play songs during their era (which we teens call oldies sometimes) like “I started a joke”, “Have you ever seen the rain”, “Let it be”, yeah, those kind of songs, mostly from BeeGees and the Beatles, and not to forget Christian songs that the uncles enjoy during Sunday worship or cell meetings.

As they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover, and honestly if I haven’t jam with them I wouldn’t believe that any of them could sing or play an instrument. It sure is amazing to know that in church there are actually many of the uncles who do actually have great talent in music to serve God.

Eating drugs... i mean pills...

2007-07-15T01:12:00.000+08:00

Alright, I’ll be totally honest with you. The reason I didn’t update my journal for some time was simply because ~~I am just too lazy to sit down and write~~ I wanted to allow sufficient time for everyone to be able to read the previous post, knowing that it is too long. If you have split up the post into sections and read one section a week, I guess this post would have been written just in time then. =)

First of all I would need to thank God that amazingly I am at least getting used to the pills I am eating weekly and daily. When I started to eat the pills 2 weeks back, the feeling of nausea, a little dizziness and tiredness makes me wonder how am I going to survive eating those pills for 1 and a half years. I could only stay awake for around 2 to 3 hours and would feel really drowsy after that. Worst of all, those side effects made me not want to do anything except maybe watching TV, as playing computer games or reading books just takes up too much energy. At least last time there was some hope even though I am suffering those side effects --- the pill eating only last 1 to 3 weeks at most --- but as of now its 1 and a half years… which is impossible for me to just put up a fight and think that those side effects weren’t there. It was so bad that I really wanted to make the decision of not eating the pills at all and jeopardize the whole protocol, but the thought of getting a relapse AND having to go through chemotherapy treatment again isn’t such a pleasant thought.

I decided to do some searching on the internet on how to counter those side effects as any little help would be a benefit. It was a little disappointing to realize that this nausea side effect was considered “uncommon” to most of the people taking the pills… ah… why must I get it? It was an interesting find as only now I knew that there were actually some food and drinks that I wasn’t suppose to take for it clashes with the pills, for instances, alcohol, milk, and Vitamin C (Mom said that the doctor did told her Vitamin C should be avoided, but weirdly I didn’t hear that). At the end of the search though, the only thing that could help ease off the nausea was something that I already knew, which was simple enough, taking anti-nausea pills (duh?!). Apparently in America these anti-nausea pills could be bought over the counter which is easy enough, but over here I need to get a prescription from the doctor to get it… and not only so, one pills cost around 30 ringgit. Since one pill can last for 12 hours, meaning 2 pills a day, times 1 and a half years… it would end up at a grand total of around RM 30k. If my health was in tip top condition I would rather use the cash to buy a second hand car. Because of that overwhelming figure, I decided to only use the anti-nausea pills during Mondays when I need to take my weekly pills which really strain the body and just bear with it for the rest of the days.

Bearing with it for the rest of the days wasn’t as easy as it sounds… which is why I really thank God that the nausea feeling isn’t so strong anymore during the second week of pill eating and I am able to do my daily activities normally once again. I still feel the chill down my spine whenever I just think of the pills and perhaps get a little drowsy for 10-15 minutes after taking down my daily pills, but that’s bearable at least. Now I only have Mondays to worry about, but that’s just fine for me I guess… when you have went through so much, you’ll learn to appreciate lots of things that don’t seem so significant at a glance.

Honestly speaking, I was quite disappointed as the end of my chemo-treatment wasn’t going as what I have hoped for. I thought I could be doing vigorous exercises again, strolling around shopping malls, attend YTU and stuff I did before I got admitted to the hospital, but apparently it wasn’t so. This pill eating has even made me think that perhaps going through chemo-treatment was better as at least I didn’t need to suffer discomfort for so long. Yes, chemo-treatment does deal a heavier side-effect, but at least I know that it’s going to stop after 2-3 weeks and I can rest after that, without being bothered by it anymore. That was what I thought the first time I had it in mind, which of course, if I do seriously think about which is better; eating pills would definitely be much easier to go through compared to chemo-treatment. Makes me realized how short sighted human beings are at times, not being able to see the big picture. That’s why without Christ in us, we will all be really lost in the world, as none of us can really know what is the big plan that has been installed for us, and we used up all our energy focusing on the wrong directions instead.

On a side note, elder brother coming back for winter break was a welcomed relief. He always brings back goodies whenever he comes home, but when I think of where the money comes from I guess I should appreciate my dad even more ha-ha. With him back my younger brother’s computer is finally fixed, I could go anywhere without pestering my mom or dad, and I finally have a usable lag-free Playstation 2 to play. Oh, and 3 cheers for my brother for passing his exams this time around, you’ll understand what it means when you ask him.

Oh, and for those who are wondering what in the world pills am I talking about, the pills that I am taking are called Mercaptopurine and Methotrexate. Well, I decided to tell you guys because ~~the book is oh-so-conveniently beside me~~ I am feeling nice today. Don’t ask me to figure out which one is the weekly and daily one as I am in no way going to go check it out at my pill box or check the internet for it as I get this chill whenever I just look or think about it.

Hmmm… and I guess 3 cheers too for the Malaysian soccer team too. At the rate they are going, the tourism department would be very please to know that more foreign football supporters would be staying longer in our country (thus, increasing their spending over here) as Malaysia is doing a good job in giving up a spot to allow another country beside themselves to get a spot through the group stages. Selflessly sacrificing their own hopes and dreams to get the medal for the sake of the country… how admirable don’t you say?

It's not over yet...

2007-06-20T06:37:00.001+08:00

Warning:

Prepare for a really long read; reading it in parts is advisable; not for the easily distracted or those who just hate reading.

Phew… what a week…

I was initially planning what to write 2 weeks and a half ago and was deciding to use the title called “Hair Issues” for that post, since I wanted to thank God that even though hairs from other parts of my body such as my moustache were dropping, the hair on my head didn’t drop off from the last chemotherapy. I also wanted to proudly announce that I had my first “real” hair cut, since chemotherapy, at my aunt’s place to trim my hair that was growing out of place (well before that it was only shaving due to the fact that my hair was dropping off) . I was worrying about that as I have totally no idea what this one can do since I haven’t had it before. Heh, I even thought about the advantages of having my moustache drop off so easily with this weird advertisement in my mind:

Some guy: OH NO! My date is arriving in 1 minute and I forgotten to shave!!!

Narrator: Ever had this problem? Fear not as with chemo-hair-remover, you can instantly take away your moustache by just wiping it off your face (guy in advertisement swipe the moustache off and his date arrives just in time, with a big smile he walks off) Yes! Just by wiping it off!! What’s more, you will never need to worry about hurting yourself while shaving again! Please note, side effects include hair loss from all parts of the body.

And since my hair didn’t fell off, I was thinking of explaining about my thoughts on shaving my hair just once more in that post… till I get old and it drops off I guess… for the sake of remembering what I went through, though then I was hesitant to do so.

Hmm… what else, oh… and to write about how little red dots were appearing everywhere on my body. If it was rashes I wouldn’t be in such a panic, but the “dots” weren’t on the skin, it was under it. And that could only mean internal bleeding. The fact that when I scratched my left arm one night and bright red patches appeared in the morning the next day, plus all the other red dots that were starting to show up got me worried. Though I tried to stay positive and say it wasn’t internal bleeding as it wasn’t like last time: the skin became dark brown in color when I scratched it.

Well, as you can see that article wasn’t written as I became lazy from all the thinking I have done and decided to push it to the next day, well I do have most of the days free anyway since I am not schooling or doing any work as of now. Ah, but I didn’t know what was about to come…

The next day was Monday, and it was time for my check up with the doctor. I was dreading to go there as it would mean the start of my pill eating days till one and half years later, feeling nauseous whenever I take the 12 pills every week. I know there’s no way I can delay it if my blood count were all normal, especially since the check-up was suppose to be earlier on Friday, but it got delayed because the doctor had to go for his church camp then. So, I went in the clinic, doctor was talking about his experience in the church camp and he wrote a prescription on the pills that I needed to take. When he asked me if there was anything particular happening to me, I told him of the red dots, but he wasn’t too worried as long as the counts were alright… phew. So, all that was left was to wait for the blood test result as it still hasn’t arrived then. Though most people hope that their blood count stays on average, I was praying that it wasn’t so--- I wanted it to be high enough to sustain me from infections and internal bleeding, at the same time low enough so that I couldn’t take the pills as it will drop my blood count lower and that can be dangerous.

Not too soon the moment of truth arrive when the doctor opened the door and said:

“Your white cell and blood platelet is too low to start the pills…”

I was about to jump and say “OOOoooohhhhhh Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh!!!”

“You need to be admitted to the hospital as the platelet count is 18 and white blood cell is at 1 point something…”

Arghh… tried to escape by telling the doctor if I could stay at home and get admitted only if it gets any worst…

“You HAVE to get admitted, I don’t want anything to happen to you especially since this is the last treatment you have…”

Hoo-boy…

Well, the first thought in my mind was that I felt kind of betrayed by the doctor in a way. Since this chemo-drug was never administered to me before, I asked the doctor if it would be heavy so that I could prepare myself before the treatment. The doctor said that it was light, and wouldn’t be much of a problem.

It was easy to believe at first as it wasn’t much of a problem for the two weeks I had, before getting readmitted this time around. In fact, during the time the drug was administered it wasn’t too bad. And after that when I got home from the hospital, I felt perfectly fine for the whole week, not feeling any side effects that would hinder the things that I do daily.

Though after thinking while walking to the designated room in the hospital, I decided that what the doctor said about this last treatment being light was not completely wrong if compared to what I went through last time, it’s just a low platelet count and my white cell was enough to sustain me and not get me isolated, nor do I need be afraid of any major infections or anything like that.

Alas, things got bad to worst…

I don’t know if it’s because I got depress since I need to stay in the hospital, especially knowing the fact that this could take a whole week or more waiting anxiously for the platelet count to go up, but during that week when I stayed at the hospital, my hair started to fall off from my head. I was disappointed in a way as after one and half years since the start of my treatment, my hair finally was long enough to be able to use gel, clay, or any other hair products. Then I remembered about the thought of having my hair bald just one last time… ah… don’t need to be hesitant about it anymore.

On the first day I was admitted I had one packet of blood platelet transfused into me. Well, mom was a little curious as to why the doctor gave me one packet instead of the usual four which he did since the first time I got admitted in Pantai Hospital. We concluded that the doctor wanted to save our money as one packet was enough to keep me out of danger (one packet increases my count on an average of 15) and if the platelets increase in a few days then it wouldn’t be a problem, and I was also counting on that as I wanted to get home as soon as possible… I thought I never need to see the rooms again so soon.

But I guess things don’t always go the way as you have planned, especially things that are out of your control and in God’s hands. Each day when I was awaken up by the doctor’s greeting I can only hear the dreading news of both my blood platelet and white blood cell count dropping from the doctor. I thank God that the white cell count wasn’t dropping rapidly till almost zero (around 0.1 something) like what the blue chemo does to me. It drops, but then the count sustains for a day or two, then drops again, and then sustains again. Blood platelet I can always transfuse and stay out of danger immediately when that’s done, but the white cells are a completely different matter.

From a white cell count of 1 plus to 0.7, 0.6 and 0.5 at the end, it won’t be a surprise that I was issued by the doctor to be isolated as I could easily get infected with that kind of count (I was immediately to be isolated when my white cell count drops under 1). And that’s when the fear crept in as I didn’t want to get sick or have any kind of infections. I have had all the common infections by someone who has low white blood count except pneumonia (based on my book on leukemia that is) and somehow then I had the feeling that it was going to get me. That… and I never wanted to face the pain of an anal infection for the chances of getting it was pretty high since I didn’t do my big business in like 4 days, and I thought I was going to get a tear because of that. Thank God that that didn’t happened to me at the end. What joy I have just by doing my big business in the toilet when my white cell count was low.

And I don’t know why, but whenever my white cell count drops to a level where I need to be isolated and easily get infected, there’s bound to be some completely clueless dude or dudedess who will enter my room. It seems the chances of this happening are pretty low when I am alright, but once it drops… During this time when I was isolated came a man who has no common sense at all. I would forgive the person if he enters the room, sees that the person on the bed isn’t who he’s intending to visit, and leaves saying sorry for the mistake. Nooo… this dude came in, saw that I wasn’t the person and instead of leaving, his eyes starts looking frantically around the room trying to search for an invisible compartment inside my room, or perhaps his invisible friend, I am not sure, but the way I see it his look was serious enough like that of people trying to watch comets flying pass earth every once in 50 to 70 years. I won’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he may be taking that time to figure out if I am the friend he was suppose to visit because we look alike, for if supposedly he “is” my friend… won’t I like say ‘hello’ when you come visit me and invite you? I won’t stare at a friend like a complete stranger and ask him or her to go away, right? And to makes things worst when my mom gestured him that he was in the wrong room and asked him to leave, he was going “harh, harh?” like my mom was asking him a question. Only when I said: “Salah room” did he get back to his senses and only leave. *slaps at forehead*

I did not expect that I will need to take back my words on my previous post about how I will never need to last 5 days WITHOUT taking a bath so soon. My aunt came over to shave my head in the hospital on Friday and having hair sticking all over you after that is really frustrating, and I had to give in to take a bath. I’ll admit that sometimes I am just too lazy to take a bath, but in the hospital, the main (or perhaps second after laziness) reason I avoid taking baths is because of the chemo-pod with the needle in it. To avoid it’s dressing getting wet and all I need to use a plastic bag to cover the chemo-pod, use Micropores (the white bandage commonly used) to stick the plastic in place, and when I bath I can’t move around so freely to avoid the chemo-pod from getting wet. Lots of work, totally not worth it to me it seems. Me and mom thought we could avoid that this time around when the nurse gave us some water-proof like stickers that could avoid all the plastic bag/Micropore work, but it turn out to be foolishness instead as the sticker was too sticky and I had to change my entire dressing on my chemo-pod because it pulled out the dressing while sticking on it *grumble grumble*. Though normally after actually taking a bath, I will start thinking why in the world did I forgo this super refresh feeling just because of… laziness. I shaved my head as I didn’t like the sight of my hair dropping every time I wash my face, dry my hair, or wake up after sleeping. It seems freaky to see your hair getting less and less every day. That, and for hygienic reasons too: you don’t want to see your hair dropping on your food every time you eat.

Hmm… I guess some of you may be wondering half way, why don’t you update your blog in the hospital instead of waiting till you get home? Is it because you are “lazy”? Ho-ho, I do have a legitimate reason for this. I brought my laptop to the hospital after staying there for one or two days as I know it’s going to be a long week and I cannot survive by watching the same movie/cartoon/documentary more than twice. Mom was using it first the day she brought it to play spider solitaire as then I wasn’t in a mood to surf the internet or write anything. But the next day when I wanted to use it (which I think was the day after I shaved my hair and took a bath)… eeeehhhhh??? How come my screen black one? Tried everything I knew that could restore the screen but to no avail. It was only when I realized a slight movement in the super dim desktop background that I knew what happened --- my laptop’s screen back-light has blown. ARghhhh!!! And the effort I took to reformat it!!! Just when I thought I was bound to watching reruns of the same movie/cartoon/documentary for the rest of the week, I thank God that I still had the faulty but playable Playstation 2 at home and had an RPG game that I did not finish (which I eventually did while staying in the hospital this time around), otherwise I would have bored myself to death by memorizing lines from the same movie/cartoon/documentary that I have watched over and over again.

There was a glimmer of hope on Friday evening when the blood test result found out that my blood platelet has gone up by 1. Well, 1 may not be a significant number, but if it is increasing, even just by 1, the chances are by tomorrow or the day after I might go home if it is still increasing as the doctor can rest assured that my blood platelet will restore to normal and don’t need to stay in the hospital any longer. But that wasn’t the case. The next day my count dropped further down to a count of 15 and the doctor said that I would need to have another platelet transfusion, 4 packets this time. Since the decision to have the transfusion was only decided during the evening (had the blood test around then), the packets of platelet only arrived around midnight. I would complain as most of the time I would be having a short nap of around 2 hours at that time, but this time around during the transfusion I was able to watch Fantastic 4 at Star Movies for the first time. At least I won’t be left out in the dark when I watch the sequel. One thing I don’t like about platelet transfusion, especially 4 packets, is that most probably I would have allergies popping out by then. The good thing that it’s only itchy when you scratch it… but who can resist when you see a bump coming out from your skin?? And soon after that, my head feels like exploding inside out and my body feels really hot. Thank God that after a few hours, ever thing goes back to normal.

