Hospital Interlude: my Saviour speaks

Ok, I know I've gotten to the part where I was completely knocked out by the anaesthesia that had been given to me and I'm lying on the cold operating table, but before I continue the account of my time in the hospital, I should mention something of great importance.

Now, while I was in hospital, I was definitely very very blessed and encouraged by all my family and the many friends and colleagues who stopped by and spent some of their time hanging out with me. The visits definitely made my stay in the hospital a lot more enjoyable, and like I mentioned often to them, left me with very little time to feel bored.

But it still didn't take away the fact that I could very possibly be dead by the end of the following week. It could be any number of things; the cancer suddenly spreading, complications during surgery, catching some other disease, the possibilities were endless, in a rather morbid, unwanted sort of way.

It didn't help that I was also starting to wonder about my faith, whether it was real or not, whether I had fallen away and not realised it, whether by my lifestyle, I had removed myself from being before God. It goes without saying, of course, that I was hardly living the most exemplary life. Sure, I looked and acted Christian, but there are definitely things that I wasn't proud of, and which I kept very well hidden.

It also didn't help that the last sermon I listened to in church before getting hospitalised (or at least, the last one I really remembered) was one of the hellfire and damnation ones that our church has been putting a bit more emphasis on recently (and a good idea too, if you ask me, since we've been focusing so much on God's grace and mercy that we sometimes forget His holiness and judgment). And I was really starting to worry that even though I thought of myself as Christian, perhaps it was only what I thought, and that the reality before God was that I had drifted away and not even realised it, and that if I died and found myself before the throne of Him above, I would find out, to my horror, that my name was no longer in the Book of Life and I would be banished from His presence.

Naturally of course, when people were around, this issue was put away in the back of my mind, but sometimes, when I was by myself, I would wonder. And pray. And wonder if the prayer was enough.

I had been thinking of telling Pastor Kee Oon (my YA pastor) when he came to visit on Saturday, but we had such fun talking and laughing that it completely slipped my mind. And so my fears were unaddressed.

At least, until God intervened.

Thing is, before Pastor Kee Oon came, he had been getting prompts to give me a passage from the Bible. And it was a rather specific one too, but like I mentioned, we had such good fun joking and stuff, and it also slipped his mind to mention it to me. But after he left and went back, the prompts started getting to him again. And he told me later he thought the verse wasn't the one he had thought of telling me, which probably had something to do with healing or how all things work for the good of those who love God. But the prompts got stronger, and the next morning, he sent me a message telling me that the Holy Spirit had been telling him to tell me to read a passage in Isaiah.

Now, for those of you who do know me, you would know that I am not particularly spiritually sensitive. In fact, I can be incredibly dense when it comes to this sort of thing. But as I read the passage, I started to tear almost immediately after scanning through it once, and it became extremely clear to me that God was speaking directly to me from a book that was more than 2,500 years old. This is the passage:

But now, this is what the Lord says - he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour...

- Isaiah 43: 1-3a

And just like that, all my fears of thinking that I had abandoned my faith and was no longer in God's favour disappeared. And even knowing that I might die by the end of the week was not as distressing as it had been.

And since the surgery was successful, it feels that I have been redeemed a second time, this time in the physical sense, and that I am now living, essentially, on borrowed time. It'll be up to me (with the help of the Holy Spirit) to make sure I use this time for something worthwhile in the name of God.

Cancer

It's never pleasant hearing that someone has gotten cancer, especially if you are the person in question. But when the truth of it is out, it's always much better to face up to reality and put a brave face forward.

The morning after I had gotten warded into SGH, several other doctors came by and prodded me and looked at the scans that had been taken of me, and the most senior one in that particular group, Dr. Lai, sat me down (well ok, he was the one that sat down. I was lying in bed already) and told me quite bluntly that in all probability, based on the size of the tumour, I had cancer.

My parents had been listening in on it too, and I guess it sounded almost like the final nail in the coffin for them. It certainly seemed like that for me, as I started getting the feeling that I was sinking through my bed in despair again.

The one positive thing that Dr. Lai could see from it though, was that it seemed the tumour (which he said probably had an infection) was fairly well-contained, my body having reacted to it and sealing it off, which he said allowed him a bit more time to get more info and plan the best way of dealing with the cancer.

My siblings came to my bed after the doctor had left, but my parents didn't really need to tell them much, since they had also been somewhere in the room when the doctor was talking (even though he seemed to think that he was talking softly enough that no one could hear; he had a rather strong sort of voice, that kind of carries even if he didn't raise the volume). Quite a shocker, no doubt, but despite the situation, our faith in God remained strong, and we committed it all to Him in prayer.

At any rate, I was left in that bed for the next few days, and was not allowed to take anything in by mouth, which was a real bummer sometimes, since it wasn't just food, but drinks as well. They kept me on a drip the whole time, giving me either saline or a potassium solution. The downside of this, was that they kept on having to give me new IV plugs when the old ones stopped working, some of which had needles that looked very foreboding, and once, I was left with a massive bruise on my left forearm when the nurse couldn't get the needle into my vein.

