Part 12: PCMC My Second Home

By now, I have already been more than three weeks in PCMC for my second round of stay here. At the point of writing, I have been in hospital for a cumulative of 52 days in three different hospitals! This is indeed the longest ever in my life that I have been in hospital and out of work. It is quite an irony to think that I have not even taken a sick day leave for the past many many years. I supposed this should make up for it all somehow. All this now is just down to an emotional endurance test to live through the day, every single day.

And these have been my most trusted companion these days... I have graduated from walking frame to double crutches and finally down to single crutch. 

As far as being a patient; I supposed I'm what the nurses must have called a model patient, really. I'm obedient. I take my medicine whenever I was told to do so. I ate my meals. I'm more or less highly independent by now hence need almost no help from them in whatever I have to do.

My daily routine begins as early as 6:30 am after Subuh prayer when they had to give me my first dose of antibiotic. The IV procedure goes for about 2 hours at a time with them having to switch the infusion solution bottles 3 times and then to flush the IV line. Then breakfast and shortly after they would send me down to the physiotherapy gym downstairs for a one and a half to two hours session. They now had allowed me to join the crowd in the gym as my infection is more or less under control. It's quite a nice change to see other people's faces. And by being in PCMC, we get a fair share of celebrities and VVIP there too! I believe the physio therapy sessions stories deserve a post by itself after this considering how it was a highlight to my daily routine and how many interesting people I met there everyday. The routine repeats for one more physiotherapy session in the afternoon and then another round of antibiotic in the evening.

This monotonous routine would have killed me with boredom if not of the few surprises I get everyday. One is waiting for Zarina to come after she sends Afiq to school. She would hang out with me until it's time for her to pick up Afiq again from school. I enjoy those moments. We chat, we watched TV, we read and we just enjoy spending the time in the company of each other. She most of the time would turn up with some surprise comfort food, magazines or whatever she can do to cheer me up. The other thing that I look forward to are the visitors. I'm proud to say that up till today we still maintain the amazing record of - not a single day without a visitor!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every visitor who came and paid me a visit. It meant a lot to me and it does contribute tremendously to my recovery. I lost count of the gifts people brought me but I treasure deeply each and every one of them - (not in any particular order) the flowers, fruit baskets, chocolates, comfort food, teddy bears, 'pati ikan haruan', probiotics, super berry juice, books, magazines, 'air zam-zam' and all sorts of other gifts that I loved so much! 

Anyway, talking about visitors reminded me of an incident, an unpleasant one, during the first few days I was in the hospital this time round. I always had plenty of visitors even on weekdays but more so on weekends. On the first Saturday, the stream of visitors kept coming and coming from morning until in the evening. I of course loved it so much but unfortunately my next door neighbor doesn't. She (as I only found out later) kept complaining to the nurses about the noises made by my visitors. Okay, I have to admit, most, if not all of my visitors were on the jovial side (you guys know who you are!) and hence there were plenty of laughter around. Unfortunately my neighbor does not appreciate this so she kept complaining to the nurses to tell me to tell my visitors to shut it up.

For the record, I do apologize for the fact that she can hear my visitors' from her room. The wall is too thin and to make it worse, they have an interconnecting door in between the two rooms. But then again, I also have to defend my visitors on the fact that they were there during the designated visiting hours. I also noticed that all other rooms have visitors as well and some were probably even louder than us and some even had their door wide open! Whenever I don't have any visitors I could hear them too and sometimes can even gather what they were saying but it doesn't really bother me. When she kept complaining, I had to caution my visitors to lower down their voice but then again that lasted for only a few minutes before they had to laugh again - quite uncontrollably sometimes. I can't help it - I am not terminally ill. Other than the back pain and the weak legs I had, I was totally healthy and in sound happy mind.