The other thing that I don’t really enjoy about having low white cell count is that I would need to take antibiotics at intervals in order to prevent infections. It wasn’t too bad at first; the antibiotic that I initially took a day or two when I got isolated was the injection kind. So after injecting it through the chemo-pod it was done… simple, fast and easy. Though I must say that whenever that antibiotic is injected, I could actually feel in my mouth some sort of UHU gum taste and for the first few days of administering it I could feel the pain in some area of my gums which I think was infected by bacteria by then, as later the pain didn’t occur anymore. Though it does disturb my sleep (the antibiotic comes when I am sleeping, around 11pm, 5pm and 11am), the fact that the antibiotic could be given to me real quick reduces the frustration factor. But after Friday (I think…) the white cell drop to around 0.5 by then and I was put on another antibiotic, this time the drip kind. What I really don’t like about the drip kind is that first of all, it takes a longer time; secondly, I can’t really sleep as I need to make sure when the drip is done and call the nurse to remove it, otherwise there might be a back flow and my blood starts flowing back into the tube; thirdly, unlike the injection kind, I can’t really trust the nurses on this and had to wake up to make sure there isn’t any air bubbles in the tubing that could kill me. The second and third could be countered by a dripping machine of some sort (which stops the flow when the drips finishes or has air bubbles in it); unfortunately I could only use it for a day as someone else more urgent needed to use it. The feeling of being bound to the drip and not being able to twist and turn in bed so easily isn’t that pleasant too, though I think this is just mind over matter. And… the worst of all when having a low white cell count, next to suffering the pain of getting an infection, is that I would need to suffer pain from getting a Neupogen injection to the stomach. The next day when I was given the antibiotic drips, the doctor also decided to give me the Neupogen to raise the white cell count up. He did asked me if I wanted it a few days ago as it can dramatically spur the white cells to increase rapidly, but I did not want to as an injection to the stomach really hurts and there may be a blue-black considering that my platelet count is so low. I also place my bets that my white cell count wouldn’t drop any lower than 0.7 but that apparently didn’t happen. Well, there’s two parts that I dread of having this injection: the waiting part and the actual injection itself. The last few times I had it, this injection was given around 5 in the evening, and every time after lunch I will start to have this fear of waiting and thinking when the injection would be coming and that haunted me till the nurse comes with it. Totally waste my afternoons thinking about it then. Thank God that as of now, this wasn’t the case because it’s given in the morning. So… when the nurse wakes me up around 11 in the morning and I am still groggy and all, she just say it’s time for my Neupogen injection and get it done, don’t even have the thought of waiting for it haunting me at all. The pain from the actual injection wasn’t avoidable though, sometimes it hurts really bad, sometimes nothing at all, but I guess that’s because the sleepiness I had then acted like a natural anesthetic. I had 5 (or was it 6) of the Neupogen injection. The last one was on the day before I got home, could be avoided if the doctor came earlier in the morning but when he came then the damage was already done. Though I must say, all these annoyances is still better than getting infected, as getting infected could cause me my life instead.

Oh, and talking about drips and all, another reason why I dread drips, especially at night, is because of some of the night nurses that does a not so decent job. I thank God that for the most half of the time, the night nurses that took care of me were the more elite ones who were more careful and caring, and with that I was able to rest in peace at night knowing that nothing bad would happen. But the first half of the nights there was this really scary nurse that I was always afraid of, since the beginning I was first admitted I guess. Well, remember when I said that I wanted things to be done fast so I could sleep? Yeah, I want things to be done quickly, but in a proper and moderate and safe manner, but this nurse… fooyoh, she really feels the need… the need for speed. When she injects the antibiotic I could see her using like all her strength to try and push it in as fast as possible (that antibiotic is really thick); when she draws my blood out, I can tell you it’s so fast, that I could actually feel the decrease in pressure in my heart… no kidding, I had to tell her to slow down as I am feeling something in my heart, which she goes: “Oh sorry…”; she uses the same tubing over and over again without taking a new set for the drips; and when I was getting transfused with the four packets of platelet, she wanted it to be quicker then it already was… so she kind of squeeze the packet like how you do on a toothpaste. Well, most nurses do the squeeze like toothpaste thingy only when it’s about to finish to make sure that no platelet is wasted, but when it’s still half full?? And since she was on duty for the first time I needed the drips, I didn’t dare to sleep soundly since then as with her she wouldn’t even care about when the drip is done or not and expect me who is sleeping to take care of it and tell her when it finishes… makes me wonder how those old folks are going to survive without anyone else taking care of them. Imagine the horror by the time when they wake up and all the blood has back flowed into the tube. Well, for the elite nurses they do everything opposite of what I have described, easy as that.

Talking about this scary nurse, on Sunday night, one of the elite nurses said that I needed to change my chemo-pod needle as it has already been a week. So she told me that she had written a message to the morning shift nurses but asked me to remind them just in case. Morning came, my mom helped remind the nurses, they said “yeah”, but nothing happened. Which could only meant that it was passed over to the afternoon shift, but then it really isn’t a problem as I wanted to take a bath in the afternoon before the needle is reinserted. Afternoon came, mom reminded again and a nurse finally came to pull out my chemo-pod needle and I was able to take a bath freely without the needle blocking the way. But while taking it out the nurse says that it will only be reinserted at night… I was thinking: why at night? She said all the nurses are busy at the moment and therefore it would be best to give the job to the night nurses. *Plays horror music at background* It’s not that I am annoyed they are delaying it for so long since the morning, but I was afraid that that night the nurse in charge was THAT scary nurse. I remembered the first time when my chemo-pod needle was inserted by her… instead of using a square waterproof sticker and paste it professionally; she just took some Micropore and paste it above my chemo-pod needle. That time I was like: what in the world?? You call this a dressing? Thank God at that time then I only needed to stay for one day, so it wasn’t a problem, but as of now I am not staying for one day, and if it’s her… I am soooo in trouble. Thank God once again that for that night, it wasn’t her. So, at the end: the night nurses asked the morning, morning asked afternoon, afternoon pass it back to night… what a cycle.

After a lot of waiting, good news finally came on Tuesday when the doctor told me my white cell count has gone up by one plus though my platelet was still dropping. It is a relief; at least I didn’t need to be afraid of getting infections anymore, and it meant that it’s a matter of time before I could be released. That morning my throat felt sore but I didn’t wanted to tell the doctor at first for I fear that if I did tell him, he would ask me to stay longer in the hospital for the throat to cure before going back home. What’s the big deal of a sore throat anyway? It will cure in a matter of time right? Though after thinking for awhile and realized the consequences if the sore throat is in fact something serious, I just went ahead and tell him. The doctor said that I was having the sore throat now is due to the fact that the white cell is up again and had nothing to worry about. Hmm… how could I forget about that, it’s just like the other infections I have. Makes me think how ironic it is, that even though we as humans don’t want to suffer pain in anyway… feeling pain actually means that your body is working properly as intended.

“Hallelujah!!!” was shouted on Wednesday as my blood platelet has finally increased! The doctor smiled and told me that if all goes well and not have a fever I would be able to go home tomorrow. Woah… that sounded like music to my ears. Unfortunately, on that day when I did my temperature check up every 6 hours, my temperature was always slightly above 36.9 Celsius (37, 37.1, and 37.3, around there). I would like to point the fault to the thermometer, but that wasn’t the case as most of the time the errors occur below 36.9 Celsius (had 36.1 once… isn’t that hypothermia? And the nurses just say: “Temperature normal, tak de fever”) but if it is above 36.9 Celsius, it usually does mean I do have a fever. So then I was praying to God that the doctor wouldn’t mind these slight “mis-readings” and allowed me to go home the next day, if the platelet goes up that is. I was also soooo tempted to hide the temperature report or maybe changed it so that the doctor would never know about it.

So on the next day, I was SUPER delighted and thank God when the doctor said: “You could go home…” Woo-hoo! The weird thing is, when he told me what my count was it really isn’t to say the least good. My white cell count has shot up to 6.7 something because of the Neupogen injection and if I am right, that count isn’t normal for a human being. Not only that, my blood platelet, has in fact dropped that day, not to forget about the slight fever that I think I had. So, I just had to ask the doctor why am I allowed to go home even though my blood platelet count was dropping and he told me that it was because the blood platelet was on an average level, or whatever that means, and was stable enough to go home. Well, if he said: “oh yeah horh, you better stay longer…” I would have strangled myself for making me stay longer in the hospital by opening my big mouth. After packing my stuff and getting my antibiotic pills, I gave out a huge sigh of relief: I was finally able to go home.

Though this isn’t really significant I’ll just write it down for remembrance sake. On the morning before I was able to go home, I finally manage to sit down and watch how the sky changes from black, to dark blue, to light blue in 30 minutes time starting from 6.30 in the morning. I am always amazed at how the color of the sky changes so quickly in a matter of time and wanted to watch how the sky color gradually changes at least once, as most of the time when I see it, it’s black, then I go off to do something and later when I see it, it’s already light blue. The most amazing thing is that, for the past few days in the hospital I wanted to do that, but distractions such as, nice movie to watch, the sky was already dark blue when I look out the window, I was playing games --- kept me from succeeding in doing it. So I was telling myself that staying in the hospital for another day more has one benefit, I could try and at least watch the sky gradually changing. Weirdly on the day I succeeded doing it, was the day I could go home. God’s plan seems so perfect when I think about it…

God teaches us to be patient by putting us in situation where we need to be patient. For the 11 days there I kept asking God why doesn’t He just do a miracle and allow me to go home instead of letting me suffer like that. Then I remembered about how there are some people who prayed so earnestly for their love ones to come to know Christ for 10 years plus; how people prayed that their love ones could change for the better for years… that’s when I realized that if it’s only just 11 days and I cannot take it, what about those who waited for years? As they say, God’s answer to our prayer is “yes, no or wait”. Perhaps God wanted me to trust in Him and see if I still stand firm in Him if He didn’t let things go as I wanted. Makes me realized that most of the time I kind of forget that my life is in God’s hands and not my on, that most of the time I treat God like a genie in a magic lamp and ask for things to be done my way, instead of following His way as He is my Lord; to learn of His will and purpose for me on earth, instead of the other way around.

Guess I’ll need to update what I have overcome (updated in bold):

-1 year 5 months plus (started on December 22^nd, 2005 till June 14^th 2007)
-12 chemotherapy treatment (not including the others, if included it’ll 18 treatments)
-50 plus blood drawn from the arm (not including those from chemo-pod)
-10 Lamba puncture procedure (and counting… still need to go for it)
-5 times hair dropped
-3 painful mouth ulcers (one caused from bacteria, while the other 2 was because the cell lining couldn’t recover fast enough)
- 2 anal infection
- 1 case of herpes zoster (or the heavier version of chicken pox if you’re wondering)
- Packs of blood and platelet transfusions (+5 more packets of platelet from what I had)
- And being nausea for all the treatments except the first one and the one where I didn’t need to take any chemotherapy.
- 20 plus Neupogen injection to the stomach

Hope, this time it really is mission accomplished though, ha-ha! Thank God once again, that there weren’t any serious infections this time around, that everything went smoothly as planned, and that I didn’t need to suffer as badly as having to go through a chemo-treatment.

If you have read this far, I’ll give you a little treat through these photos. This is the first time I ever actually taken a photo of myself since being diagnosed with leukemia. Well, the other photos were mostly wedding events, but that’s not like I can ask to be excused right?

[Hmm... I guess it's time for a trim...]

Me: Boss, kasi trim sikit.

Barber: Noooo problem boss.

Me: *Dum Dee Dum*

Me: WHAT??? Boss APA NI?

Boss: Trim sikit lah boss, taklah macam Zidane?

Me: ...

(If you noticed, I was so shocked that my shirt changed colour)

After getting back on Thursday, I really thank God that I could make it on time to help in performing for the Father’s Day church event on Sunday. Well, my uncle’s cell group decided to play some Christian songs to perform on Father’s Day, to show that they still have what it takes to be band boys… err… I mean to show that father’s like them still can serve God by performing songs.

It really is fun, especially the fact that I once again felt this nervous feeling in performing like the days I used to play bass for my friend’s band. Though this time around, I haven’t been playing for so long that my fingers had blisters by the end of the practice, and had to use bandages on the fingers to play on that day itself.

I was really worried too, about the fact that my lips were deteriorating to the point that I could taste blood on it. As if it goes on, it would mean that I need to suffer a lot when eating as my entire mouth lining would be destroy by then, not to forget that I need to face my lips that are filled with dried blood every morning. Thank God though, that as of now it didn’t reach to that point. Praying to God that it becomes better instead of worst, as I would really like some rest before the pill eating starts this Thursday… though if the lips and mouth lining reached to that level I could avoid eating the pills to allow it to cure, but that isn’t all that good either. Then again, if it really does become that bad, I would not hesitate to yell at the doctor for telling me that this treatment is light, when it actually gives me the terrible side effect of all the red, blue and yellow chemo-drugs combine.

Alright, guess I’ll be going back to bed now… finally manage to update my journal once again. Phew… tough trying to record everything down…

The older I am, yet non the wiser I got...

2007-06-02T04:53:00.000+08:00

Aiks, just went I thought I was able to exercise a little once again…

On Sunday, 2 days after I got home from the hospital, my younger brother and cousins were playing 1 versus 1 football and I was there taking a look. Thinking that perhaps I was “healthy” enough to play, I decided to join in order to move my body a bit. So I took the ball, did some left right movement, and just went I started to turn around to get the ball… “CRrraacccKKK” The inevitable happened, I sprained my ankle.

It wasn’t too bad at first, I managed to limp back into the house to sit down and rest. After that I was even able to walk upstairs to surf the internet. But after seating around for an hour, I realized how severe it was when I wanted to stand up to take the mic stand for my cousin. My left leg that got sprained couldn’t support me at all; it was too painful to stand up. Arghhh! And there I was, thinking about going out to catch some of the good movies that were out in theaters.

Nevertheless, it isn’t so bad, as having a sprained leg most importantly doesn’t affect my appetite or sleep (as I am so afraid of nausea nowadays), and it’s not like I cannot move any where at all and need to stay put, just that it takes a longer time to carry my non-movable leg around. Thank God it isn’t a broken/dislocated ankle, no way am I going back to the hospital when I just got out of it two days ago. Oh, and later did I realized that missing the chance to watch movies this week isn’t a problem at all, as at first I didn’t know the school holidays started, and I don’t really enjoy much when the mall is so crowded -- where you could feel someone breathing down your neck or smelling someone’s sweat’s just centimeters away from you.

Thank God that as I am typing right now my sprained left leg is able to move around normally, though any movement faster than walking would result in me screaming I guess. Heh, from now on I will need to do some warm-up before starting any exercise whether heavy or light, guess my body is so rusty that starting it up to full gear instantly would result in everything breaking apart. Either that, or I am just getting old real fast and can’t do stuff I did when I was younger.

My dad recently started using my laptop a few months ago when I seldom bother it anymore as any games having better graphics than Warcraft III would result in a major lag and surfing the internet was a pain as it takes so long to load FireFox. That and my elder brother ordered a new computer before he went back to Australia for his studies.

Well, the computer lagging really badly wasn’t only experience by someone who’s tech savvy, but even my dad who doesn’t use the computer at all till now complaints about it whenever he uses it, saying how come it starts up so slowly.

I tried deleting everything that I am not using, cleared spywares and stuff but to no avail. It still loads up to Windows really slow, and checking pictures and documents is a frustrating process as you need to wait forever. I read from In-Tech that some files, even though they are deleted they still leave traces of it on the hard disk; therefore it still lags at times and doesn’t really help. Plus I guess many irremovable spywares have entered my laptop since I didn’t really bother it for a long period of time, didn’t bring it along with me to the hospital after awhile as I realized that I really have no energy surfing the internet or writing stuff when I am feeling so nauseous. Hmm… which reminds me about that experience in the hospital where someone kept sending me some unknown file through my laptop via Bluetooth, which Norton says are viruses… but I’ll leave them for some other time…

Well, if all else fails what do you do? You start over! Yeah, that’s right; I decided to reformat my laptop. After checking sites in the internet on how to reformat your computer correctly, I was confident that it was a piece of cake.

So I started to reformat, reinstalling Windows and stuff… after a really long time… Yay! Finally installed and ready to go. Load up all the essential programs and realized that there was one more CD left. Apparently this CD is to install a program to allow the laptop to play videos and music without even Windows loading up. Looking at the manual it says it needs 212 MB of space set aside from the main partition to install it… oh dear… guess I got to reformat it as I only have one partition and didn’t realized about it.

