Day +115

I am fine today. Now continue my story at UH…

It was coincidence that my eldest sister came from Kuching, Sarawak on that night. She is a government school teacher teaching in Chinese primary school and she took half-paid leave to come here. I thanked God that she came at the best time because I needed most help during fever. My wife was about seven and half months pregnant at that time, so she could not stayed in the hospital overnight to take care of me. Since the nurses have to look after many patients, to have someone to lend a hand during fever is really helpful. She stayed in the hospital day and night to take care of me.

On 6 March 2006 (Day 15), my creatinine level in the blood reached 165 µmole/L, which is way above the normal level of 121 µmole/L. This reading serves as an alarm that my kidney function was degrading. Because of this, the doctor replaced the anti-fungus drug Amphoteracin B with Cancidas which has much fewer side effects compared to Amphoteracin B. I did not have to be given sleeping drugs before receiving it and it took only one hour to complete a dose. The creatinine level also dropped to normal level after a few days. However, the drug was not without side effect. The biggest side effect was it made me poorer because it was so expensive. The first dose which was called loading dose cost me RM1000 and the subsequent dose cost RM785 each.

I was discharged on 13 March 2006 (Day 22) and I stayed in the ward for 27 days. I managed to compete the very long novel “天龙八部”(The Demi Gods and Semi Devils) by Jinyong (金庸). During the period I was also given intravenous antibiotic called Tazocin, a few platelets and red blood transfusion, potassium infusion and other drugs. I also experienced water retention which made my stomach looked like a pregnant woman :-(

Since then, I never stopp taking anti-fungus medication until now. Initially I was given expensive drug called Sporanox in liquid form. After the bone marrow transplant, I take a less expensive and less effective Sporanox pill.

See you next post :-)