Day +45

I am fine today. My wife make some every nice steam bun today with tuna, long beam and peanut filling. I have them for dinner and they are really delicious.

The diagnosis of this disease was not very straight forward. The first symptom appeared as rashes on the arms and legs early November last year. Because I just enjoyed seafood with some of our church members and our visitors from Hong Kong, I thought the rashes might be due to seafood allergy. In fact, this was my ignorant as I had no history of seafood allergy before. Furthermore the rashes were not raised and not itchy at all. It was actually due to bleeding under the skin because of low platelet, a condition called petechiae.

Other than the rashes, my health looked normal. I still went for jogging very morning and worked very hard. As my family and I prepared to go back to Sarawak for holiday, my company’s software development source code management system went completely haywire. In order to fix the problem, I worked 3 days overnight until the morning of 15 November, the day we traveled back to Bintangor.

We visited my 2nd sister in Sibu, my wife family in Sarikei, my 3rd sister (stem cell donor) which is not far from my mother house and many other relatives. Most of the time we stayed at my elder brothers house in a kampung”(Village) called Sungei Mador, the house where all my family members stayed before we have our own family. It is somewhere between Sibu and Sarikei. The children enjoyed kampung life very much. They managed to play with the dog and rabbits, chased the chickens and ducks, went for fishing, played sand, visited pepper and orange farms and experienced many other new thing.

After one week staying in the kampung, on the day we would like to fly to Kuching, I developed sore throat with blood in the phlegm. My wife and I went to see a doctor in Sarikei. This doctor speaks Foochow and called, “Ah Kiew, Ah Kiew, come.” He called me like my wife or my family member called me. After examining my throat, he said, “You have acute throat inflammation. Why you come so late?” But I did not experience any pain as when I had acute throat inflammation before. He asked me to swallow an antibiotic tablet in the clinic immediately and prescribed a 5 days course of antibiotic to me. I showed him the rashes but he was unable to link it to blood problem.

So I flied to Kuching happily with my family, my 2nd sister family and of course the antibiotic. We stayed at my eldest sister house for one night, then we all went to Holiday Inn Damai Beach Resort for 3 days and 2 nights. A very nice place, both the children and the adults enjoy very much there. Without knowing I was going to be diagnosed with Leukaemia, I was also very happy there.

Soon I finished the antibiotic but my sore throat did not seem to improve. So my eldest sister brought me to the see an ENT specialist in Kuching. He prescribed me another course of “better” antibiotic. And on the same day we went to see a Chinese Traditional Doctor, she asked me to throw away the antibiotic from the ENT and took her medicine. She guaranteed that my throat condition will be improved within 2 days. Both doctors were unable to link the rashes and the throat bleeding problem to blood problem either.

I put aside the Chinese medicine and started to take antibiotic from the ENT specialist. At that time, I felt very tired. After two days, I noticed my urine was red in colour and I suspected there must be bleeding at some part of my urinary organ. So I went to see another doctor, and he was able to identify the problem immediately. A blood test was done and on the next day, 28 November, it was confirmed that I had some form of blood disease as the platelet was extremely low and the white blood count was very high. You can see here the diagnosis is not so straight forward as it took about 2 weeks for 4 doctors to relate my problem to some form of blood disease.

My sisters went to Bintulu on 27 November to attend a wedding party of one of my relatives . So I asked the doctor to refer me to Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) for further treatment without consulting with my sisters.

On the evening of 28 November, I was admitted to SGH. Without much choice, the holiday had to be prolonged and I cancelled the flight back to KLIA on 29 November.