So, second time, I did what I thought it says, created 212 MB partitioned space and installed Windows in the other, did all that I’ve said above except the mistake. But I realized that when I tried installing that program from the CD, it failed saying that I have insufficient space.

Getting frustrated, I partitioned 250 MB to see if this program will still give the excuse of not having enough space. Did all that I have mentioned above except the mistake… and yet it still says insufficient space after a super long time of installing.

What in the WORLD??!!!

So this time I read the manual again, it’s just 2 pages for goodness sake and yet I could get it wrong. Thinking that maybe I should just call some technician to help if all is lost I suddenly realized something… the manual said to deduct 212 MB from the main partition for the “operating system”. *Slaps forehead*, I just realized that when it says operating system it means Windows and not the program I was trying to install, and where it says ‘deduct’ I was ‘creating’ a partitioned instead. In short, I should deduct 212 MB of my total hard disk volume, and install Windows to the rest of the larger sum, not creating a new 212 MB partition by itself.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t as easy as I thought… by the time I finished installing everything it was already midnight. And what should have been a one time reformatting process became four times the work. Guess I ain’t so tech savvy after all, savvy?

Well, I learnt my lesson… if there’s anything computer related that needs to be repaired and done; I’ll just leave it to my elder brother. Saves the trouble from me =)

Mission Accomplish~

2007-05-27T06:08:00.000+08:00

I didn’t know that saying goodbye to something that I dread wasn’t as easy as I thought.

Not that I am going to miss chemotherapy, as it isn’t really something anyone would want to look forward and receive it with open arms, but the whole experience of going through it for one and a half years was some wild journey. And it’s has all ended. Having a mix of feelings right now as I am typing this, it seems… unreal in a sense that the chemotherapy has come to an end; that the super long list of chemotherapies that I need to go through for weeks and weeks was completed just like that, and back then I was like looking at my protocol, crossing out each treatment I’ve gone through and wondering: “Man, this is going to take forever… when will it ever end?”

Got home from the hospital 2 days ago and though the homecoming was delayed for two hours because of a total mix up with the insurance company and the hospital--- both relaying wrong information to one another--- I didn’t really bother much. Okay, okay, I lied… even though it was the last day I still got frustrated from waiting and changed my clothes even though I was still feeling quite weak to venture outside my room and to the bill department to see what was taking so long… thought my mom was chit-chatting with her aunts so long to pay her bills, tsk tsk.

Really need to thank God that this time around the treatment was very much bearable, didn’t throw up once and the days seem to pass by rather quickly, except for Monday I guess when I had my Lamba Puncture and needed to stay still for like 5 hours on the bed, and that’s when time moved really slowly, but who loves Mondays anyway. Had 2 chemo’s this time around, a 2 hours daily chemo (Ara-C), and for the first 3 days a 3 hour chemo (didn’t know what it’s called, but apparently it breaks down the DNA of cells or some sort like that, message me if you really want to know). I was rather surprised or terrified as you can say… that the chemo was able to be administered though the period of time was really out of place. I took my first chemo at 6 something in the evening for the first day, but as my mom thought that there may be a chance that I would want to go home on one of the days and also in order that on Friday I wouldn’t need to stay for another day since the chemo will end by midnight, she asked the doctor if it could be made earlier. The doctor said that a time difference between a ‘few’ hours was okay and asked the nurse to plan accordingly. So the next day the chemo started at 3-4 in the evening, which was fine I thought. But on the third day it suddenly started at 11 in the morning and the nurse who put the chemo on me didn’t even spare a single second for my anti-nausea medicine to settle down. Normally they wait around 30 minutes for it but she just put in the chemo straight after that. I would yell if it wasn’t for the fact that this chemo treatment was bearable… and I thought those horrible nurses only appear at night or Saturdays and Sundays. Thank God that nothing terrible happened to me because of that.

Nothing much to mention I guess for the whole five days when I was in the hospital. I spend most of my sunlight moments sleeping, while watching Disney’s series at midnight (like Lizzie McGuire, Even Steven’s, I find it way more interesting compared to the B-grade movies on Star Movies which they normally show during midnight). When I was back at home, mom even complimented me for being able to hibernate in the hospital: only eating one main meal which was dinner, and sleeping through everything else. At first I thought it was because of the loss of appetite and tiredness from the chemotherapy, but on Friday when I got home, my appetite was back to normal and though my stamina wasn’t at its best, I didn’t need to sleep the whole day like in the hospital, proving it wrong. I realized the hospital room plus the thought of knowing that I am going to get a dose of chemotherapy and certain food and smells (realized this because certain food gives me my appetite back, while others completely destroy it, problem is, I don’t know which is which as it changes) made me nausea even before I begin any chemo treatment at all, meaning that the whole thing was caused mentally, but it isn’t something where I can concentrate and chant: “the hospital is a happy place” a million times to make it go away.

Hmm… it’s going to be disgusting but I guess I’ll just write it down for memory sake… I guess it’ll be a long time before I can last 5 days NOT bathing. I didn’t have the heart to tell one of the nurses that was doing their routine check up that my hair wasn’t purposely oiled, but it was “naturally” oiled. Yeah, imagine how oily it has become when one doesn’t bath. And there she was complimenting about how great my hair has grown back.

Oh, and before I forgot, a really big thank you to the student nurse that came visit me for more than once while I was in the hospital (I guess you know who you are), though you didn’t had practical duty at the hospital then. It breaks the mundane cycle of sleep, watch TV, and sleep again in the hospital. I seldom get visitors, and for those who are wondering why, a patient undergoing chemotherapy is really hard to get visited by friends as most of the time cell counts are low, and even if that isn’t the case I may need time to recover from the side effects that I have received and wouldn’t want to meet anyone then (it isn’t pleasant to talk and feeling like vomiting at the same time). And I guess it doesn’t seem polite to “ask” people to come visit you, as that seems forced in way.

Most importantly I need to give thanks to God for all He’s done. For helping me to overcome the impossible, and teaching me that going through life isn’t so easy. It isn’t always “the other person” who would need to go through the difficulties. Heh… and before that the hardest thing I need to go through was exams. But for exams if you fail, you get devastated… of course… but you still live through it and can retry another time. But the exam of life isn’t something that can be retaken.

There are so many things that I’ve learned through this experience, and a million more reasons to thank God for it, but I’ll just write one for now. One important thing I learned through this experience was the peace of God. I realized that the peace of God isn’t something where panels of bright lights appear and suddenly all the pains go away; all troubles disappear; all worries gone in a snap with God’s finger (though He could do that if He wants to).Now I realized that the peace of God is this: Even IN pain, troubles and tons of worries, you know there isn’t anything to be afraid of, for you know that God is in control, and you can have rest, sweet rest knowing that His arm is carrying you through all the way without a doubt. I guess it’s best describe by Pastor Chuah during one of his sermons: The peace of God is like a bird, sleeping soundly under the shelter of a rock, though heavy storms with loud thunders roaring and flashes of lightning are around it, the bird could still rest peacefully under the solid rock. And it was this peace that made me go through my toughest times, as I know full well that I can give all my burdens to God, for He wasn’t going to abandon me.

I would really want to jump and celebrate, maybe fire a few fireworks while I am at it and party all night but having to eat the pills for 1 and a half years time (the main thing I am dreading right now) after this, and going back for Lamba punctures every now and then (not too bad this one) to decrease the chances of a relapse seems to dim the celebration mode. Though, I won’t complain much as I am still very glad that I don’t need to drip in any chemo anymore or having the need to stay really long periods of time in the hospital.

So, in short (just the highlights):

After,

-1 year 5 months plus (started on December 22^nd, 2005 till May 25^th 2007)
-12 chemotherapy treatment (not including the others, if included it’ll 18 treatments)
-50 plus blood drawn from the arm (not including those from chemo-pod)
-10 Lamba puncture procedure (and counting… still need to go for it)
-4 times hair dropped and grown back again
-3 painful mouth ulcers (one caused from bacteria, while the other 2 was because the cell lining couldn’t recover fast enough)
- 2 anal infection
- 1 case of herpes zoster (or the heavier version of chicken pox if you’re wondering)
- Packs of blood and platelet transfusions
- And being nausea for all the treatments except the first one and the one where I didn’t need to take any chemotherapy.

I can finally say to myself: Mission Accomplish!

*pats myself at the back*

~Hmm… guess I’ll be writing what I’ve learned and felt through this whole experience every now and then whenever I could think of it. Just couldn’t fit every single thing that is gushing through my mind right now.

Negotiation at the hospital...

2007-05-17T00:15:00.000+08:00

“Eh, you think this is a market ah, ha-ha!” says the nurse.

Yeah, went to the doctor for a check up today, thank God once again that the counts were all normal, and that I didn’t need to get admitted to the hospital on that day itself.

Well, not that it was part of the doctor’s plan in scheduling me to get admitted next week, but I managed to get out of it through some negotiations, well like those in the markets.

“AUNTY AUNTY, BUY 10 ORANGES FREE 5!!!!”
“You give me FREE 20, only I buy lah…”
“Harh?? Free 20 cannot lah…”
“Aiyah, how about 10 leh?”
“Eh, I rugi, but can also lah.”

Which in my mind I don’t think they are going to rugi unless they are doing a stock clearance.

Anyway, after discussing with the doctor I managed to persuade him to only let me get admitted on Monday, which I really thank God for as this at least gives me some time to relax and enjoy eating for another 4 more days, free from feeling nauseous and all I must add, before the next unknown side effect pops up when I undergo chemotherapy for 5 days again.

And since I was going to be staying for at least 5 days, getting admitted on Monday is another good thing as I totally dread the nurses’ service on Saturday and Sundays. Well, unless I got lucky and have the regular senior nurses working on that day (senior doesn’t mean those grandma’s mind you), I am going to have to be fully alert in making sure that the nurses don’t do anything life threatening to me and making sure that they actually do things properly. I guess that’s what happens when you have too many patients and too little nurses, all which have taken leave on that day I guess. Man… that kind of reminds me of some of the horrors at night, but let’s leave that for another day.

Bah~! Though I did succeed in postponing the days, I didn’t successfully manage to negotiate with the doctor to reduce the amount of pills from the insane number of 12 pills a week. He was saying that my counts were alright and there wasn’t any need to alter it. Arghhh… I am suffering from eating the pills!!! Hope he actually understands that before I need to retake the pills again.

Hmm… though I am really dreading to get admitted to the hospital this time around, but since it is the last one, might as well get over it so I don’t need to think about all that anymore. The doctor says it isn’t going to be too heavy either and actually allowed me to go home anytime between the stay if I wanted to, which was reassuring I must say. Praying to God that all goes well, don’t want anything to happen on my last long stay in the hospital, as even though the doctor may say that this treatment is going to be light, I can’t even remember how many ‘light’ treatment’s I have came out feeling that the hard ones were easier to go through instead.

Oh and yeah, got to thank God that my elder brother didn’t give in to my stubbornness to NOT buy any warranty for the Dell computer. I remembered back then I was like: “What??!! Waste so much money on warranty! I don’t buy can save another thousand lorh, just need to take care of the computer properly only mah…” Yeah right, come to think about it, I don’t think there was once any of my computer survived 3 years without anything happening to it. Really got to give credit to my elder brother as with the 3 years warranty I didn’t need to pay a single cent for the replacement motherboard and the service of repairing it.

I was rather amazed by Dell’s service though; I called Dell service hotline on Tuesday (took me lots of guts and scolding from my brother and mother to do it as I am a total chicken when talking to ‘strangers’---what if they kidnap you?), did all the check up and pinpointed it to be the motherboard’s problem, and the technician told me on the phone they guarantee that by tomorrow morning they will come over and pick it up for repairs or you can call the hotline again to speed them up (reminds me of how one speeds up Streamyx to install broadband service to you). The next morning (Wednesday), while trying to ignore the ringing of my cellphone in order to sleep, in which after a missed call only did I realized it could be the Dell technician, I answered him that my motherboard could have been destroyed. Well I actually said: “my motherboard fried…” in which he just replied: “harh??!!”, so yeah saying “destroyed” would simplify things. The tech dude said that he would come in the morning… well, as Malaysian’s when we say “would come” and then it was already 10:30 in the morning, chances were that that morning would only come tomorrow or the day after next, after next, after next… so I just went for my checkup without waiting.

Voila, while waiting to enter the doctor’s room the Dell tech dude called and said that the computer was in working order, the motherboard was replaced, a full system check was done… heck, he even ask me what other repairs should I give him to do on my computer (should have asked him to upgrade it if he have the parts, tsk tsk). What surprised me was that instead of being the typical computer technicians that brings the CPU back and slowly take a week to sort of your problem, they actually took the initiative to bring the parts, which in this case was the motherboard, though there could be a huge chance that a complete computer noob (i.e.: me) told them some wrong information. Ha-ha, all in all, was really glad that the computer didn’t need to get admitted anywhere, and was repaired at home and really fast I might add.

Well, I do have a complain though: The technician only arrived at 12:20 pm and not in the morning that he promised.

*A punch comes out from nowhere and punches the author--- “you ungrateful brat!”*

Strike by lightning...

2007-05-14T22:14:00.000+08:00

Oh Yeah! Finally today I can stop eating those horror pills and not worry of any crazy side effects that would happen after eating it!

I woke up thinking that it’s going to be a perfect day for me. The weather wasn’t so hot like it used to nowadays, I wasn’t feeling the nauseous feeling I had few days ago, and I even got the 218.208.XXX.XXX IP in one try woo hoo!!!!

For those who are wondering what’s to be so happy in just getting some random numbers, as any IP given also allows you to surf the internet, let me tell you this: Yeah, all given IP from STREAMYX (got to emphasis this!) allows you to surf the net, but not all of them allows you to connect it at a fast connection! Though you are using the “high speed” broadband of Streamyx, have you ever noticed that there are times when you want to beat up the monitor and throw your keyboards on the ground and smash it because it’s takes like 5 minutes just to open up your e-mail or maybe 1 hour to load Masked Riders Part 1 on YouTube?? It makes you think that maybe taking out your old noisy 56k modem from the past and reusing it would be a much better alternative compared to paying Streamyx for that lousy SUPER slow connection. Well, that’s because certain IP have a really slow connection to overseas sites, and more often that not, you’re going to get it, which is normally the 219.95.XXX.XXX. It’s really dumb, but there are times when I just sit there for hours reconnecting my broadband modem till I get that IP I just stated so I can play online games smoothly (frustratingly, my cousin just few doors away can always get those super good and fast IP connections WITHOUT fail, hmm, some trick perhaps?). Thank God that for the past month I manage to find the time schedule to actually get it after at least 5 tries. Otherwise I am just going to stop subscribing to Streamyx as with that kind of speed is just not even worth it. Best Broadband Company for online games and web surfing in Malaysia… yeah right…

Then after lunch and an hour of gaming later it started to rain, a good thing since it cools down the temperature, but if it starts to have lightning… arghhh! That means I have to close the modem and lose that IP that I’ve got. At first I didn’t off it because I thought the lightning would eventually subside and I didn’t want to reconnect all day to get the IP again, but the lightning didn’t get better at all. Well, better off it than letting it get strike, as that would be even worst… no internet at all. So, after offing everything and switching off the plugs I decided to go and take advantage of the cool breeze by sleeping.

Barooom!!! (I hope this gives the impression of the sound of a really loud thunder) And suddenly the power of the whole house was gone, guess a lightning has struck my house, or perhaps somewhere near. Phew… I thought to myself, I have switched off all the computer plugs, what’s the worst that could happen? I thank God and went back to sleep.

Half way sleeping I heard my younger brother mumbling about something but I didn’t care… which turns out to be something really terrible…

Both my computers couldn’t be turned on.

What the…

How come I off the entire switch also still can strike dead my comps…?

Well, to be honest this time around I didn’t have the end of the world syndrome like how I had when my old comp blew up. Maybe I started to learn what’s important in life… or perhaps through God’s grace my laptop wasn’t blown up so I could still use the internet woo hoo! Though now I am starting to doubt that as my laptop seems to be going a little haywire compared to normal.

The funny thing is, only both my CPUs got blown while everything else was still in order: the monitors, modem, router were all still functioning. Praying to God that it’s just the power box that blown as if it’s the motherboard I’ll go crazy then. At least this time around my parents didn’t scold the heck out of me as I did off the switches, or maybe the lightning strike it dead during the time I was hesitating and before the whole house power trip? If it is so then I am sooooo in trouble.

