Here's My Story

At IPC. I wonder how often they check the stock for freshness and to restock as necessary.

As planned , I alone went to Penang GH to attend on his behalf my dad's appointment with PCU. To my embarassment, what the specialist said to the hospice nurse was true: that on the last appointment, they had increased Gabapentin from 300mg 3x daily to 600mg 3x daily. Either I misheard and didn't read the lable properly or the pharmacist mislabeled it. Likely the former. 😔 Fortunately, my dad did try the double dosage for about 2 days before the appointment (the hospice nurse's instruction) and it did improve the pain score from 4-5 to 2-3 during the day. Phew! Although pain spiked up every now and then randomly, it would certainly do so each time my dad moved from one place to another, starting from the time he stood up (with help, of course). Hence, the PCU doctor recommended taking Oxynorm before moving. Since once a while he moved to dining table to have meals, she suggested coinciding the intake of the fixed 3x daily of Oxynorm (to manage his breathlessness) to ju...

I've always wanted to try this and so one day, I split my dinner into two parts: chap fan without rice followed by chee cheong fun few hours later. Because I didn't look at the picture closely, I was quite shocked at how wrinkled it was. I was expecting the smooth kind. So, that was a bad start for me. In addition, most of the prawns were outside of the rice roll. Its only redeeming feature was its sauce. What a pity.

Some update to the previous post before my dad's appoint with PCU this coming Friday: My sister managed to persuade him to restart using his tablet to watch drama series. Hopefully he'll continue to do so. Bowel movement is pretty good: at most miss one day. On someone's advice, we got him a secondhand (6 months old) anti-bedsore mattress which is comfortable for him. He seems to like it. My sister chanced upon a physiotherapy centre that has housecall service. We hired a physiotherapist to look at my dad and upon her recommendation, she'll come in 3 times a week to administer TENS therapy on my dad as well as getting him to do sit-down bicycle exercise. Hospice nurse visited and, upon consultation with a doctor, advised us to double the Gabapentin's dosage for night i.e. 300mg x 2 day time, 600mg night time. Pain score before doubling night time Gabapentin: 4-5 for day, 3-4 for night. After doubling night time dosage, the pain score is 4-5 for day (i.e. no c...

There are companies, in certain countries, who are willing to pay more than what you'll get when you surrender your endowment or life insurance policy to your insurance company. I knew about this for about two decades already but it wasn't availble when I was working in Singapore, until now. How do such companies earn? Well, they earn the difference between the insurance benefit upon claim and the amount the paid for the policy. This will materialise if the insured lives long enough for the sum assured to exceed that said amount. This raises an interesting issue. Firstly, we need to discuss the term 'insurable interest'. A basic element of insurance is insurable interest i.e. the beneficiary will suffer some sort of loss(es) upon the demise of the insured. Classic example will be the death of a father, the breadwinner of the family, causing financial hardship to his family. He can then be the insured while the beneficiary can be his wife, children or both. When an...

My dad's condition worsened since the last appointment with PCU and oncologist: he now asked to be wheeled from his resting area to the car when we brought him to hospitals; he just stared at the ceiling whenever he was resting and he stopped watching news/videos on his phone while at the table. Weaker for sure. Almost bedridden. There were some bright spots: he usually could sleep soundly throughout the night; he still tried his best to do whatever needed to minimise pain; and he was still interested in playing card game with Ban and I. He was getting very clingy though and that's a problem because none of us can be with him 24/7. So unfortunately some of us had to tell him that we need to have time to do other things. One thing hasn't changed though: his impatience. So the combination of all these conditions and behaviour are quite distressing to the everyone. I contemplated forgoing my dad's follow-up appointment with Dr P , the orthopaedic oncologist at Adv...

Results as compared to more than 4 months ago :                                Aug 2019          Jan 2020          Ref. range Total cholesterol           5.5                 5.6                  < 5.2 HDL ("good")               2.16              2.34                > 1.04 LDL ("bad")          ...

One of the food places in Butterworth that Ban and I go to every now and then is Uncle Kin Chilli Pan Mee (but we opt for the non-spicy one). We nicknamed the dish there "special pan mee" because of the unusual way of preparation. Ban normally stays away from pan mee and so this is truly special :) My sister told me of another place that serves similar dish: We both ordered the non-spicy dry pan mee but we chose different sets. The pan mee itself was more expensive than Uncle Kin's. It had more noodle but Uncle Kin gave a bowl of fishballs and so the latter is better in my opinion. Its taste was quite good. Uncle Kin's version was heavier in flavour such that you wouldn't want to have it again for, say, a week. 'Jelak'. Now come the strange bit: I chose the set that came with dessert and side dish. Craving for vegetable, I chose a vegetable side dish, only to realise later that it would had been cheaper to order ala ca...

I couldn't blog earlier because my laptop was under repair. On New Year's day, I started uploading an Overwatch ganeplay and then went to hang laundry. When I went back to my laptop, it was "shut down". Nothing happened when I tried starting it. Also, the light indicator on the adapter switched off each time I tried to connect the adapter to the laptop. Ban suspected short circuit. My laptop is no longer under Dell's warranty and since it was already past 9pm, I had to wait to next day to call. The other option was to approach a shop at Digital Mall. We didn't have any technician in mind. I vaguely recalled All IT Hypermart offer technical service. I tried googling them, on my smartphone, and also I might as well checked the nearest repair shops: OK Computer had good reviews and rated by 528 reviewers. What caught my eyes was Computer Repair's operating hours: closed at 11.30pm! So I called the latter and spoke with a technician n...