This is one of the larger ones. In fact, I think this is the one that the nurse had to try to put in twice. If you notice, it actually has a valve which allows two drips to be used at the same time. How cool is that?

There were many more upsides to this episode though. For one, the nurses were all very skilled (they only missed the veins one time when putting in needles, and often, it didn't really hurt too much) and very caring. My bed was fairly comfortable, and placed in a decent position that let me see some scenery out of the window. And the other patients in the room were very very nice people.

One of them was Uncle Yap, who strangely enough, was the father of a man who went to our church (which led to knowledge of me being hospitalised for cancer being spread much faster than I had intended). Another guy, an Indian dude called Pala who was warded after me, came in because of shortness of breath, but he also told me his experience when he had a terrible hernia where his small intestine kept on popping out.

But the guy who was the biggest encouragement was in the bed facing me; his name was Mr. Neo. And coincidentally, he knew my mom from some teachers' symposium or other which they had both attended in the past. Mr. Neo had a terminal form of cancer, and the doctors had only given him only about a month and a half more to live, but he did not let that affect him. Every morning, he was up early and cheerfully talking with the other patients, with the nurses, with the guests. He even went visiting a friend's father in a different ward, and brought him coffee and his own breakfast one morning. In short, he was like a great big ball of energy and joy in the room, and he encouraged me by telling me how the cancer I got was easily the most treatable in Singapore, and horrified me by telling how many tubes had been put into him in the course of his operation and his treatment. He even offered to let us use his bed number to get more visitors in, since he said not many people dropped by to visit.

He was only there for a couple of days after I was warded before he checked out and went home, but it felt so much longer than that, and the impression he left behind, the positive face he put on even in the face of something so terrible gave me a lot of strength to push on.

I was also tremendously blessed by having many friends and family members drop by. Mom and Dad were near constants, being there almost all the time, and Hannah and Andrew were in quite frequently too. But there were many church friends and colleagues and former schoolmates and other acquaintances, some unexpected, who chose to make time to come and see if I was dead yet. And as such, I was never bored while I was there, since there was an almost constant stream of well-wishers coming and going. I just hope it wasn't too much of a hassle for the other patients.

While I was waiting for the op, the doctor who was to operate on me, Prof Tang, came by, and slated me for another x-ray, a chest CT scan, and a scope. But at any rate, on Tuesday, one of the doctors in his team came by to check on me, and told me that the operation was to be conducted on Wednesday, probably in the afternoon.

Up til that point, I had actually been somewhat enjoying my time, just sitting around, talking with friends, doing almost nothing, but knowing that the operation was just a day away started to get to me. I started wondering what it was like, whether the anaesthetic really prevented you from feeling anything, and what would happen if the surgeon made a mistake and I died on the operating table.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I soon did not have to think about such things, as one of the nurses came by with a huge pitcher of an orange-coloured fluid and told me to drink it. Now, I have to admit that the taste itself of the drink wasn't so bad. If I had to describe it, I would say it tasted like an orange-flavoured, salty, warm, slightly thicker type of Gatorade. Which does not sound appealing, I know, but it was drinkable. It was meant to cause me to purge myself of anything that may be in my digestive system, but that wasn't the worst bit of it. The thing about it that was most disgusting was that I had to finish all of it. In three hours. I had to force myself to swallow the horrible solution (which tasted worse each time I drank a cupful) and by the time I was reaching the bottom of the jug, I felt that taking another cup would cause me to puke everything back out, thus purging myself in a totally different way. By that time though, it was midnight (the cutoff time), so I could avoid the last couple of cups.

Wednesday was more of the waiting. A few friends managed to get in before visiting hours, then I just had to wait for the nurses to come and call me when the operating theatre was ready. It almost felt like being in the army, and waiting to go for an outfield exercise. Or waiting to go for the obstacle course (which I really really disliked). The only difference this time was that I just had to go and lie there and do nothing.

Finally the nurses wheeled in a gurney and they put me on it and wheeled me off to the theatre. I guess it could have been a lot more traumatic thinking about what might happen ahead, but the way I deal with possibly distressing situations is to not think about it until it comes to a head.

At any rate, they wheeled me into operating theatre area, and left me at a corner while they went to prep some stuff. They then pushed me into what I guess is the pre-operating theatre room, where the anaesthetist came over and asked me some questions, and a nurse stuck some electrodes on me. They then brought me into operating theatre itself, and transferred me onto the table. I remember looking up and seeing the lights and several hooks (one of which they used to hold my saline drip bottle), and then the anaesthetist came over.

"I'm going to give you the anaesthesia now ok?" she said.

"You're going to use the (IV) plug right? You're not going to jab me again are you?" I was really not very fond of needles by then.

"Oh yeah. Since you have the plug, we'll use it," she replied, leaning over and inserting the syringe into the plug (it had two holes remember).

Now, several of my friends and colleagues had told me that what happens here is that they pump you with the drug, and then ask you to start counting backwards from 10. And so most people go like: "10... 9... 8... 7..." and then they get knocked out by the drug. But I never even lasted long enough for them to tell me to start counting backwards. Before I realised it, I was out.