Ah, guess it’s time to take out my dust covered Playstation 2 and replay some of the old RPGs that I have been too lazy to play. And I guess this event also encourages me to go out to ‘lepak’ too, looking at how I’ve stop eating the pills also.

Or maybe I should just take this time and go finish reading the book of Jeremiah since it’s only the last two chapters.

Though I wouldn’t say that this day was in any way perfect, I would still thank God as having to not eat the pill and feeling so relax because of that is really nothing more than I could have asked for.

64 pills later...

2007-05-13T02:36:00.000+08:00

Gosh… I can’t believe that it already has been near to a month since I last updated. Didn’t realized it at all as time seems to move really slowly at times, and really fast when I am enjoying myself.

After my birthday, which was a Monday, I started eating the pills that I oh-so-dread, and it did not turn out too well as on the first day itself I puked from the 12 pills I was taking. Was eating the pills 2 at a time and I guess the over dosage of water drank plus the horrific thought of what it can do to me for the next few days made me nauseous and vomited not long after I gulp in my last 2 pills. Thank God that it wasn’t the kind where you throw out every junk from your stomach but it was just the liquid that came out, as I needed to do the horrendous task of searching through it to make sure I didn’t vomited the pills out in anyway. Though it still troubles me as me thinks the pills have dissolved into the water, but NO WAY was I going to retake the pills for that week. So I just presumed that the pills did not come out… and that the pills have a plus minus error like that of the answers from our graph’s calculations, so minus a few dosage wouldn’t matter, just to comfort myself.

But for those who are starting to think: “Ju Liang, you shouldn’t do that, what if it jeopardizes your treatment??!!” Take heart, as first of all I have no idea how many ‘dosage’ of pills I have vomited out, and I, without the proper apparatus at home can’t measure it through the pile of liquid in front me (and I don’t think anyone would want to do that anyway). And if I take anymore of what I have consume it may jeopardize my life instead as the pills are highly toxic.

Of course I started to feel groggy and nauseous but on that Thursday it became unbearable. I couldn’t move out of bed as it makes me feel seasick, even though I was firmly on land it seems like I was in a rocking boat with tidal waves all around me, and the only way to make me feel not too sick was to lie down in bed. But that wasn’t helping too much either. It kinds of reminds me about the time where I got that serious headache and dizziness from the chemotherapy during World Cup last year, only difference is… I have zero appetite at night as I was sure that one bite of anything will definitely make me puke. Thank God once again that I could actually feel hungry for lunch, therefore not depriving me of any nutrition at all.

Tried calling the doctor, but he was away at Lisbon for a doctor’s meeting, so I have no idea what I should do. Thinking that it may be a one off thingy I decided to give a few days for it to go off. But after 4 days I realized that if it continued I was going to die from the suffering, and followed my mom’s decision to see the doctor the next day instead of being macho. I even decided to stop eating the daily pills on my on accord.

Well, despite the doctor being in Lisbon there’s still the substitute doctor, who was a lung specialist. Huh? What does lungs have anything to do with leukemia?? Well, apparently since this doctor also looks at lung cancer patients, chemotherapy isn’t a problem to him. So I went to him on Monday, told him my situation, and explained to him that I didn’t eat the pills because I couldn’t take it anymore. At first I thought I was going to see the doctor shake his head in dismay, and start lecturing me on why I stopped eating the pills without any doctor’s order or anything like that. But the ‘botak’ doctor just smiled and said: “You did the right thing.” Woah! I was really relieved then. According to him, the 12 pills that I was taking were highly toxic, and he was actually starting to wonder why my doctor prescribed me that many pills per week, in which I blurry said “…because that’s what I take most of the time during the other treatments.”

He did an examination on me and realized that nothing was amiss, so it could be an overdosed. One thing I did notice though, that this doctor was “pro” at taking blood. I was looking away a sec, and when I turn around I found out he draw one whole tube of blood from me, without me noticing much of anything. Normally the amount of blood taken by the nurse at my usual doctor was only like 5-10% of the tube, and there were times when she couldn’t draw the blood that I must suffer the pain of her re-poking to find the vein, and it took so long of and ordeal just to get that small amount of blood.

At the end of the check-up, and after consulting with my doctor through the phone, the botak doctor prescribed me some anti-vomiting pills and asked me to stop eating the pills till my main doctor comes back on Wednesday, where he will have a look at it himself. Well, I didn’t touch the anti-vomiting pills at all as back then I was too afraid to eat any pills anymore. And thankfully, I was starting to feel better once I stopped eating the pills, and for once I can say it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me.

Time suddenly just speed up when I was feeling much better and it was the day for the check-up. The doctor said that the pills couldn’t be stopped as it is very important in the protocol and must be retaken on that day itself (boy I wish I didn’t heard that), but in order to know which pills were the ones that was causing the overdose, the doctor asked me to eat the 12 pills only next week, while I cut down to one pill daily instead of the usual 2. Well, thank God again that the doctor actually gave me a day’s grace before eating the pills. I wanted that break so I could watch the Champions League match that night, ha-ha, before feeling sick all over again. Though now that I think about it, I think I never watched any match then, or perhaps completely watched any match as I was still weak from the over dosage.

Surprisingly, cutting short by one pill could make a world of difference. Despite the fact that I still have that “want to puke” thought whenever I just think about the pills, I couldn’t feel much of the nauseous effect after taking it, and was able to go on and do whatever I was doing. Really thank God for His grace and mercy as I cannot imagine how am I going to go through another 2 weeks of that uber-suffering. Especially when it was only just the week before where I almost felt like dying just by eating pills, and there I was eating the same pills again.

I couldn’t say much about the 12 pills though, as after taking that it makes me quite nauseous and really tired. So tired that it makes me want to sleep right after I have taken those pills, but I learnt the hard way that if I actually slept immediately I would suffer twice as hard when I awake during midnight. And those pills would gave me a night or two of constant dreams (around 5 per sleep), not those sweet dreams, but dreams about things that bugs you the most (I’ll leave that to your own imagination). The frustration makes you all worked up that you felt like you haven’t slept at all. Guess when I go back for the next check-up with the doctor I got to go negotiate about reducing the amount of pills from 12.

The 3 weeks of pill eating became to 4 weeks because of the delay. At first I thought that it was a set 3 weeks in which I eat the pills, and what was gone… was gone and didn’t need to replace the days I missed eating the pills. But when I called the doctor just last week I found out that I had to eat the 12 pills once each three weeks. Thus, since I skipped one of the weeks I got to replace it. And once I have started eating the 12 pills I’ve got to eat the daily pills for a whole week without fail…ughhh… not what I have expected and that got me really frustrated.

Ah, but one comforting thing would be that the pill eating would be done by today night, just one more to go. Not feeling too good though as I am writing this for I am feeling quite nauseous… hmm something I ate perhaps? Praying hard to God that the doctor would give me at least one weeks break before the grand finale, for I really need a rest before the next one. Well, if it doesn’t goes as planned, I guess it just makes the final treatment ends faster, which is also a good thing, better to just get over it then fret about it. Hoping the final one isn’t too hard to bear too.

Oh yeah, and guess when morning comes in a few hours time I got to wish mom “Happy Mother’s Day”. Don’t really know how to thank her, especially since she have sacrificed so much time taking care of me during the time I was in the hospital, and even besides that she has selflessly taken care of me all the years.

So, if you somehow manage to read this post on Sunday and forgotten to wish your mom that, you better do it now!

Hitting 20...

2007-04-16T05:21:00.000+08:00

“So, how are you feeling now that you’ve reached 20 and not being a teenager anymore?”

“Heh… I feel very old somehow…”

Well, that was a question asked to me by myself, and it kinds of summarized how I feel of reaching my birthday yesterday. Somehow I still just can’t take in that I am 20 years old… and I thought only females have the problem of admitting their real age.

Time just passes too quickly… and back then I can’t believe I always wanted time to pass as fast as possible: when I was young and still not schooling, I couldn’t wait to be older as I wanted to go to school like my elder brother; when I was 8-9 I still remembered I wanted to be 10 years old as quickly as possible in order to use a stationary set (in which I couldn’t wait then as it seemed to take forever); besides that during primary school I wanted to be 18 so I could watch violent movi… err… I mean, able to enter the club gym and use their equipments (then again, though I have already reached the age limit, I have never used the gym).

But during secondary school, I started to not want time to pass quickly anymore. Well, I guess one reason was because I dreaded to take the PMR and SPM exams then, tsk tsk, and then there were some group of friends that were so fun and I didn’t want to part from that class. Of course, there are still some reasons in which I wanted time to pass quickly like learning how to drive at 17 or going to college (or when classes are just so freaking boring), but it wasn’t that great of a feeling compared to the younger days. It was more like you are thinking: “aiyah, how good it is to be 17-18” but then after 30 seconds you forget about it and go on with the thing you were doing.

Hmmm, now that I think about it, perhaps the one reason why nowadays I always have this “don’t want time to pass by quickly” thought is because I don’t have anything to look forward to and distract me. During the schooling days, there are a lot of things to look forward too and you just want time to pass by like Saturday movie outings, class trips, getting by boring classes, hoping weekend comes to go to the cyber café, praying that tuition classes ends before the teacher finds out you are sleeping, youth camp, the long holidays, etc. Of course, occasionally there are times when you want time to stop like when you’re enjoying your term break and don’t want to go back to school again (or perhaps you want it to go by quickly so that you can meet your friends at school again, which I seldom have; miss friends, yes, but miss school? No way!) or at the end of the year during Christmas when you start thinking how a year has gone by so fast. With all the activities it leaves you no time to think about how time just goes by like that. Hmmm... hoping now that I can start doing those activities again so I won't need to keep thinking that I am old ha-ha!

Sigh… going to really miss the days when I could act foolish and actually not feel stupid. Now I must watch and makes sure I look mature enough so the younger kids won’t go “what kind of kor kor is this” (though I doubt I will be called kor kor though, maybe uncle seems more like it). That, and the fact that when I actually finish my treatment I need to start bearing many different responsibilities which I never wanted to. Whenever I see my friends studying so hard for university it makes me think: “Wah! Where are the good old days when we study only during the last second?” But then I remembered that we aren’t that kind of teens anymore, and have actually started to think more maturely. Ha-ha, not that it’s a bad thing, in fact that’s the attitude that everyone should have when they are still schooling, but it does make me feel how we have change. Maybe that’s what makes a youth anyway, people that makes all the dumb mistakes so you wouldn’t make them anymore *chuckle*. Sigh, being a kid sure is nice.

Thank God that at least this year I can stay at home and relax on my birthday! Last year I got admitted to the hospital on the very day it was my birthday. And the year before that I had a gum ulcer and couldn’t enjoy eating though it was my birthday then ha-ha!

Ah, then again, pill eating starts today, praying to God that I won’t be feeling that bad throughout the entire week. Oh, and thanks once again to everyone that wished me!

Finally, always wanted to say this to myself:

“Happy Birthday dude”

P.S: Thanks Darren for waking me up from my sweet sleep in the morning on my birthday! Nah, thanks for the call and greeting me all the way from UK, ha-ha.

Thanking God again...

2007-04-13T23:45:00.000+08:00

Woooaaahhhhkaaaay……

Went to the doctor’s clinic on Wednesday with a heavy heart, thinking that it was going to be the start of three long terrible weeks, but somehow when I went there the doctor said that my white cell count was still too low to start eating the pills. Doctor said he doesn’t want me to get an infection, so it will be better not to start just yet.

Immediately the nauseous feeling I had when I went to the doctor disappeared…

The weather suddenly seemed so good…

I could hear the birds chirping oh so sweetly…

Alright, to get to the point, I was really happy! Though, I didn’t have another weeks break as the doctor asked me to start eating the pills on Monday (well, he didn’t pick the date, but asked me to choose one of the days… of course I chose the day in which I could delay the most) for around that time my white cell count should have went up to a safe level, still thank God for the gracious extra time that I could have to relax more! And there I was thinking it will never happen, so got to thank God twice as much for this precious grace ha-ha!

Now, I am starting to feel a little guilty for having so much time ‘off’ in suffering…

That… and having time off makes me worry a lot on how I am going to use my time wisely. Not that I have to plan real hard though, since I am still better left at home in order not to get an infection like the shingles that I had last time, but the mind still keeps thinking of ways to use it properly so that I won’t regret when Monday comes, when I can’t have so much freedom anymore in my daily activities, which I’ll start telling myself why I didn’t do this, or eat that, when I was still okay.

Bah… but who cares, guess I’ll just enjoy for now, and think later!

Jokingly saying a prayer...

2007-04-11T04:11:00.000+08:00

Sigh… time just passes so quickly when you are enjoying yourself…

Last Wednesday I was supposed to start eating my chemotherapy pills, which I was in no way ready for. Just didn’t seem to have a long enough break before I start my ‘hard work’ of going through the side effects again. And if it’s just one week I wouldn’t mind, buy THREE!!! Gosh, that’s going to be real tough.

So, the night before that Wednesday, I was reading my e-mail and got a message from Pastor Siew Teng asking if I was available to play the bass guitar on Easter Sunday. I was like: “Ah, darn, last week when I was healthy and alright, I missed the chance to play the bass guitar for worship simply because I was too lazy to check my e-mail, and this week I’ll miss the chance to play again because I won’t feel too well after eating the pills.” Was feeling really disappointed then, but seeing that there isn’t anything that I can do, just decided to pray and go to sleep and be prepared to face tomorrow.

I prayed to God that the blood results would be good when I do my check up at the doctor’s tomorrow; that there wouldn’t be any scary news that I need to know; and that through God’s grace the side effects of the pills wouldn’t be too bad. And before I was going to end the prayer, I jokingly prayed to God that if it’s possible, please let me skip eating this pills for one week… and to make it look like a proper request I decided to tell God that I wanted to skip the pills so that I would be able to serve as the bassist for the coming Easter Worship.

And what do you know... to my surprise on Wednesday, as I had my check up with the doctor, he told me my white cell count was not good enough to start eating the pills just yet, and needed to wait for another week at least to let the white cells recover to normal. I was like… woah!!! Thank God for answering that request!!! Normally even with a low cell count the doctor would still sometimes ask me to go on in order to not delay the schedule. Then again, it really is ironic that just a few months ago I was praying so hard that my white cell count would go up just by 0.5 percent, and now I was celebrating because the white cell count was low, bah. Was really happy then, but apparently there’s was another girl there who also had leukemia and she needed a bone marrow transplant as the cancer cells was still present in her bone marrow even after going through chemotherapy. Mom shared the gospel to her that day and told her that in Christ there’s still hope… from what I’ve heard mom told me that she did receive Christ later on. Thank God for that too!

As I got back home that day feeling really happy since I’ve manage to escape eating the pills for another week, I kind of had the thought to skip the night’s Easter worship practice and just laze around at home instead. Yeah, talk about showing my gratitude to God. But then I remembered that though I did jokingly ask God for that favor, since God “seriously” did grant me that request, I will need to “seriously” fulfill my part of the deal too, ha-ha. It did make me think how fast we could actually forget about God’s grace and love.

With pill eating out of the way, I was able to go for the Good Friday service, the Saturday revival service and the Easter Sunday worship at ease. I was really amazed and impressed at how Pastor Chuah could get a backup sermon to preach for Good Friday when the invited speaker lost his way in Kuala Lumpur. Well, I did prepare my English oral presentation for college just 30 minutes before it actually started, but that was only for a less than 10 minute speech, but 1 hour plus? Me and the youths were joking that maybe he got the sermon well prepared from Wikipedia at the sermons section, ha-ha. The Saturday’s revival and Easter Sunday message was by the invited speaker and though his message for both occasions was about “vision” (not the kind where God talks to you in dreams, the other one) by looking through the disciple Peter, I learnt more about how the first few disciples followed Jesus instead (realized that Peter didn’t first met Jesus in the fishing boat incident, but was called by Andrew to meet Jesus first as stated in the book of John). The whole time I was flipping my bible between Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, just to know where he got the verses from and why did the pastor said that it was like that. Reminded me how much I still didn’t know about the bible. Ah! Though the Sunday Easter worship went well, I really need to improve my bass guitar again, as I was completely lost while playing two of the worship songs… thank God that no one really pays much attention to the bass guitarist anyways, ha-ha.

