Day +533 : Heavy cough, flu and fever :-(

I am fine today.

I developed heavy cough, flu and low grade fever (<= 38˚C) early in the morning. The durian and local olive season is accompanied by cough and flu season here :-( You can hear people coughing everywhere, so avoiding infection is like a impossible task.

A person like me whose immune system is suppressed has to be very careful about infection. This is the first time I developed fever after discharged from bone marrow transplant. My family members were quite worried about the fever.

I called bone marrow transplant unit in UH to seek advice, and it just happened that the sister was the one who picked up the call. She told me not to worry too much and also not need to cut short my holiday; just go to a hospital here to make sure that my lung is clear.

As today is Hari Raya Haji, I seek treatment through the emergency unit of general hospital Sibu. The doctor said that my lung is clear :-) I am also given the following medicines:

1. Expectorant Diphenhydramine – for cough
2. Chlorpheniramine Maleate – for flu
3. Paracetamol – for fever

I paid RM1.00 and the consultation process took about half an hour only :-)

I hope the cough, flu and fever will settle down very soon so that I have enough strength to bring my family back to KL on the coming Sunday.

Lastly, I would like to wish my Muslim friends: Selamat Hari Raya Haji.

See you next post :-)

Day +532 : Visiting new friends (2)

I am fine today. Continue from yesterday…

One of the mostly discussed topics was the foods that a patient should avoid and take. This special interest on foods was common to all patients and their family members including me. After going through my treatment, my advice on foods that claimed to have special effects on Leukaemia or our blood system is: the main course of treatment of this disease should not rely on foods as no one knows their effectiveness. There might be some claims that some food is effective, but there is no way to substantiate them. However, there is no harm to take most of the special foods such as eels, rabbits, guinea pig, black beans and barley. Just eat them as common dishes that we have for meal :-)

The family member should try their best to supply the food that best suit to the taste of the patient. It is very important for the patient to absorb enough nutrition especially protein during the treatment. Though the general advice is for a patient to take plain, non-fried, non-oily food, non-spicy foods, the care keeper has to be flexible under certain circumstances. For instance, if it comes to a point that the patient only has appetite for Kentucky Fried Chicken, the care keeper should give it to the patient. It is better to eat KFC than eating nothing. However, one thing that cannot be compromised is the cleanliness of food.

The son is the most outstanding child among the four children in the family. He is studying form two and is a self-disciplined and intelligent boy who always scored the first position in the class. He will be doing his final round of chemotherapy on the 28 December, 2007 before doing his bone marrow transplant with his sister as stem cells donor.

Let all of us pray for him to have a smooth and successful treatment. We also pray that with the medical treatment coupled with the grace of God, he will be completely healed from this disease.

See you next post :-)

Day +531 : Visiting new friends (1)

I am fine today.

Dr. Haris advised me not to reduce the Prednisolon daily dosage from 15mg to 10mg given the rising level of liver enzymes. The doctor will reassess the situation during my next follow-up which is scheduled two weeks later.

My sister-in-law (my wife’s sister) who visited me with her children from Miri a few weeks ago introduced to me one of her church members whose son was diagnosed with Leukaemia and was under treatment in Kuching General Hospital. This church member is also originated from my wife’s hometown Sarikei but now living in Miri.

I didn’t have a chance to visit them in Kuching as I didn’t go to Kuching this time. However, the father has three sisters staying in Bintangor. Last week, he invited me to pay his sisters a visit to share my treatment experience with them. I gladly accepted the invitation and went to one of his sister’s house early in the morning.

I spent more than two hours with them. A lot of questions were asked and the conversation was done in Foochow :-) I explained to them the need of bone marrow transplant, the risk involved, the stem cells donating process, and the bone marrow transplant procedure.

To be continued and see you next post :-)

Day +530 : Blood test

My Blood Count Today: - Reading within the square bracket [] depicts the previous test result.
Red Blood Count (HB) = 144 [142] (Normal 130-180)
Platelet = 168 [152] (Normal 150-450)
White Blood Count (WBC) = 12.6 [8.5] (Normal 4 - 11)
Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) = 9.072 [5.525 ] (Normal 1.5 - 8.0)
ALT = 152 [71] (Normal 30 – 65)
AST = 78[26] (Normal 15-37)
GGT = 208 [153] (Normal 15-85)
ALP = 99 [75] (Normal 50-136)

I am fine today.

