Day +199

I am fine today.

With so many negative comments received about UH, why I still do transplant in UH?

In fact, I initially planned to complete all remaining chemotherapies in UH then do bone marrow transplant in Subang Jaya Medical Centre (SJMC), the only private hospital that offers bone marrow transplant services in Malaysia. I was told the estimated cost of transplant in SJMC is about RM150,000. This is beyond the coverage of my medical insurance.

On the other hand, the government will bear all my transplant charges if I carried out transplant in UH. This is because my wife is a government servant and in Malaysia, all family members of a government servant enjoy medical coverage provided the treatment is done in government or semi-government hospital.

However, to me, the primary concern of choosing a transplant centre is its mortality rate, not the cost. Life is better than money, isn’t it? I was informed by my first haematologist in Kuching that the mortality rate of an allogeneic transplant is about 20% to 25%. This is consistent with what I read later. If the mortality rate of a transplant in UH falls within this range, there should be no reason not to do transplant here, considering the cost.

In order to find out this, my eldest sister accompanied me to see Dr. Alan Teh in SJMC. Many questions asked and answered. The most important one to me was the mortality rate of a transplant in UH and his answer fell within the above range. Since he is the visiting consultant to UH, I trust his answer and decided to do transplant in UH without further hesitation.

I was very ‘happy’ after the decision because one of the side effects of the transplant would be significantly reduced now. This side effect is called poverty. In fact, the insurance company ‘paid me to stay in hospital’. In the end, I earned money, the money that no one ever wished or dared to earn :-)

See you next post :-)