Alas, as I have said, when you are enjoying your time it just passes so quickly. And as I am writing this it’s already Wednesday. Don’t think I would be able to avoid eating the pills with any kind of excuse to the doctor, or God at that matter ha-ha. Guess I would only be able to pray that God would lessen, better yet take away the side effects, so that it would not mess up my daily activities.

Bah, and there I was thinking that only homework and assignments could be procrastinated. Thank God for the one week break, at least I feel more prepared to eat the pills.

Let the three long weeks begin! Oh yeah, and happy belated Easter, where Jesus has risen indeed!

P.S: Was editing my post while watching Manchester United thrashing A.S Roma, bet my elder brother is rolling on the floor with laughter now, ha-ha.

not so dizzy... yay!

2007-03-28T01:42:00.000+08:00

When to the hospital last Monday for my chemotherapy treatment, though I really dread going there nowadays I didn’t thought too much about it then as I assume that the treatment was an easy one. Well that’s because I couldn’t remember what terrible side effect it gave me the last time I had it, in fact I couldn’t even remember I had when through this treatment till I reread my blog as I am typing this (http://forgiven-by-grace.blogspot.com/2006_06_01_archive.html , read it for treatment details). So, it was only when I reach the hospital where I suddenly had a hunch that this was the one that gave me the headache and dizziness that knock me out for a month. Tried reconfirming with my mom and ask her if it was during the World Cup season last year that I gone through this treatment and became very dizzy, but she said it wasn’t during that time… well she said her own journal didn’t recorded as what I have said and that made me even more confused. But I proof her wrong with my blog buahahaha! Then again, I always write my post late, sometimes even 1 month late from the day of treatment, so I don’t really know either, woops!

Though the dizziness could be countered by just lying flat on the bed, making it not as terrible as feeling nausea, it is terribly boring as I can’t do anything much except sleep (since I am already in bed) or playing the guitar blindly perhaps.

I was even more assured that I was going to get the dizziness when I got home from the hospital on Wednesday and had to sleep earlier than usual because if I don’t I was going to puke from the dizziness. And besides that, I got dizzy just by crossing the sea on ship- only that it’s my Warcraft character that was crossing the sea and not me in real life… talking about game realism.

That’s why I really thank God that even as Sunday came; I didn’t experience the terrible dizziness that made me unable to move and was able to go the church. Phew… thank God for His amazing grace, for not letting me suffer the boredom of not doing anything at home! Truth to be told, I still feel a little dizzy time after time, but that’s pale compared to the one I experienced before, at least this time it doesn’t affect my daily activities much.

Oh, and I realized that the dizziness and headache wasn’t caused by the LP procedure, in which I suspect it was the last time I had it, but by the 45 minutes white chemo-drug called cyclosamidite or something like that, well it sounded like that I guess, too lazy to go check, give me a comment if you really want to know. Easy to know as this dizziness only happens when I have this chemo, and not when I have the LP procedure, this means that I don’t need to be so afraid of the LP procedure anymore and try to lie down on the bed as long as possible in order to avoid this side-effect, phew.

I also realized that I don’t understand what my doctor wants. Well, he said that he’s going to knock me out completely with general anesthetic while he was going to do a prick to check my bone marrow, and he kept telling the nurse to make sure that this time I was completely out before he does it, as last time he didn’t do it. Well, I could feel the anesthetic drug going in, but I realized I still wasn’t completely sleeping yet, could hear voices from the doctor and see the nurse still standing beside and some student nurses trying to learn the procedure. The doctor was like: “Harh? Still not sleeping yet ah?” I thought he was going to give me another dosage of anesthetic, but I realized that he already prick me and close the wound with the bandage. I was like: “What the…” I was semi-awake then, and it was only during the LP procedure when the other doctor asked me if the procedure was painful or not, in which I replied yeah, and he said: “I thought last time you said not painful”… and after that I kind of knock out. Then again, no complaints as I couldn’t feel the pain already then and the main doctor said that this time the prick isn’t as painful like last time because he doesn’t need to go through the bone again or something like that (forgive me, was between sleeping and being awake then). It’s really weird… I can remember I was replying to the doctors, but I just simply can’t remember completely what I replied to them. The way I reply them was like how anyone would do it when they want to sleep longer while their mom is nagging them to wake up:

Mom: Boy ah, wake up!

Son: ughh….

Mom: What you want to eat for breakfast? Hot milo and half-boiled eggs?

Son: ….. give me half-boiled milo and hot eggs lah…

Mom: Harh?!!!

Son: aiyoh… the usual lah… ZZzzzzZZZ…

Yeah something like that.

This may sound weird though, but somehow I am starting to love general anesthetic. Not loving it as the kind that makes you go: “Woah, I am seeing colors… stars… am I in heaven?!!” but loving it because it really helps to pass the time while I am in the hospital. Yeah, the thought of having to drip the chemo for 24 hours is terrible and as the time passes I slowly feel like vomiting… ughhh, and having the anesthetic cuts the time like by 6-8 hours since I get knocked out. And as I am doing the LP procedure I don’t need to feel the pain from the local anesthetic injection which the dentist always say: “it’s only an ant bite” but you know you want to poke him with it to show the dentist how painful it actually is (okay, now I am starting to sound like a spoilt brat, well, the local anesthetic isn’t so painful lah, just exaggerating).

Ah, really thank God that the nausea’s gone as I am writing this and me not having the super dizziness. Really thank God also for protecting me all the way through the treatments, I just have one more chemo-treatment in the hospital and I should be off by then, which is comforting in a way ha-ha.

Then again, I am starting to get reeeaallllly lazy to study or do any work. But it’s still better than going through treatment I guess. =)

Gospel Camp 07...

2007-03-15T16:01:00.000+08:00

Phew, thank God that I sign up to attend the Gospel Camp instead of staying at home all day long during the weekend. Was actually starting to regret when I found out that the camp was a week from the day I registered (well, six days since it was already Sunday then) and not two weeks apart which I thought it was as I needed time to cure from the nausea I was getting from the pills I was eating. But since I already paid the money before actually knowing it, I decided to just go for it as I was too lazy to ask for a refund or anything like that. Got to remind myself once again not to be so blur…

Well, really thank God again that it took only 2 days to recover from the nausea, which makes me think that maybe the nausea feeling is just all in the mind, for if I needed to do something of importance it kind of disappears faster, then again it may not be as there was one time when I followed my dad to KLCC to watch MI3, I spend most of my energy just trying to remember where the rubbish bins are so I could vomit in them if the nausea gets too bad (I remember I was thanking God that the rubbish bins weren’t the push to throw types but a big hole right on top, so I can vomit straight on it)… so maybe it was the fresh sea breeze that helped speed up the recovery. But to avoid all confusion and uncertainties, I say it was another of God’s miracle.

I made myself look like a social outcast in the camp as I didn’t join in any of the games, and I was too lazy (once again) to explain to the other people that didn’t know of my condition. There were some games that I know I could play, but I was afraid that there may be certain “accidents” that may happen (like a flying ball that came out of no where because someone doesn’t know he has Hercules’s strength) and cause a fatal blow to me. Besides that, I was literally burning from the sun though I was under the shade of a tree… makes me wonder how in the world am I going to play at the beach under the hot sun ever again. And though I was sitting down most of the time, I was as tired as those who played all the games all day long… in fact, I could actually feel my legs getting cramped… just by sitting down and not moving. Playing beach soccer barefooted wasn’t any good either; one good kick at the ball and my big toe was bleeding… I was about to ask what in the world happened to my body.

Then again, not being able to participate in most of the games wasn’t a problem at all, somehow I did not feel bored… not with all those whacky things that seems to be happening to the youths all the time and the lame talk about Daniel-lism and all (go figure). Not playing the games also meant that I was free from a lot of responsibility, which makes this camp more relaxing in a way. That… and also since I wasn’t ‘alright’ in a sense, the boys in my apartment actually let me have my own room, though honestly I feel really bad about it as it seems I am hogging all the space (though I know the reason they didn’t want to be in the room is because they wouldn’t be able to stay up late at night as I needed to sleep).

One thing that I really enjoyed in the camp was the fellowship with the youths and Sunday school students, or friends, I must say, as even until now the way I talk to them is very not teacher-like, plus the fact that my brother is among the gang which makes it impossible for me to talk to them like how a teacher does. Can’t imagine how the teachers who have a 2-3 years age gap teach without feeling like one of his/her students. Having fellowship with friends is fun, though for me the ‘fun’ was greatly enhanced due to the fact that I seldom have such company.

I must admit though, I was completely clueless about the message during the camp ha-ha. Really wanted to use the excuse that I was sleepy and tired so I couldn’t hear the message but then it wasn’t like that at all… to me it seems like the message on the second and third day didn’t seem to connect, but maybe that’s just me, was cracking my head all day long just trying to figure that out till I decided to just put it aside and ask the other youths during the next meeting to save myself the trouble.

Though there is one thing that I really learn, and that is being a Christian really isn’t an easy task. I’ll be totally honest and say that at first it was hard trying to mix around with the outsiders, it’s like hard for me not to keep an eye on them and go “what the heck are doing?” But as a Christian, God says that we ought to love everyone (and not to judge them too) and not just our own group of people, meaning that we must go out of our comfort zone to mix around with the others as well. Didn’t do too well in that I must say, but thank God for the opportunity that came up for me to interact with the outsiders and get to know them. Hope when I get better I actually take the effort to have fellowship with the new comers instead of just hanging out with my circle of friends all the time.

It really has been awhile since the time I went to the beach and as I see the endless sea and the bright blue sky above it, I was really glad that I came. It isn’t a new or rare sight of the beach though, but then it really amazes me how God shaped the earth and all… so perfectly I must add. And just like what Daniel and I were talking during one of our lame jokes conversation: …and God saw that what He made was good… real good~

Another day...

2007-03-06T19:58:00.000+08:00

Good news: Don’t need to go to the hospital, able to stay at home longer after Chinese New Year. Woo hoo!

Bad news : Got to eat chemotherapy pills for one week. Ugghh…..

Well, I thank God that at least this time around I didn’t actually throw up after food, allowing me to eat normally and not restricting the things I can do in a day, but it is still making me nausea and tire easily which is bothering me in a way. I don’t know if it’s the pills that give me these nauseas side effect or perhaps my fear of it which makes me chill to my spine whenever I just think of the pills or the smell of it. Not to forget, the pills are giving me freaking weird nightmares, can’t say ‘dreams’ as I hardly get one that is pleasant, well maybe just 5 percent of it is.

At least it’s only for 1 week this time… but to my horror when my chemotherapy treatment ends I got to eat it for at least 18 months. Trying to figure out ways to survive through that ha-ha, especially since I won’t be able to slack like how I am doing right now by then. One comfort that I have is that the terrible side effects of the pill lessens for each pill eating session I take (I think this is the fourth), praying to God that by the time I am released it wouldn’t be much of a problem anymore. Well, the doctor also did say that most of the patients didn’t have many complaints when they took it after their treatment end, so I guess that’s another comfort too.

About the nightmares, the 5 percent that was pleasant reminds me of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ. I don’t know how Jackie Chan appeared in my dream and had a connection with that, but when I woke up it kind of reminded me that despite us being so sinful and unworthy, and God could just zap us from the face of the earth for He hates sin, yet He still love us and sent Jesus Christ to redeem us, forgiving our sins just like that and allowing us to enter His throne of grace so freely.

Trying to force myself to think that I have only 2 more days of pill eating left from today, for if I remind myself about the 18 months more to go, it will definitely wear me out even before the battle begin.

As I have mentioned, the side effects of the pills weren’t so bad this time, so I managed to drag myself to Midvalley to go shopping with my mom. Of course they were the occasional “want to vomit” signs as I walk around, but thank God all of them were controllable.

Well, this is the first time since I got admitted to the hospital that I actually do some serious shopping. Though mom occasional did ask me if I want to go shopping last year I mostly turn her offer down due to the fact that I realized there’s no point in buying new clothes and all, like I have the chance to wear them in the hospital ha-ha.

Going shopping today was refreshing to say the least; it’s something I haven’t done for a long time, though of course it did remind me of all the hassles about shopping, like picking your size for the clothes you want etc. Thank God that at least the designers were smart enough to design ‘what you call it’---- in-built strings around your waist that act like belts (I have no idea what you call it) --- for pants so that you don’t really need to buy pants that are exactly your size as you can just tighten them with the ‘strings’ if it’s too lose. That saves like a whole 5 minutes in choosing the pants you like (yes 5 minutes in shopping is a lot), and if you don’t have the size of your pants… who cares??? Just tighten them and off you go!

Another plus was due to fact that since today wasn’t a public holiday, and most schools are having exam, the mall was really quiet… something that most people couldn’t enjoy nowadays as all the students seems to flock endlessly to all the shopping malls whenever they have nothing to do, and most of the time they have nothing to do. What happened to the days when the cinema actually belongs to you and your friends alone? Having less people meant that you could enjoy buying your stuff like the place belongs to you, no queuing up at dressing rooms, counters, or trying to grab a shirt inside a mob, man this is the life!

Then I went to the sports shop at the top floor of Midvalley to buy new shoes in order to replace my 2 year old one. There was this like SMS contest where if you manage to answer the questions given correctly you will be able to get a 20 percent discount on the items in the shop and the sales girl asked us to join it as it’s really easy. Hmm… how easy? Most of the time these contest are just a con to waste your phone credit (One message cost a Ringgit). But as my phone credit worth is more than my handphone I decided not to think twice and just followed the instructions that the sales girl was saying to enter the contest:

Sales girl: Tekan… *something* dan *something*…

Me : Oh... send ah?

Sales girl: Yeah send…

Me : (Beep!) Oh, got reply…

(There was a question… I think, I couldn’t even read the message and before I could work my mind to think what the answer is to the question or perhaps what the message was… she asked me to let her see the message)

Sales girl: (Looks at the message) Okay, sekarang tekan *something B*, *something C*…

Me : (Thinking in mind) Wah can trust her or not wan, maybe she just wants to waste my money, I haven’t read the question man…

(Being so easily tired from the pills I decided to play the just listen and do roll and type the stuff requested)

Me : (Beep!) Ada message lagi…

(Shows her the message on the phone again)

Sales girl: Boss!!! Motorola Z3 apa model?

(I think the boss told her Rzor, but later I realized the answer to that question was on the contest promotion sheet as well)

Sales girl: Okay sekarang tekan, ini ini ini…

Me : Oh… (beep!)

Sales girl: Okay, sudah ada discount, pergi beri cashier tengok…

Woah, okay, so by wasting 3 bucks I saved 40 bucks… not too bad eh, and I am in the running for a Motorola handphone, some goodies and unlimited free Coke for a year. What surprised me is how come the shop staff just gave the answers so freely like that? They want to fully utilize the contest sponsors money is it?

And I finally manage to buy an overdrive pedal as I went to Midvalley to make myself look more “pro” when using the guitar, as I still have almost to none knowledge of how to fully utilize it. Though it was embarrassing that a less than 2 minutes set up of the pedal took me more than 15 minutes due to the fact that I put the input and output cables wrongly. Not too bright for a PA personal in church eh?

Ha-ha, all in all, was really glad that I was able to do some “normal” stuff after a long time, thank God for giving me this privilege to go out.

Chinese New Year Post...

2007-02-20T23:32:00.000+08:00

Woah kay, HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR! Though I can’t really feel the holiday ‘feel’ due to the fact that I totally lost track of time since going through treatment (the reason will be explained later in this post), yet I must say this few days spending at home has been really enjoyable.

Hmm… it’s been a week plus a few days since I got discharged from the hospital, didn’t update sooner as like I said, was too engross on enjoying my time at home. God has been really GOOD!

I really thank God for lots of things. First of all would be the fact that I didn’t get the sore mouth side effects. During my treatment at the hospital I was going “Oh No!” as I felt the mouth cell lining slowly deteriorating, meaning that sooner or later it will start bleeding and it’s going to be really painful. Thank God that as I got discharged and stayed at home the sores didn’t appear, and because of that I could really relax and enjoy my time at home. Besides that, need to thank God that the nausea didn’t lasted for weeks like last time but only just a few days since the time I got discharged. Without those two side effects it meant that I could eat anything to my hearts content… Ah, what joy of eating unlimited food…

Don’t know why though, but whenever I have the second round of yellow chemo, the side effects won’t be as severe as the first. The last time I had the yellow chemo it was the same thing, terrible the first time, not too bad the second time around. Hmm… but the doctor usually reduce the dosage of the chemo whenever I take it the second time because he says it’s too much for me to handle, and if he uses the same dosage I might get knockout instantly.