My third sister Sie Kiong fetched me to Sibu to do blood test this morning. Though some roads were still flooded, she used alternate routes to avoid the flood.

The liver enzyme levels are climbing again. I am not sure whether to further reduce the Prednisolon daily dosage from 15mg (3 tablets) to 10mg as planned during the last follow-up 4 weeks ago. I have sent the result to Dr. Haris for evaluation. Dr. Haris is one of the UH haematologists who look after me. I really appreciate his kindness to offer consultation through email while I am enjoying my holiday in Sarawak.

One thing that worries me is the elevated white blood count reading which fall beyond the normal range. I hope the count will drop on the next follow-up which is scheduled on the 31 December, 2007.

I also developed mild sore throat with brownish phlegm and occasional cough. May be it was because I consumed too much heaty fruits such as the local olive and durian. I think I have to exercise a little bit of self control :-)

See you next post :-)

Day +529 : Sharing at home village church

I am fine today.

We went to attend the church service in the morning. I did a sharing in the service and also sang the song “It is a miracle that I live (我活着是神迹)”.

As some senior church members could not undertand Chinese well, I did the sharing in Foochow dialet. It is quite a challenge to do the sharing in Foochow dialect :-)

Daniel recorded the entire sharing session using camcorder. However, there is no point for me to post the recording as not many can understand the Foochow dialect. I will tidy up and post the script which is written in Chinese later.

I was sharing.
The audience.
See you next post :-)

Day +528 : Fruits at home town

I am fine today.

I would like to introduce to you some fruits that we have in here.

The Pomelo (柚子) – very tasty and juicy, better than the Pomelo in West Malaysia. My third sister purchased 20kg for us to consume in the kampong and I plan to bring at least 50kg to KL after the holiday. It costs RM1.80 per kg only.

The delicious Pomelo
A heap of Pamelos
There are many coconut trees surround my kampong house. They were planted by my brother Richard many years ago.

No one in the kampong has the motivation to pluck the coconuts. So the fruits are left to ripe, dry and drop :-) I took the initiative yesterday to harvest the coconuts and we managed to pluck 53 coconuts from 3 coconut trees. There are still many coconut trees left unharvested.

The coconut tree.
Everyone worked as a team to pluck the coconuts.
I was working very hard to chop off the bunch of coconuts - more than 10 fruitsJoseph was given a chance to climb the ladder
It was Daniel's turn now
The harvest - 53 coconuts
Coconut - zoom in
I cut open 8 fruits after the laborious harvest - really tiring :-(
The coconut water was very sweet – as sweet as the one found in the town with sugar added
The flesh especially the young one was delicious too. As the reason given to me for not harvesting the coconuts was that they were not interested to eat the fruit, it was very strange to see my family members in kampong enjoyed the fruit so much after I cut open for them :-) This led me to suspect that they are "lazy" to pluck the fruit instead of not interested to eat the fruit :-)

I purchased the following fruits at the town market this morning.

“Maowan” – didn't eat this type of fruit for more than 20 years
Local Olive – not available elsewhere except Sarawak. Just soak it in the warm water for a few minutes before serving with soy sauce and sugar.
Cempedak – RM4.00 only per piece. It weighs more than 4kg! I used to pay RM4.50 a kg in KL.
Soursop – RM1.50 a kg only :-)
Kedondong or “Mangolong” – 6 pieces for RM1.00
See you next post :-)

Day +527 : Eating at Bintangor Town

I am fine today.

There is still no way for me to reach Sibu today and I found out that the Pathlab in Sarikei town was already closed for business. This means that I have to wait for the flood in Sibu subsides first before doing the blood test.

My wife and I went to Bintangor town this morning. We had breakfast and lunch at the town. I would like to introduce to you what we had today :-)

The small town – could not find a single traffic light in the town :-)
The best hotel in the town owned by Ting Pek Kiing (陈伯勤). The hotel bears his father's name if I were not mistaken.
Wantan Soup (RM2.00) - my wife’s breakfast
Kampua Mee (RM2.00) - my breakfast, this one is the best that I had since I came back for the holiday
Fried Mee (RM2.50) - my nephew’s breakfast
We had clay pot Mee (RM3.00) for lunch. I haven’t eaten this type of noodle for more than 20 years. My third sister who works as a dental assistant in the nearby hospital always brought us for lunch whenever we go to town, but she didn’t ever know the existence of this type of noodle. She said she would bring her children for this type of noodle later.
Miring - my wife's favourite dish
Wife’s Biscuit (老婆饼) - not only for wife, also good for husband :-)
Dousa Biscuit(豆沙饼) - my third sister always buy this type of biscuits for me to bring back to kampong whenever I go to town
Li Biscuit (礼饼) - there was a story behind this type of biscuit
We had this Fried Kueh Teow the other day. It costs RM2.20 only. The shop owner told us he would like to keep the price at RM2.00 but due to pressure from other shop owners, he had no choice but to increase the price. People scolded him stupid for not increasing the price.
The Restaurant that was reluctant to increase the price of noodle
See you next post :-)

