Onward to FOLFOX

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We arrived on a Monday for appointment with GH's oncologist, armed with prepared request. To summarise,

(1) There's no oral version.
(2) Can infuse chemo drugs via chemo port.
(3) Need surgeon to insert chemo port. Will need more time to do that at GH and requires overnight stay. Estimated time to first infusion is 6 weeks. But if do it at private hospital (without having to stay overnight), estimated time shortened to 3 weeks.

Incidentally, we discovered that there were many more patients at the hospital on Monday, a trend that was confirmed by a guard. We're going to try to avoid appointment on Monday!

We decided to do the chemo port insertion at Lam Wah Ee Hospital. Met surgeon there:

(1) Insertion of chemo port to be done the next day.
(2) Oral chemo drugs generally are not as effective as direct infusion.
(3) He was assured of the recommended chemotherapy regimen since both GH's oncologist and Dr D recommended it.
(4) Assured us that Malaysia is up to date on cancer treatments as many doctors attend a particular conference (couldn't catch the name) where experts discuss new treatments in relation to current ones.

The insertion of chemo port itself supposed to take about 10-15 mins but in total my dad was in the operating theatre for an hour. In addition, time was needed to queue to place deposit for the procedure beforehand, finalised the bill thereafter, queue to pay for a chest X-ray, about 10 mins spent in the X-ray room, and quite a long wait for the surgeon to view the X-ray to confirm that the chemo port was in the correct place. My dad said that it was quite painful during the procedure despite the application of local anaesthesia. The surgeon urged him to take deep breaths to manage the pain @@

The chemo port insertion procedure cost about RM 2408 while the X-ray cost RM 24.

So now we wait to consult GH's oncologist in about 2 weeks time.

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