Then again, maybe the doctor did not intend to reduce the yellow chemo dosage this time but he did so anyway because he got the wrong blood report.

Yeah… wrong blood report…… WHAT IN THE WORLD???

It is freaking scary to know that there are mistake like this made in the hospital. This time though, I cannot say it’s the doctors fault for the person who produce my blood report was at wrong. Instead of faxing the latest blood report to the doctor, he gave him the previous one instead… the one where I was admitted to the hospital because of the low platelet count and all (no wonder the count looks so familiar). So, obviously my blood count would be lower than normal as that blood test was taken right before I was discharged from the low platelet count incident. Because of the low count, he decided to give me a lower dosage just in case my body collapses as it is too weak.

Well, it was only much later that the blood report dude or dude-dess realized his/her mistake and fax the doctor the latest report, which reported that my blood count was like any average guy. But since I was already undergoing the yellow chemo on the bed, the doctor just told me that it was alright. If he told me that I need to do another chemo, I would have definitely gone berserk there and then, as I really dread that chemo which lasted for a day. Just thinking of it makes me want to vomit.

So, that may be a good thing as perhaps of the low dosage I didn’t get the side effects as bad as before or maybe it was because I had more pholinic acid (don’t know how to spell ha-ha) which prevents the side effect; then again it may be bad as a lower dosage may mean that the chemo will not be doing what it is suppose to do at it’s best with that kind of dosage. Whichever the case, I guess it’s up to God’s grace in the end. Despite the fact that there may be many different reasons on why the side effect wasn’t so bad this time, I know one thing for sure -- it is definitely due to God’s grace that I didn’t need to suffer the side effects so badly this time, and it is only by His grace that I hope the low chemo will not jeopardize the treatment.

So… why did I say I don’t feel the holiday ‘feel’ anymore? Basically since I don’t go to work or school or have any responsibilities (except going back to the hospital on due time and eating the right number of pills everyday), everyday becomes the same day to me, everyday IS a holiday, and that made me completely lost in time somehow; maybe besides Sunday when I have to go for church and later to my grandmother’s house for dinner that I break my routine every once in a while. Of course, if somehow someone can trade his school time with me and I trade my treatment time to him I would definitely agree, going through chemo is just not worth for all those holidays, ha-ha. Some may say that having a super long holiday may seem super bored, but to me, being able to have a holiday at home and not going to the hospital is already more than enough, so I never get bored, as it is much better than going there.

Getting lost in time also made me feel that somehow I am still 18, and it seems like I haven’t grown matured at all as I have lost contact of the world since I stayed indoors most of the time. Yeah, you may say that I can go online and read about the latest hype around, but reading and actually seeing it outside with your own eyes is two very different things. To me, it seems like I am still stuck in time, that the holiday I am having after college and before university seems to be just very long.

Ah, but I must say it was pleasant today as I was healthy and strong enough to play DoTA at a cyber café (yeah, who said you only must be strong and healthy to play sports and not computer games) with my younger bro, Zhi-Yong, Noel, and Daniel, and winning all the matches with all of us being in one team. It’s been a year plus since I entered one, as most of the time I will pass out on the offer being too tired all the time from the treatment. Playing today reminds me of the times during college where me and my classmates go for our “club” where our sole activity was playing at the cyber café every Friday after lessons. Saying that it was a “club” was a good idea as it allows us to escape all those talks about stress, managing time, BGR (by telling our teacher we have club activities) which was always held on Friday in college somehow and which our homeroom teacher kept encouraging us to attend till we got afraid of it. Though our ‘club’ did attend one of the talks at the end, as I think back I feel really guilty for not attending the other talks due to our “club”.

Ha-ha, but then again, it seems like we are pretty sad people who plays DoTA during Chinese New Year and not spending it visiting our relatives of friends… hmmm… or maybe since we are playing together it is like having some sort of fellowship… though most of the time we go:

BACK BACK! B LAH!

ATTACK LAH, DUN SCARE, ATTACK!

STUN LAH, WHY DUN WANT STUN!

FASTER SPIN FASTER SPIN! WHERE YOU SPINNING TO! … haiyoh….

ZUES! ZAP! WRATH! SHOOT LIGHTNING! DO SOMETHING!!!!

WHY U KS?!!!!

[Hero’s Name] MISSING!!!!!

DUN RUN LAH WHY U SO CHICKEN?

Yeah, I guess there isn’t much conversation at all ha-ha… still we had a really fun time I guess, woot!

Deja Vu...

2007-01-28T15:37:00.000+08:00

Have you ever had that feeling where the things that are happening around you reminds you that something bad would inevitably happen?

I did.

Around 3 in the morning on Sunday, I had this same migraine feeling which I had before I was admitted to the hospital for leukemia. The funny thing of this migraine is that it does not get better even if you try to sleep. In fact, you won’t be able to sleep, but keep tossing and turning with the pain on one side of your head. And once or twice when I did manage to sleep, nightmares and dreams kept bombarding me till I awaken once again.

Because of the lack of rest, I decided to stay home and sleep, and couldn’t go to church… thinking that perhaps when I wake up in the afternoon I would feel much better. But it didn’t.

It was exactly like what happened to me during the time I already had leukemia during early December, but haven’t been diagnosed with it yet. Then it was also a Sunday, had the same migraine that couldn’t go away with sleep, so I took Panadols as a desperate measure to get some rest as in the morning I had lots to do at church. Drag myself out of bed around 8 in the morning as I needed to go for Sunday school worship practice, but realized that after playing for the actual worship I cannot take the pain anymore and decided to go home and rest despite the fact that I needed to play the bass for English Worship later (the advantage of playing the bass guitar, you can come and go as you please ha-ha, unlike the pianist).

Well, the pain did not go away then too, even when I slept through the whole afternoon. The pain from the migraine only went away around midnight, almost a whole 20 hours plus when I first got the headache. And that’s not all, even when the pain goes away; I actually still feel something at the part where the head aches during the migraine, as if the migraine can come back anytime to haunt you.

So on Tuesday when I visited the doctor for a check up, I was kind of worried and started to pray to God that everything would turn out okay. The whole same symptoms happening again thingy keeps reminding me that maybe I had a relapse. If last time I had these symptoms and was later diagnosed with leukemia, why can’t it happen again?

Even in the doctor’s clinic, all wasn’t going well. The nurse tried to draw my blood through my left hand but couldn’t seem to do so even though she did inject the needle to the vein. Tried the right hand, same thing… so the only way to draw some blood out was to press my arm like some kind of pump, where each press I could see a few drops of blood going in the injection… crazy. After a few presses, thank God that at least enough drop of blood was taken to be able to do a blood test.

When the blood test report came by fax to the doctor, I (and the doctor) was kind of shocked that my blood platelet was only at a count of 7. The last time when I was first admitted to the hospital my blood platelet count was 8, which would mean this was way worst. Darn, I was starting to feel really scared then, please don’t tell me it’s a relapse.

Now that explains why a simple scratch wound that I had couldn’t stop bleeding for like 5 minutes, and the many internal bleedings all over my back and hands, and the wound inside my nose that can’t seem to heal up right, and I was feeling cold always. The doctor immediately issued me to be admitted into the hospital to get some platelet transfusion before I bleed myself to death. I was really frustrated in the beginning as I really didn’t want to stay in the hospital so soon again. But now after staying for 3 nights in the hospital, I really thank God that I was admitted, for if I don’t, firstly I can actually get knock out with the fact that I couldn’t heal up my wounds and secondly, in the hospital the doctor gave me more folinic acid injection which helped my mouth sores to be healed more quickly, giving me more relief with less pain in my mouth.

And it wasn’t all that bad, when I was admitted my elder cousin Ju Xing actually came to visit me. It was a surprise as I didn’t know he was on a holiday break from studying in England. Well, we manage to have a great chat and that seemed to lift up my spirits.

But the relief only came when the doctor check up on me again in the afternoon on the day I was admitted. He explained to me the whole situation and at the end of it, I asked him if it was a relapse or does it in anyway point to that direction. Thank God he said it’s none of that, and the cause of the blood platelet dropping was because of the chemotherapy I had 2 weeks ago. Poof! Suddenly a huge burden seems to be lifted from me, for somehow most of the time, the hunches I get mostly comes true… and this was one time I hoped it wasn’t ha-ha.

Thank God for His grace and mercy once again.

*By the time I got home and post this it has already been 5 nights, couldn’t get an internet line in the hospital ha-ha. Well, honestly speaking, was again really really frustrated by the fact that I can’t go home sooner, but I always try to remember that the Lord has His way in the thing He does. When trying to learn patience, God puts you in a situation where you need to be patience, so that you’ll really learn.

Ouchies...

2007-01-23T00:52:00.000+08:00

The things that happened last week:

I think it was a Tuesday, when elder brother got home quite late that night and seemed to be more pissed off compared to whenever Manchester United loss a game. Well, he did have a reason to be so pissed off; someone broke in his car when he went to 1-Utama. Though it was a big commotion, somehow I still was too lazy to actually see how the thief broke the back windows of the X-Trail and stole my brother’s schoolbag and laptop bag, so I have no idea how damaged the car was (hmm… in fact even after a week I have no idea how the car looks like after the repairs, haven’t gone out the house since I got back from the hospital). Well, thank God that the car wasn’t stolen at the least… when brother said that his car got broken into, I was like: “You mean they stole the freaking whole car?”

Well, despite the seriousness of the whole matter, it reminds me of the time when teacher Derek called when a thief also stole his laptop from his car:

(Can’t really remember the exact conversation, but this was what I thought I heard)

Teacher Derek: Ju Liang, today my car got broken in two…

Me: WHAT? BROKEN IN TWO?

Teacher Derek: (in a calm, serious voice) Yeah, broken in two.

Me: My goodness!

(In my mind I was thinking… how in the world can he survive an accident where his car has broken in two, and better yet, with no injuries and acting so calmly)

(Just before I open my mouth to utter something to make myself looks so foolish…)

Teacher Derek: Yeah, a thief broke into my car and stole my laptop; I was hoping you have a spare laptop which I can borrow. (I think it was something like that…)

Me: Oh? Errr… wait ah I go check first…

Well, if I remembered correctly Daniel Mok also said that he was thinking about the same thing when teacher Derek called him for this matter.

Nevertheless, really thank God that at least brother wasn’t harm then, or the car was stolen, otherwise it could be way worst.

Well, I said that I did not come out from my house since I came back from the hospital, not because I am some World of Warcraft geek who has no life and play online games till my character becomes all powerful and mighty (see the South Park: World of Warcraft episode to know what I mean) but mainly because of my nausea and now my mouth sores which prevents me from going outside. Really thank God that the nausea feeling when away around the middle of the week, but that was when the mouth sores started to appear too. Still I must thank God as though the mouth sores hurt like needles poking all over your lips and mouth, yet compared to feeling nausea at least I can eat and move around more freely, though it is kind of hard to enjoy eating with that kind of pain.

The mouth sores are caused by the body not being able to regenerate the cell linings of the mouth, as the yellow chemo I was taking somehow destroys it too. And since there are no cells, it bleeds and can’t heal… really nasty sight when I wake up in the morning as it seems like I have put dark red lipsticks, only that the dark red colour is actually my own dry blood.

Guess I still have to wait a little longer before I could “enjoy” eating the food that I crave.

Another thing that I must thank God for would be the itchiness fading away. Somehow this time around it was like the blue chemo, whenever I scratch my skin I will have internal bleeding, which caused the whole back of my body looking really nasty with dark patches everywhere. At first I didn’t know how serious it was, but later I got to know that it was so bad till my younger brother thinks that my whole body looks like someone who just survived a war. At least now the dark patches seem to be slowing fading away.

Then again, at least there’s something to look forward to. With this chemo down, there’s just another 3 more to go, and I can finally have some sweet rest. Praying to God that all goes well now.

3rd Yellow chemo...

2007-01-13T00:34:00.000+08:00

Just got back home today and although I have already said this one too many times, but still I am going to say it again… there’s no where better in the world than home.

Staying in the hospital for the past 4 nights was terrible, although I must admit it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, and I have God to thank for that. Still, the fact that the chemotherapy treatment this time around last 24 hours really is a torture, and the thought that I must go through this whole treatment in another 2 weeks or so is down right disappointing. This yellow chemo is the cause of all my nausea (starting from this chemo last year, I always felt nausea whenever I go for a treatment), and it really is frustrating as it keeps making me want to vomit; I am hungry but I can’t eat the food that I want as I cannot digest the food properly and the fear of throwing up keeps haunting me; sleeping isn’t all that good either as dreams will keep disturbing me and a slight disturbance in the room would make me awake and I need to go through all the trouble to force myself to sleep again.

Well, I really thank God for being able to stay at home as in the hospital I feel totally “trap” due to the fact that I am constantly on drips. Really troublesome as going to the toilet to throw up or do my business becomes really a hassle. At home the air seems fresher; a burden seems to be lifted up from me; and the best part would be there wouldn’t be any nurses or hospital staff who would disturb me while I am asleep.

Then again, suffering isn’t all that bad of a thing. It allows me to cherish and thank God for the many little things in life. For example: I really thank God during the times when I could actually eat food without fear of throwing up and also thank God for the times when I could just sleep so easily when I am tired unlike now. If I am healthy, who cares about those kind of stuff? It’s something so common and normal for most people anyway. And most of the time I take those simple stuff for granted, for instance: preferring to sleep really late at night when I could sleep early.

Ah, now I just hope that God would cure my nausea as fast as possible, as I really want to eat something tasty before I go back in the hospital again. Nando’s Chicken, KFC and pan mee ‘gon lou’ are the few food that I must try before I reenter the hospital. Drooling now, but sigh, can’t eat any as if I throw up while eating those food I will have a phobia of them forever.

Still, thank God for everything!

Christmas

2006-12-26T05:07:00.000+08:00

Hmm… woah kay, so I finally finish writing up my November so called report, it’s really long, and I bet there’s many errors in it and a whole lot of fine details missing, don’t bother reading if it’s too troublesome (I know I won’t when it reaches that long), it’s just something for me to jot down so I could remember them next time.

Really glad that this time around I could actually enjoy the Christmas celebration and not be at the hospital, but then again, somehow I couldn’t have the Christmas ‘feel’ that I used to have last time. Maybe that’s because I wasn’t serving and being too involved in the church because of my condition, and couldn’t feel all the buzz like I used too. Which reminds me that maybe my previous Christmases were perhaps too engross in activities such as camps, caroling and the like that I forgot that Christmas is about thanking God for sending Jesus and not having the ‘feel’ from the activities and busyness. Or perhaps this is just another of my senseless ramblings.

Ah, I somehow realized that in everything I do I am always one step slower (or perhaps I just don’t take the initiative to do things faster or at least on time), and this is how I am going to prove it:

“MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS!!!”

Full November Report...

2006-12-26T04:59:00.000+08:00

First of all, really thank God that I am finally at home and not in the hospital anymore; for not getting any infections so serious that it became life threatening; and letting the days go by more easily compared to the last time I had this session of chemotherapy.

So… let’s see what happened during that month.

I was admitted to the hospital on November the 6^th, that’s a Monday, and had originally planned to just have my lamba puncture done and nothing else that day in order to reduce the stress on my body. Somehow things always doesn’t turns out right with the doctor who does my lamba puncture and the nurses: well, the nurses said that the doctor doesn’t want to do the procedure because he had an MC that day and was not on duty (if he wasn’t on duty why is must he come to the hospital then?), on the other hand, the doctor said the nurses didn’t prepare the drug for the procedure that’s why he couldn’t do anything. Hmmm… so who’s telling the truth eh?

Because of that, the lamba puncture procedure was postponed till the next day, and I had my first dose of chemo (the white colored one) the first day itself at around five something in the evening. Of course I started to feel nausea and all, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought, really thank God for that. Just when I was starting to feel comfortable and think that everything would be going alright, the nurses told me that after 12 hours I am going to have another dose of that chemo (the white one). I was like: “Huh? I thought only got 4 white and 2 blue last time wan? How come now different.” Tossing and turning around the bed that night because I thought it must be some mistake, I decided to walk out to the nurse counter and double check with the chemo drugs I am suppose to take for the entire week.

The first thing the nurses asked me when I was looking at the chart that contains my medical details was: “Boleh baca tak?” My goodness, for the first time I truly understand what they meant by ‘doctor’s handwriting’, and it gives me a new respect for all the nurses that could understand this ancient text. It was so hard to read that if I become a kindergarten teacher, teaching a class of 3 years old student, I’ll give them all an A++ for their handwriting. Basically the chart was filled with lots of signatures and scribbles; I manage to decipher a few facts, but most of it was translated by the nurse who was in charge then. Guess I was wrong about the chemo and it really was 2 white chemo a day for 4 days, which would be 8 white chemo and 2 blues then for the entire thingy. That truly was demoralizing though, it means that I would have less rest in between the days.