Day +526 : Sibu is flooded

I am fine today.

While I was on the way to Bintagor town yesterday, my second sister Sie Kiong called to warn me not to go to Sibu because many areas in Sibu were flooded. Many cars were trapped in the flood and part of the the Lanang route which we always use to travel to Sibu was also flooded.

The flood worsens today in some areas with flood water as deep as “one person (5 metres) ” height :-) Many houses and shops were flooded and this incurred huge losses to people here :-)

It is perfectly fine for me not to travel to Sibu for the next few days as we have plenty of things to do in kampong. The only thing that I need to adjust is to find an alternate place to do my blood test which is originally planned to be done in Sibu. Most probably I will go to Sarikei for the blood test as my third sister told me there is a Pathlab there.

We went fishing again today and the score:

Sie Heng : 5 fishes
Heng Hew: 3 fishes
David : 2 fishes
Daniel: 1 fish

A type of fish that we catch when the tide is low A catch of the day
A mud skipper at the stream bank – not many in the town get to see it. It manages to hog on the water surface :-)
My niece in the kampong said that her sister who once stayed with us in KL told her that I cook delicious spaghetti. So I demonstrated to her the way I prepare spaghetti sauce this morning and everyone had spaghetti for breakfast.

In the afternoon, I tried a new dish called Lemon & Honey Meaty Spare Ribs (西柠蜜汁加厚骨). The outcome was not very satisfying because I could not find imported yellow lemon here. The local green lemon that I used as a replacement gave a bitter taste :-)

The dish.The dish (zoom in)
The local greeen lemon
See you next post :-)

Day +525 : Miscellaneous photos from home village

I am fine today.

I went to Bintangor town with my nephew this morning to buy fishing hook and to visit internet café to update my blog.

In the evening, we went fishing again with the following score:

David - 6 fishes
Heng Yew – 4 fishes
Joseph – 1 fish

In the morning, I cooked Fried Kueh-Teow in Creamy Egg Sauce () for the first time. As the dish was not available here, most of my family members were eating it for the first time. Even though I didn’t use squids as I could not find it at Bintangor town, the taste was still not too far away from the one that we eat in restaurant :-) We managed to finish 2kg of Kueh-Teow for the breakfast.
My wife and Daniel were learning to make "Black and White Cheese Cake" from my niece. The cake was quite simple to make. It consists of alternate layers of ordinary and chocolate Marie biscuits "glued" together with cheese or peanut butter and chocolate pastry. No baking is necessary for this type of cake; just keep it in the refrigerator for one day after preparation before serving.

Chocolate Marie biscuits sitting on top of peanut butter.
The ingredients
My wife and Daniel busy making the cake, with happy Adriel popping up for a photo shot only
Heng Hew and Daniel busy at work

Small white fish (白鱼仔), it looks big here; actually it is small.
A beetle

A type of small crab that is widely available here. Though it is edible, we rarely eat them. Daniel said this crab was his life finger ring :-)
A moth

See you next post :-)

Day +524 : Finally we managed to go fishing

I am fine today.

We went fishing in the evening at a stream within 3 minutes walking distance from our kampong house.

As we expect to catch small fish (白鱼仔) only, we used the smallest fishing hook that was available.

The score today :
Heng Yew – 4 fishes
Daniel – 1 fish

All the rest scores zero fish :-(

The stream where we fish Happy Joseph and Daniel Daniel Joseph Aaron also join the crowd My eldest brother – Sie Heng

Heng Yew – Sie Heng’s second son (Heng Chiek’s brother)
Cat fish

Small white fish (白鱼仔) – though small but very delicious. It costs RM20 per kg here. My eldest brother told me people here use transparent plastic bag to catch this type of fish. The bait – earth worm

See you next post :-)