Here's My Story

By the time my mum went for the 11th blood test, her dizziness has gotten back to its original bad state. I tried sussing out from her whether she did anything different but she was certain nothing. The psychiatrist couldn't do anything but to wait for ENT specialist to finish their investigation. Thus no change of medicine. During the second appointment , the ENT specialist concluded that the dizziness wasn't due to (impairment of) the ear. Nevertheless, they gave an appointment to perform a hearing test and another appointment presumably to follow-up on the result. In the meantime, mum was referred to neurologist for further investigation. However, right through the 12th and 13th blood test, the dizziness inexplicably worsened :( Mum courageously tried to make do with whatever waking hours she had by doing some activities e.g. grooming their pet dog, making drinks and light snacks for my dad, and gave light massages to my dad when he was in moderate discomfort. Way to go,...

Ever since my parents moved to Butterworth, I've been ferrying them to their various hospital appointments; scheduling their appointments so that there's no overlap and also to give me a breather to go back to PJ; keeping up to date with their conditions; and keeping up with their medication. Most of their hospital appointments are in the morning. We have to go off early e.g. 7.15am because of the distance and because of the morning-hour rush to work by others. So that means I have to wake up unusually early (yes, unsual for me hehe). Regardless of where we are, every morning just before I leave the bedroom, I'll give the sleeping Ban a kiss. When there are hospital appointments, sometimes a sleepy Ban responds to my kiss with "Go forth my champion." :)

Normally, dad would go for the mandatory pre-chemo blood test at Kepala Batas Hospital 2 days before chemo and collect the results the next day. The results prior to Cycle 9 showed a a high  count of white blood cells (WBC), higher than the max value of the guideline. I told dad that it was probably because the body was producing more WBC to combat bacteria/virus that were causing his cough and phelgm . I had to agree with him that there might be a chance that the oncologist might delay Cycle 9 for a week for him to recover properly. Highly likely that high WBC alerted the doctor because the very first sentence she said was "Uncle, do you have fever?". Fortunately, he didn't. So we told the doctor the above i.e. symptoms persisted for more than a week but becoming gradually less severe. His phelgm, however, was slightly yellow (rather than white). Luckily the doctor gave the go-ahead for him to commence the cycle. Unsurprisingly, he felt weaker this time (compared t...

My sisters and I shared to get a foot massager from Lazada for our parents. The (initial) delivery was fast: took only two days. Here's the review I submitted on the product: (1) Foot massager is ok for its price. (2) Red light for all indicators although manual says green, yellow, red. (3) Remote control case cracked. Poorly packed. No protective bubble wrap around it. It was at the bottom of the box! (4) Received replacement remote control on 2nd delivery (1st one got lost or something) but it didn't work for the first 3 times. After that, it still wasn't working properly, like the old one. (5) So if remote control is important to you, don't get this foot massager. At the same time, I also submitted a review on the seller (Gitaloha): (1) Delivery was fast (2 days) but many problems later (see below). (2) Seller offered replacement for cracked remote control (great!). 1st delivery never made it. 2nd delivery made it but it was confusing (see (3) below). The ...

If all your hobbies require you to be mobile e.g. sports, walking, traveling, I highly suggest that you take up some sedentary hobbies e.g. watching tv, reading books/articles (offline or online), blogging, participate actively in online forums, playing computer/smartphone games, boardgames, sudoku, crossword puzzles, knitting, sewing. There will come a time when you'll be less mobile or even completely immobile. It is still not too late to take up such hobbies once you're less mobile, but if you don't, please don't whine about it. "I feel bored". "I feel useless". Please don't show your bored and/or depressed look and bringing everyone else down. Most importantly, don't blame others and/or resent others because you refuse to learn and change for the better. Sooner or later, you will gradually lose your cognitive functions: you are less sharp than someone else of similar age who has more diverse hobbies.

Since discharged , apart from the dizziness, mum had been getting better on many fronts: More facial expression Getting better at the physio exercises Walked faster Folded clothes on daily basis and sometimes washed some dishes and/or wiped table after dinner She continued to sleep well at night and her appetite had been pretty good. However, the dizziness remained as bad. She claimed that the previous over-the-counter medicine, dimenhydrinate, worked a little better than betahistine (medicine prescribed by the ENT specialist) i.e. when she took the latter, the dizziness was worse. I asked a friend who is a pharmacist and he said that betahistine is actually stronger than dimenhydrinate and so my mum could just switch back if she wanted to. On the weekly appointment day, the psychiatric doctor was ok with the switch. She also said that olanzapine doesn't cause dizziness (which contradicts what I found out online from more than one source). Clozapine could cause dizz...

My dad took the initiative to ask for a copy of the CT scan's (with contrast) report when he turned up for Cyce 8 treatment (probably because the surgeons asked for it ). To my surprise, the first paragraph indicated some sort of mass on the pancreas i.e. "large homogenous non-enchancing hypodense retroperitoneal mass at the region of pancreatic uncinate process"). So I asked and the doctor said that it was cancerous. Is it new because PET/CT scan didn't pick it up. Not necessarily, according to the doctor. It seems that it may be inactive and so couldn't be detected by PET/CT scan. This confused me. PET scan may not detect it because of lack of response (hence "inactivity") to the liquid injected into the bloodstream but surely the CT scan part (hence "PET/CT scan") would had detected it? @@ I chatted with my dad about this. I said that this didn't change the treatment and palliative plans because all along doctors had assumed pancrea...

What happened this year? (1) I read only two books: A Hat Full of Sky - Terry Pratchett A Matter of Honor - Jeffrey Archer Special Someones - mrbunnyban ( online here ). Yes, it's by Ban :) Unlike previous times , my dad's second line chemo session lasts much longer and so I usually go back to my sister's place after dropping my dad, sees the oncologist together with him and drop the medicine prescription at the pharmacy. I'll have lunch, nap and then fetch my dad. (2) Games: Tried and still playing Minion Masters. Tried but failed to get into top 128 to qualify for a tournament Tried Battlerite after I stopped playing Paladins. Stopped, restarted and then stopped again. Stopped playing Atlas Reactor. My goal was to level up all freelancers to at least level 20. Left Isadora and Magnus (both at level 19 now) Restarted Torchlight 2 with Ban and then stopped Still playing Overwatch but almost exclusively to reach Silver rank in each competitive season...

After delaying it for 1.5 years , I did my annual health screening recently. As usual, the package included lipid profile test. Its result as compared to 4 months ago are as follows:                               Aug 2018          Dec 2018          Ref. range  Total cholesterol           4.8                  5.4                   < 5.2 HDL ("good")               1.58              2.01                > 1.03 LDL ("bad")                  2.75              3.09                 < 2.58 Triglycerides...