The second day, around noon time I had my lamba puncture. Thank God that all went well this time without any complications or side effects; otherwise it would really be unbearable. The only problem is that the doctor is starting to pester me to write a testimonial and you know how lazy I am (he already asked me to do so the last time I had my lamba puncture). Well, it’s for a good cause actually; it’s to comfort those first timers who are doing their lamba puncture to assure them that this treatment does not hurt, except the part where they put the local anesthetics of course (although somehow it seems to me that he’s trying to promote that he does lamba puncture best compared to the others ha-ha). Not that hard of a task to write a testimonial I suppose, but somehow I am just too freaking lazy, but I know if I don’t do it soon, the next time I see him, he’s going to lecture me again… oh no~

During the 4 and a half days of chemo (the half was because the last chemo ended at around 5 in the morning on Friday), I totally lost my appetite because of the nausea feeling and was always dehydrated and really tired. But amazingly, despite all the suffering of feeling nausea, need to thank Christ Jesus our Lord as the side effects wasn’t too hard for me to handle, miraculously. Vomited heavily twice I think (first one was around the middle of the week, while the second and final one was around Saturday or Sunday of the first week, which after vomiting I felt much better and my appetite started to return). Thank God that it wasn’t the food that came out both times but errrr… the acid from the stomach? Or a mixture of water and errrm… sour stuff… That’s because if I actually vomited the food out, and since I only eat like bread for lunch, and mee soup or porridge for dinner, I would have zero nutrition and that is bad because my body won’t have enough energy to actually repair the damage done to my body and give me the strength to move about.

One thing that really annoyed me during the first week of my stay in the hospital was the fact that the nurses need to keep a record of my food and drinks input and my errm… output (I think you know what I mean).It wouldn’t be much of a problem, but when I only wake up around 1-2 pm (which is the time they do their record) and they asked me what did I eat starting from 7 in the morning, in which I answered nothing because: “I was sleeping and just woke up when you came in”, they will start giving me a lecture of why I must forced myself to eat and drink etc. or give me that worried look that pressures me somehow. They were some that actually understood the reason why I didn’t eat or drink well without me explaining to them, but some… sigh….Well their intentions were good, but ‘hello’, I know I don’t have such a good appetite because of the chemo, but I told you I just woke up, how can I eat and drink in my sleep, and go to the toilet… I don’t walk in my sleep sister! Because of that sometimes I just eat a piece of bread and a cup of water when they first wake me up to do their temperature check around 7-8 in the morning, and go back to sleep, just to avoid the lecture, or the worried look on their faces that makes me even more stressed up. Why don’t you just lie to them you may ask… would love to do that, it’ll minus the hassle, but then again, I am not a medic student nor a doctor, and if I don’t take their advice it might cost me my health. And the thing that would annoy me more than what I have mentioned would be the nurses telling me straight at my face: “I’ve told you so.” Thank God that when my white cell count dropped really low they stop doing this recording as the doctor wanted me to have minimal contact from the outside in order to prevent me from getting infected, thus the annoyance ended, phew.

For those who are wondering, I wake up around 1-2 pm not because I watched too many late night movies (I sleep around 10-12 pm the first week), but it’s because firstly my body needs a lot of rest to regenerate, and secondly by sleeping I actually reduce the amount of time I need to suffer from feeling nausea and all.

Feeling nausea and tiredness was the first effect, the second side effect started around the fourth or fifth day after the chemo (or was it right after the blue severe chemo… can’t remember), in which rashes (deep blood red color marks on my skin, it’s somehow like internal bleeding) started to appear on my body (my hands, stomach, thigh, legs) and it really itches if I somehow manage to disturb it (in which I will always do as my skin would definitely touch something). The first week wasn’t a problem when I still had my white cells at a safe level, but during the second week on Monday which my white cell count dropped to 0.5 percent, a simple act such as scratching was a huge problem. If I accidentally scratch too much and made it bleed, it could get infected because of the wound and that could cause a huge load of trouble. Plus the fact that my blood components (which I think is due to the platelets, not sure though) dropped to an all time low, scratching the rashes gave me internal bleeding, which made dark red dots appear on the rashes. This really thought me self-control ha-ha, as I need to keep resisting myself from scratching the rashes in order to protect my own body. Well I assumed that it was the low amount of platelets that contributed to the internal bleeding because whenever I had packets of blood platelet (4 packets normally, I think I had it 2 times for this whole treatment) transfuse to my body, the red marks of the internal bleeding starts to fade away, then again I might be wrong ha-ha. Even after a week since I left the hospital I still have some mark of the rashes on my hands though, the last time I had this treatment I think it took months for it to go away.

*This paragraph is a little disgusting*

The third side effect was constipation. I was really hoping that I would at least pass motion while my white cell count was up, and I was expecting the white cell count to drop after around seven days from the day my chemotherapy ended, should be a lot of time I thought to myself. But… frustratingly my white cell count dropped to zero in just 3 days from the last chemotherapy, and only during the next day when my white cell count dropped to a big zero (2^nd Tuesday) must I ‘do my business’. As most of us know, when one has constipation and finally needs to ‘do his business’, the stool would be incredibly hard and that caused my anal to tear and bleed (due to the insufficient blood platelets, it took a longer time to allow the wound to stop bleeding, the toilet bowl virtually became the red sea, imagine that) plus me having hemorrhoids because of that. Wouldn’t cost much harm to a normal healthy human being, but because of my low white cell count (again, blame it on the white cells), the wound that was caused from the tear would later gave me an infection (which I did not realized at first, as I couldn’t feel the ‘infection caused by the tear’ feeling which I had the last time I was on this treatment).

During the 2^nd Tuesday another annoying thing started to happen, despite the fact that I was totally isolated since the 2^nd Monday when my white cell count dropped to a dangerous level, and there was a sign outside indicating that fact (I think, the last time they put that, got to ask my mom again ha-ha), there were still clueless people that come in my room looking for the person they are suppose to visit. First was some Malay bearded dude who apparently couldn’t understand words and numbers; if the person on the bed isn’t the person you are suppose to visit (and it’s really obvious considering I am a Chinese), and the room number is 719, which obviously is a single bedroom since there wasn’t a 719 A, B, C, D or 719 1,2,3,4, don’t lah walk until 2/3 of my room only to realize it’s a single bedroom and the patient isn’t the person you’re suppose to visit, in addition there’s the sign telling people that I am isolated, I mean you’ll at least know what’s the sickness of the person you’re visiting right? Goodness… was really paranoid then as I didn’t wanted any outsiders coming in because of the fear of getting infected by the germs they carry, even the nurses that check up on me who don’t wear their mask makes me go cranky (thank God that only a few times the nurses did that, otherwise I’ll become crazy ha-ha). Just when I thought that was the last, that night another lady with kids opened up the door, thank God that at least she had more intelligence than that bearded dude, she quickly apologize before even stepping in the room when she sees me. But then that wasn’t the end of it… apparently some weird delivery dude came and send me a bunch of flowers, not telling me the name of the sender or who he was supposed to send to. Being the paranoid boy as I am, I quickly ask him to leave the flowers at the door and said I couldn’t sign because I am isolated. He was considerate enough to allow me to escape without signing for that delivery. I was sure the flowers weren’t meant for me as everyone who wants to send their flowers has already done so the first time I was admitted to the hospital. Didn’t wanted to check it out though, as I was too afraid that the flower may be infected (paranoid again). So, when my mom came she too was surprised, and found out that the bouquet of flowers actually belonged to a girl name Sophia whose room is actually at 709 (or 790 can’t actually remember). No wonder there were unknown dudes that came popping up at my room… guess they couldn’t get the room number right because they were too lazy to ask the nurse at the counter.

Things started to become quite bad on the 2^nd Wednesday. Perhaps because there were bacteria in the food I ate, or the fact that I got infected during the tear or perhaps someone who got close enough to me had some virus or bacteria on them, my body somehow got infected and started to have a high fever starting from around 3 in the afternoon. It took a really long time for the nurses to bring Panadols to me (around an hour), and that caused me to shiver and allowed me the privilege to suffer the coldness of winter in the comfort of my own room. During the night, upon receiving instructions from my doctor, the nurses began drawing my blood and injecting it to the antibiotic and later sending it for testing in order to ensure that the antibiotics would be effective against the infection. After around 3 hours, the antibiotics which was proven effective was dripped into me and that helped a lot because when I first ate the Panadol, I was only relieved from the fever for only at least 30 minutes and the fever came back (was really discouraged then, I was like: “WHAT! 30 minutes of relief only??? Don’t tell me this is going to be a really serious one”). Eating another Panadol and having the antibiotics later that night allow me to sleep till the next day undisturbed (the fever did not come back). And I really really really thank God for that, for His grace where I did not need to suffer so badly. The last time when I started to have fever during this treatment, it came non-stop whenever the effect of the Panadol wears off and the fever only settled down when my white cell was back at the normal level, and that was a really suffering experience. So I suffered the effects of that high fever only from 3 in the afternoon till 11 at night, and then I had rest… sweet rest for the next few days as the fever did not came back non-stop like last time. Because of me having this high fever, I was put on antibiotics every 6 hours to prevent the infection from becoming worst, and hoping the fever does not come back.

I knew it was an infection that caused the fever, but had no idea specifically which infection caused the high fever. It was only on the second Friday did the doctor told me that the high fever was caused by an infection of the blood from some bacteria. Where did the bacteria came from? I have no idea, as I have mentioned it earlier it could have come from many possibilities. The doctor assured me that the antibiotic was effective against that blood infection and need not worry much as the fever have subsided, meaning that it was a success. There and then I did not worry much about the infection, but later I realized that if the doctor did not gave me the proper antibiotics in time, and the infection had spread out to my entire body, it may have caused me my life. Woah! And there I was thinking that it was just something like the common cold or cough (but then again, any common bacteria or virus could have killed me, ha-ha). Therefore I really thank God for His grace and mercy and love, to preserve my life once again, and not letting me go (and the comfort of allowing me think that it was just something normal keke).

On that Friday night my beard hair started to drop too (was pulling it and it came off, don’t ask me why I do that). Just as my secondary classmate Harold once joke to me, that having my hair dropping because of chemotherapy isn’t a bad thing, as if anytime I think I need a shave, one swipe to the mouth and my moustache and beard would all be gone, viola, as easy as that ha-ha. Yeah, it does save ‘me’ a lot of trouble, but to the person who needs to clean up all the hair, it would be a mess. It was only during the 2^nd Saturday that the hair on my head started to drop rapidly. It was a mess with all the hair dropping around my bed as I roll around my pillow and my towel whenever I try to wipe my hair dry after bathing. Was thinking of trying to salvage as much hair as possible and not shave it, but seeing how my head is becoming more like badly made crop circles and giving me a really sickly look because of that, mom forced me to shave my head using an electric shaver that I haven’t used in years. Got to give credit to my mom though, she did do a great job off shaving my head to become that of Zidane, thus allowing me to feel much more refresh with the completely shiny bald look, and not having that trauma of seeing how my hair drops whenever I pull at it.

On the 2^nd Sunday though, my fever started to return and the frequency of getting it seems to increased as each day passed starting from that day, but still, I really thank God that most of the time it’s just a slight fever, and even if my body temperature rises too high, I don’t really feel the suffering effects of the high fever like previously. Just pop in two Panadol pills and I would have around 5-6 hours of relief and I don’t really feel the severe shivering from fever or anything like that. Really thank God for His grace on this, too. In some ways it was a relief to me, as having a fever could mean that the body is starting to put up some resistance in fighting the infections, meaning my white cell count is increasing steadily. But at the same time, it could also be due to the fact that the infections are getting very much stronger and the antibiotics could not fend them of. Not taking any chances, the doctor added more antibiotics per day (he added one antibiotic that was taken every 8 hours and later another 4 small bottles that were taken once a day, totaling up to 11 bottles of antibiotics a day) to be dripped into my body starting from the 3^rd Thursday. Why the 3^rd Thursday you may ask and not instantly when the fever started to return? Well, from what I overheard, the nurses did not report to the doctor about the fever returning as they assume that since I am already on antibiotics (the ones that were dripped into me when I got my high fever) they shouldn’t worry much. Miscommunication again I guess, ha-ha. But still, all in all, thank God that this fever was rather mild, and most of the time I don’t actually feel the effects of having a fever.

But then again, it wasn’t really smooth sailing all the way. During the 3^rd Monday night, somehow the anal infection became insanely itchy till the point that I almost when crazy since I couldn’t actually sleep through the whole night. I tried every thing I could think of to ease the itchiness: putting lotions, washing, trying differing positions while sleeping, scratching but all to no avail. At most I could only have 1 minute of relief and the itchiness would return. The lack of sleep because of this made me cranky and I started to feel really fed up of being in the situation that I am in, and somehow I began to question God why in the world must I go through all this suffering. But just when I started to think of all the questions, I realized that I shouldn’t have done so and asked God for forgiveness… God never make mistakes, and He knows what’s best for me. After checking the Internet the moment the sun rises the next day, I realized that there were certain creams just to ease this kind of irritation, and asked my mom to go to the pharmacy to get them for me, in which the doctor later gave me another more powerful version of the cream plus a pill that reduce itchiness and that helped to ease the irritation.

This time around I only had one blood transfusion and that was on the 3^rd Thursday midnight. Two packets of blood were transfused to me at midnight because it takes a really really long time for the blood to come from GH (there’s a blood bank there I think) even though the order was given in the morning by the doctor plus the fact that they must make sure the blood isn’t infected in anyway and it matches my blood type, that’s why if you really need lots of blood fast, go to GH. The one thing I really don’t like of blood transfusion would be the fact that it takes around 6 hours minimum just to finish dripping in one packet of blood, and two packet would meant 12 hours. Being bounded to the drip isn’t very pleasant as it restricts my movement greatly, the antibiotics that took around 30 to 45 minutes were already frustrating at times, so 12 hours was arghh!!!! Thank God that at least they dripped it at night, so that reduces around 8 hours of feeling bounded ha-ha. Oh, another thing to thank God for would be that the rashes (it’s a different one) that appeared because of the blood transfusion did not cause any itchiness this time around, compared to some other times when I have transfusions of the blood which made me scratch my skin non-stop. During the transfusion though I mysteriously vomited twice, once during the night and the other early morning, the doctor did not explain why that happened, so don’t expect me to know the reason then. Still, thank God that everything went back to normal after the blood transfusion was complete.

Was starting to get quite depress due to the fact that I was expecting to go home around the late of the 2^nd week and the start of the 3^rd week, and as each day pass when they do my blood check on alternate days, the doctor would tell me my white cell count still hasn’t gone up yet, ah, depressing… was thinking I could have gone home much earlier and made it for the VBS in time. Thank God though, that since I have written this blog, I actually manage to have some reference of how long it took the last time I had this treatment, which was roughly around 24 days, so in a way that comforted me as it should take at least around 4 weeks compared to the last time if I were to be discharged, and that gave me a glitter of hope in some way. My mom also had a journal writing my days in the hospital too, hers was very much detailed, and thank God for that as it allows me to tackle some of the problems that I was supposed to face during this chemotherapy. One of them was the mouth ulcers, which I think wasn’t really ulcers but fungus growing out since it dropped off like mushrooms when my white cell count when up the last time. Back then I must have not kept my mouth clean enough when my white cell count was low and was subjected to the mouth ulcers because of that. It was really terrible to have those ulcers as breathing was difficult as it hurts; when I sleep, saliva comes out and that really made me unable to sleep properly and eating a simple meal seems as difficult as climbing a mountain cliff. Mind you, it’s not one or five ulcers, but the number of ulcers on my tongue alone was uncountable. White spots were all over the sides of my tongues, and in order for me to actually eat I normally need to put an anesthetic solution to numb my tongue so it becomes bearable. Through that experience, this time once I was staying in the hospital I kept rinsing my mouth immediately after food with antiseptic mouthwash to prevent it from being infected. There was also this salt thingy that the doctor prescribed for me to gargle, one of the nurses told me that it was used to prevent the infections of the mouth but somehow I remembered the last time I had this salt thingy, it was used to make sure my mouth don’t get too dry and irritate my throat. Not taking any chances I religiously gargle the salt thingy twice a day. It was only during the day that they stop giving me the salt which I asked another nurse why I don’t need it anymore, in which she explained to me like how I remembered it. Gosh, got conned again by them. But still, I really thank God as this time I did not have any ulcers in anyway, for I know that no matter how hard I try to protect myself, there’s still a percentage for me to get my mouth infected, and it’s only through God’s grace that I could avoid it, thus reducing the amount of suffering I must endure… YEE HAW!!!! At least I could enjoy the pleasure of breathing, eating and drinking.