入院

"You have a tumour."

I was sitting inside a room at Khoo Teck Puat's A&E on a Friday evening, when the surgeon dropped this particular bombshell. As he, and the attending doctor, started listing out symptoms - abnormal bowel movements, poop appearing 'narrower' than usual, blood in the stool and loss of appetite, among others - I realised that many of these had been happening for close to half a year. But the single fact running through my mind was: I have a tumour.

I guess what made it harder to detect was that I had also had piles, thanks mostly to my penchant for reading or playing my PSP while sitting on the toilet seat, and some of the symptoms could have been explained away by it. In fact, when I had visited my GP earlier on, he had given me medication for piles, and some of the issues had gone away. This, together with the fact that I am just into my 28th year, probably led the GP to suspect it was something more akin to an infection in my gut.

And it most likely would have remained that way, had the tumour not started affecting my appetite, reducing it so much that I had not been eating properly for the past few days. And so on Friday, after going to work and going through a couple of articles, I felt really out of sorts, and spoke to Andrew, my superior, and said I wasn't feeling well.

He was concerned, of course, and suggested I go to see the company doctor, despite the fact that I had just been to my GP the day before and had received medication. Still, the fact that I was obviously zoning out at 4 in the afternoon (not that uncommon an occurrence, really) and that I was losing my balance while walking, must have appeared disconcerting enough for him to get me to go see the doc, at the very least, to get an MC for the day.

I made my way upstairs and I told him some of the symptoms I had been experiencing. Up to this point, I was still worried that I would be seen as a slacker trying to get an extra day off (probably something to do with the fact that in BMT, my platoon sergeant, who could have passed off as a drill instructor for the USMC, was of the mind that unless you had a 40-degree fever, you were well enough to fight for the country). But upon hearing what I told him, the doctor quickly got me to lie down and started prodding my stomach.

While generally ok, it hurt quite a bit more when he poked me in the gut below my stomach line. He then said it felt like there was an obstruction of sorts in my intestines, and recommended I get to a hospital as soon as possible for a scan to see if there was any infections that were causing blockages.

I got down to the subs desk and told Andrew that I had to go to the hospital for a scan for a suspected infection. This, combined with the fact that I appeared to be unable to keep my balance, led some of the desk to think that I had a ear infection, which would lead to some confusion later on. At any rate, he told me to quickly be on my way, and joked that I should  take a taxi instead of trying to bike my way to the hospital to save money. I laughed and told him I wasn't that stingy.

Fortunately for me, mum was finishing up work around that time, so she swung by my office to bring me to Khoo Teck Puat hospital. It wasn't the nearest to SPH, but it was the nearest to home, and my brother works there as a corpcomms officer, which made the place seem more attractive.

As I was fairly coherent, and did not seem to be in a lot of pain (I had a fever I did not feel though), I ended up waiting for more than an hour before I got to see a doctor, but he was efficient in his work, quickly taking blood samples and giving me a checkup, then getting me prepared to go for a CT scan. While waiting, mum said I felt really warm, and got me a glass of water to drink while she asked a nurse if there was any Panadol to be had. The nurse soon came back, and took away my water, saying I was not supposed to be taking in anything by mouth, and he attached a saline drip to me instead.

The interesting thing about the drip is that it feels cool when it enters your bloodstream, and much later on, I realised that you do not actually feel that hungry when you're on the drip. You do feel some hunger pangs after a while, but as it stood, I ended up without any physical food for the next 8 days without getting any gastric issues, which I tend to be highly susceptible to.

A while later, they called my name and brought me into the CT scan room (they had plonked me in a wheelchair by then), which looked very much like a miniaturised version of the warp gates in Cowboy Bebop (which is a really good anime). After the scan, I was brought out to wait, until the surgeon called me in and dropped the news on my head.

I guess it did not quite register for a while, but then it felt like I was sinking through the bed, as if the news immediately made me feel like an invalid. Later, however, when I sat up, I still felt really normal, albeit weak from the relative lack of food.

It was quite a shock to my parents too; although my mum's side has a whole bunch of issues ranging from high blood pressure to diabetes, cancer was not in either of my family lines. My father quickly made a call to Elder Julian, a church friend who works in the geriatrics department of SGH, and he recommended I get admitted into SGH instead, since the National Cancer Centre is based there and he personally knew a surgeon (whom he also said we should request for) who was an expert in that particular field of medicine.

I felt a bit upset about the news, since by then I was really out of sorts, not having had food or drink for the past few hours. We had also been making a lot of requests of the staff about the nature of the hospitalisation, and felt a bit sorry for the doctors who had been keeping an eye on me til then. But most of all, I was upset that I would have to get a new IV plug.

We got to SGH at about 11 that night and had to go through the whole A&E process again, this time, waiting a couple more hours before they finally admitted me into ward 78, where the doctors on call (two really attractive young women) came by and asked me questions and prodded and poked and examined me some more before allowing me to drift off into a sort of sleep.