Well, the white cell did start to steadily return of the 3^rd Friday, rising from around 0.3% to 0.5%. Yeah, not much, but it’s a start ha-ha. Though it is encouraging to know that my white cell count is going to return to normal soon, there was one thing I really dread. Because I didn’t have enough white cell then, the anal infection which I mentioned did not hurt in anyway, as there are no white cells to fight the infections, and the infection kinds of like just stay there, unable to be healed (something like those who have diabetes). But once my white cell count goes up, the white cell will begin attacking all the viruses and bacteria and that caused my anal infection to hurt like CRAZY (on this 3^rd Friday itself). This really gives me a great respect for all the mothers out there, for if I am woman I would have died during child birth as even this I couldn’t stand anymore. It was as if a knife is stabbing the wound repeatedly, and without any medicine it would be impossible to find relief. And through this experience I really thank God that I am born in the modern world and not during the medieval times, when anesthetics weren’t easily found. At first I put some anesthetic lotion on the wound… no effect; then I asked the nurse to give me some pain killers… still no effect; finally around 1 in the afternoon (I started to feel the pain the moment I woke up in the morning) when I could take it no longer, I asked the nurse if there’re any methods left to reduce the pain, and the nurses told me that the only option left would be an anesthetic injection. ARghhh, no injection please! Was starting to think twice when the intense pain reminded me that I shouldn’t hesitate anymore, and after having the green light from my doctor, I had the anesthetic injection. Of course the injection hurt quite a bit, but compared to the pain of the wound it was nothing, an immediately right after the injection was done, I could feel relief, and finally mange to sleep in peace once again. I did not have any proper sleep since the day the wound started to become itchy, which later started to increasingly hurt as each day pass till this Friday, was waking every now and then most of the night either because of the itchiness or pain. In addition to not sleeping well, it was also due to the fact that the injection will induce drowsiness, but it was good for me, as I really wanted to sleep. In fact, I manage to sleep so well that I snored and ask my mom not to disturb me in anyway, in fear that I might not be able to sleep like this anymore (or perhaps because the injection was actually some kind of morphine drug like thingy, as I kind of feel ‘high’ before I slept). Since the time after the injection the pain became bearable, and I thank God for that as I don’t want to have another injection anymore (even after a day it made my right legs felt numb). The next day and the after that though, I need to use the bathroom, and yeah, the red sea once again appeared, pain like crap (couldn’t sleep on one of the days because of the pain), but then again, thank God was bearable enough to not have the drug high injection ha-ha.

On the 3^rd Sunday, my white cell count went up to 1.5, really thank God as on that day I could stop eating Panadols because the fever didn’t seem to come back. Was a bit disappointed again the next day as the white cell count dropped to 1.44, I was like: “what in the world? Shouldn’t it be just going up all the way now?” Then again, didn’t really bother much as I had no fever, meaning all seems to be going well, and that was more than enough to thank God. A surgeon was also send by my doctor that day to check the anal infection that I had, was glad that the doctor said that all is well; the only thing that could heal it is time. Phew, don’t need any surgery then, ha-ha.

After the 4^th Monday, my white cell count started to increase exponentially (I think that’s the term), went back up to 1.5, then 2.5, 4.44, 7-point-something and finally manage to be discharged from the hospital on the December 2^nd, which was a Saturday. Had a total of 16 Neupogen injections on my stomach to increase my white cell rapidly (started on the 2^nd Monday and ended on the 4^th Tuesday), was more than what I had expected honestly, the last time I had this treatment it was around 8 times only I think. Painful when injected but wasn’t too bad later, though one part of my stomach got swollen because of the lack of blood platelets.

On the day that I actually got discharged I had one more task to do before I was home free, that was to wait for the same surgeon to come and check my infection one more time just to make sure that all is well. Hmm… waited for him for like 3 hours, but he didn’t come; then nurses told me that he won’t be coming as I am already discharged, and I would need to see him at his clinic (that’s another block in the hospital). Was thinking, is it better to make and effort to make sure everything is all right, or just go home straight away and hope for the best… I chose the latter ha-ha! Who cares man, I could go home!!! WOO HOO!!!! THANK GOD!!!

It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing as I got back though (should have at least see the surgeon ha-ha), just before the day I was discharged I had another trip to the bathroom and I think I had an anal tear this time (the infection was cured). So yeah, got home, suffered around a week with the pain, but still, it was somehow bearable and being at home beats staying in the hospital a million times I guess. Really thank God for being able to be at home.

So, yeah this is my report for the whole of the ‘blue’ treatment during the month of November. It took a total toll of 27 days. Watch almost every Sean Connery’s and friends “James Bond” there is and realized how lame it was compared to the James Bond series nowadays, also reminded me why I said that Pierce Brosnan’s ‘Golden Eye’ was terribly boring when I was young (when DVDs haven’t existed and we were using LDs- the CD that has the size of a dinner plate), though after that his James Bond role got better. Watched ‘High School Musical’ on Disney Channel and thought it was amusing, though I remembered that the plot was reused from another Disney Channel Movie (that’s what happens when u watch every Disney Channel movie there is for the whole month). Also watched cartoons series like “Emperor’s New School, Kim Possible, Totally Spies, Lilo & Stich” for most of the days (oh yeah, I only have Disney Channel for the cartoon channel in the hospital I was staying, that explains all the Disney thingy). Was really surprised (and thanked God) when somehow my Star Sports (my only sports channel) became ESPN (don’t ask me how) when Manchester United was having a match against Chelsea (was disappointed with the score though, should have watch Arsenal or Liverpool instead ha-ha). And the reason why I watched so many movies? It’s the only entertainment I could have that uses up the least energy, playing computer games and going online was a hassle then, I won’t consider it as a joy (it uses more energy). But I think the main reason was because of the ultra lousy internet line, playing DotA, I couldn’t complete more than three matches out of like 20 because I kept getting disconnected (and everyone started saying I am a ‘noob leaver’, wait let me rephrase that ‘Pro Leaver’ as you can’t have two negatives), and there are times when I couldn’t get on the net because of some weird error messages, which the helpline has no idea what it was, and in fact he was also experiencing the same problem (I was like, what in the world, aren’t you like the admin or something), goodness, not worth my 24 bucks a week, but thank God that at least I could like chat with some people during my isolation though, ha-ha. Gave me some sanity in the midst of all the chaos that was around me.

All in all, really thank God for bringing me through this whole treatment. If compared to the last time, it was easier to bear (didn’t had the suicide intend). One thing I really thank God during the treatment was for teaching me patience. The pain and all the physical suffering was hard to bear, but during that time the one thing that really bothered me was the frustration I had because I wanted to go home. Each day I asked the doctor how my condition was and whenever he said that my white cell count hasn’t rise yet, I began to have this intention to ask God why. The frustration became worst when my white cell count started to increase but yet it took me a week for me to go home. During this period of time I realized that in all things God has the power and authority to do things at His time, for He knows what’s best. We may think otherwise, but who can phantom God’s wisdom? Only God knows what’s going to happen ahead in the future. And in all things, I know God doeth all things well.

Really thank God for my mom too, for taking care of me during these 27 days. And for listening to my senseless ramblings and watching all those cartoons with me. Not forgetting for cooking porridge and Mee soup for those 27 days, and giving me comfort and some sanity.

All praise and glory to God, for persevering my life, for bringing me through this tough times by giving me peace and comfort, and for giving me Jesus Christ that I may enter His throne of grace so freely through the forgiveness of sins. Thank God for your love, Amen.

1st Anniversary...

2006-12-21T11:50:00.000+08:00

Hmm, really sorry for not posting about what happened during my treatment in the month of November… I still have a quarter more to go… but I got to post this first as the 21^st of December was a significant day for me somewhat.

Though it isn’t something most people would try to remember, today is first day I got admitted into the hospital and when everything started to happen.

Last year on this present day, after checking my SAM finals on the internet, my plan for the day was actually to go to Pantai for a medical check up, not really to find out what in the world made my lymph node near my groin and neck all swollen, but to have a full medical check up report so that I could go overseas to study. After that I intended to go to Taylor’s to get my final results, certificates and all, and later to go shopping at Midvalley as I didn’t do my Christmas shopping yet.

Well, when I went to Pantai for the check up, the Punjabi doctor said that the swollen lymph node was a concern and that I must be admitted to the hospital in order to be able to determine the cause of it through further test. That point I realized something was going amidst, for the doctor had that dreadful look on his face but he didn’t said anything then, just in case he was wrong I guess ha-ha, and not to frighten me. It was really funny then, as me and mom asked the doctor if we could go to Taylor’s first to get the results, go shopping and come back later, which the doctor replied (in Punjabi accent): “No! No! Must stay in the hospital for check up, don’t go anywhere.” We didn’t know how serious it was.

So after getting a room in Pantai, I had many test done on me. From the simple blood test, to the X-ray machine, then the Ultrascan in which Jia Harng, my college mate called me just before I entered the machine. Not really sure what was going on myself, I just told him that I had a fever and all, which in the end he got scolded from all my other college mates because of a misunderstanding, as he told them I had a fever when later it was realized that I had leukemia (really sorry ya!).

Well from all the test the ultrascan was the worst…. Watching from movies and all, the ultrascan seems only like a machine where a person just goes in and the scanning process takes place, simple as that. But when I entered the ultrascan room, first of all I need to drink two yellow drinks in order for the scan to take place (thank God the drink doesn’t taste too bad). Problem is, after drinking those I could not go to the bathroom, and somehow out of all the chances I could use the bathroom, I wanted to go then. Goodness, no choice but to hold it in. After drinking that drink too I had the fever; then I did not know why I got the fever, but later I realized it was because of the leukemia, and my body was already in a critical stage though I did not know about it. Okay, after the drink it wasn’t over yet, I got to change to those freaking thin gown despite the fact that I was already shivering with cold from the fever, and later a nurse came with a huge needle which was connected to a bottle of weird stuff. My first thought was: “Please tell me this thing belongs to someone else!” Well, it did belonged to me, and that was the toner so the colors would appear in my report after my ultrascan was done. It really hurt as the toner goes into my system and my body had that weird hot flushes feeling when the liquid when inside. Only after all that, the part in which we always see in the movies take place, where a person enters the machine with a smile and everything was done oh so easily.

After that I remember having two bags of platelets entering my body in the afternoon. The nurses were saying I had dengue, I was like: “Come on, if I have dengue sure I know lah!” But then I was really tired after the entire test (and the leukemia), and did not want to argue and all. Around 4 to 6 in the evening my current doctor came in and told the news to my parents and some of my relatives who were there then (the Punjabi doctor transferred me to him as he already knew what was going on I guess), yeah, it was the first time I saw my mom and dad so worried since maybe the day I almost got drowned in some pond when I was young. The doctor also told me then, that if I hadn’t admitted to the hospital I would die as I would bleed to death. My blood platelet count was 8 while in normal human beings it is 300+. Woahkay, so that answered why I needed platelets (back then I was totally blur in what leukemia actually is). I also really thank God, as despite the fact that I was already in such a critical situation, he still preserved my life and made me feel like nothing wrong was happening, and to think that I was happily having a holiday at China just last week. Phew, thank God nothing happened over there.

One thing I really thank God then, is the fact that despite all the chaos that was happening around me, the peace of Christ was with me. From receiving the news and having the thought that I would die and all, I was glad that God, through His grace and love gave me peace, and I had no sort of fear then. Back then it was like: “Die? Then die lorh, go heaven only mah…” Now when I think about it, I really hope I had that kind of assurance once again. To have no fear in death, knowing that Jesus Christ has already freed me from the curse of both sin and death.

Guess that’s all I remembered during the 21^st of December. After that it was a long journey for me, but as they say, it was just a blink of an eye when time flies, and God has lead me through one year in just a flash. Really thank God for all He has done.

Home... finally!

2006-12-02T16:32:00.000+08:00

WOO HOO!!!! OH YEEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

Thank GOD!!! Praise His name forever and ever!!! For His eternal grace and love!

Ha-ha, it's really a joy to be home once again.

Anyway, will update what happened during the almost one month stay in the hospital.... errr around this week? i guess, ha-ha too lazy to write now.

So, off I go enjoying the comfort of my home.

2nd Blue

2006-11-06T00:50:00.000+08:00

Hmm… let’s see… what should I talk about today…okay…

ARGHHH, I AM FREAKING SCARED!!! HELP ME!!!!!!

Yeah, guess that’s what I am going to talk about. Ughh, going back to the hospital tomorrow, or today by the time I finish writing this post. Wouldn’t really mind if it’s just a light one which would require me to stay at most a week, but this one would be really really heavy, so heavy that sometimes just remembering what happened last time makes me shiver down my spine.

Staying for one month in the hospital isn’t that bad, you can watch television immediately when you wake up; you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at bed; you can just doze off anytime since you’re already sitting on the bed itself; the bathroom is just 3-5 steps away; and best of all you get 24 hours service (okay I am being sarcastic here). Staying in the hospital isn’t all that bad, but the side effects, are… torturing, as I can say.

I remember telling quite a number of people that I would rather stand pain than the nausea, but now when I think about it, both are equally bad. Unless I could actually avoid those bacteria and fungus from growing and attacking my body, the pain could be avoided I guess, but that would need a tremendous effort to keep myself super clean, and knowing that I am such a dirty person who would avoid bathing if possible, I don’t know how am I going to do it. But about all that’s going to happened, I guess after this whole course of chemo I would only write what happened, so I could compared to how it was previously during February-March.

It’s during times like this that I realize that humans are just so weak. That’s because I know that I can’t do much to prevent what’s going to happen. And during times like this I know I could only trust in the living God to grant me His grace to go through this whole thing easily. I am asking this of Him because I know that Jesus Christ is real, and He hears our prayers. But even if it doesn’t go as well as I plan, I guess God has His ways. God doesn’t do something and later says: “Ooops!”

Another thing that I really got to learn is to take things one at a time. When I see the list of chemotherapy that I still need to go through, it makes me really discourage, especially seeing the ones that seems so hard to go through. And knowing that it would take around July to complete the whole thing really isn’t good news at all. It seems never ending. That’s why I got to go slow, aiming one course of chemo at a time, otherwise I would really wear out if I keep thinking of the whole list of chemo. Hmmm, this is one time where it’s better not to see the whole picture.

Ah, but I shouldn’t just talk about sufferings all day long, God has been good for the past 2 weeks, giving me sufficient rest and all at home, really thank God for that. But time seems so short when you are actually enjoying… ARGHHH!!!! And not to forget I manage to update my music collection after like centuries by finding some really whacky Japanese songs, well actually around 10. I haven’t been up to date with the songs on the radio for a really long time; the last time I actually listen to the radio for hours would be around form 3-4 when my brother always turns on the radio while studying. Me, trying to avoid doing my homework would always sleep at the bed and hear his radio till like around midnight, and that’s when I start doing my homework because fear starts kicking in. After he went to Australia to study, the only time I actually listened to the radio was during the trip to and back from school/college. That’s why, since then my musically knowledge is like really terrible. And since then most of the time I would only listen to Japanese music which mostly comes from the opening/ending theme for the animes I watched, and it’s really hard to get my hands on other good Japanese music because it’s not like I can hear them anywhere, unless I actually get them and listen for myself, and therefore, my comp can be said is filled with half of unwanted Japanese music or in other words: junk, while the rest that I actually enjoy seems to be only a handful. The weird thing is that I seem to enjoy those really bubbly, whacky, Japanese songs, those that classical music dudes would rather hear dogs barking instead of the songs that I am hearing, guess you get what I mean.

Okay, guess that’s all for today, pray for me guys, need all the prayers I can get to go through the first week, and err the few weeks after, and hope that I don’t get any serious infections that would make everything even worst. If possible I may bring back a picture of the blue chemo, which I am going through for the 1st week, since I already have a picture of the red chemo, but I am not letting it out in public because it’s errr disgusting… you’ll understand what I mean someday. Hmm, if all goes well, guess I may be strong enough to enjoy the Christmas celebration that I missed last year.