It bothered me after a while so I asked the nurse if I could be moved to a room far away from her, and preferably at the end of a corridor. Luck was on my side as the next day, a room at the far end of the ward was vacated and I of course get the first right-of-refusal to move into it. In one of the conversations I had later with one of the nurses, I referred to what was happened and said how I was feeling sorry for putting the nurses in such a difficult situation. But the nurse's reply shocked me. As it turned out, my neighbour complained about everything! She complained to the doctors that the nurses do not know how to do their job, not friendly to her and not helping her. She even complained that some of them did not smile! I was made to understand that her condition was not that bad but every time the doctor wanted to discharge her, she always seemed to develop some new symptoms that requires her to stay there longer. Anyway, come to think of it; I did not know her personally so it would be unfair for me to judge her and furthermore to a certain extent, we were at fault too! The lesson from this is probably how we should tolerate one another - which is something I find quite lacking in the community these days, myself included.

It struck me that my sequel of dramas is probably finally over. If what happened above was already an event worth thinking and writing about - then the worst is definitely over! No more pain, no more needles, no more bad news from doctors. I believe it is all going to be a nice and gentle glide from this point onwards.

I have a neat arrangement with Dr. Jag now. I'm allowed to leave whenever I want! Yes, the only reason why I had to be in the hospital is for my antibiotics IV and my physio therapy sessions. Other than that, I'm free to go wherever and whenever I want. You won't believe how that simple arrangement made a big difference in bracing through weeks of otherwise what would have been like a long imprisonment. 

It is called "home leave", a term I was not very familiar with before. All I need to do was get my arm bandaged so that the IV line would not be dangling all over the place or expose me to external infection, and then sign a consent form and then off I go. I look forward to the time when Zarina will come to take me out. My first destination - to work! Please, do not roll your eyes or sigh disgustingly on this statement. And please don't make me feel bad about it. Don't get me wrong; I AM NOT a workaholic. I just happen to have a wonderful job and I love it so much. I'm a member of a great team working on this one and all I wanted to do was just to join in the fun with them. Don't get me wrong on this one too - the team is fully capable to handle absolutely everything in my absence. Again, I just don't want to miss the fun they were having. 

Everytime Zarina allowed me to visit my work I felt alive again. I can almost feel the blood pumping and the adrenalin gushing and a couple of hours with the guys can feed my craving and will fuel my brain for a few days after. Once it wears down I just have to be super nice to Zarina and beg her to send me to one of those visits again. Okay, it was not all work. I do spend more considerable amount of time and number of trips out with my kids to have lunch or dinner, to go to the mall, watch movies or do some shopping. Zarina even took me out to see my koi at the koi dealer's pond yesterday! Anyway, I just have to keep reminding myself to do it sparingly and only for a sensible length of time for every outing or otherwise I would have a difficult day in the physio session the next day due to my sore back. 

This is one example of the difficulty I was willing to go through just for a taste of good food. Imagine having to struggle even to get in with my crutches in one of the cramped nasi kandar restaurant in Jalan TAR. But it was all worth it!

One thing I noticed whenever we go out is, whenever people see me on a wheelchair they couldn't help but gave me a certain kind of look. Maybe it was just me being ultra-conscious of my condition or maybe it was true that our society still find it awkward and uncomfortable to deal with people with disabilities. I don't mean this in a bad way - it just appeared that they were just not so sure on how to behave and interact with a disabled person. Do they hold the elevator door for me? Do they walk pass and overtake me or do they follow my pace from behind? Do they make eye contact or do they just pretend that I'm not there? Do they greet me and smile at me or just try to make me feel at ease by accepting me as one of the normal person i.e. one of them? I came across this simple article on the internet that might help you on how you need to interact with someone in that condition.  

Link: How to Interact with a Person Who Uses a Wheelchair

The other highlight of my day is definitely my physiotherapy sessions. PCMC clearly has the best Physical & Rehabilitation Medicine Department I have come across so far. A well equipped rehab gym and large number of highly experienced therapists are not just it - it also has a very conducive environment for recovery for patients like me - the have plenty of smiling faces and laughter! 

This is Shaheerman, my physiotherapist or more fondly known as Man by all of them there. He is THE "Che Man" mentioned by Johan, the recent winner of 'Maharaja Lawak Mega 2012' - a fact he proudly and repeatedly mentioned on daily basis. Anyway, with Man and his colleagues' help I have improved tremendously. But I still secretly believe that physiotherapists in their nature - like to torture people! Here we are all these less-abled patients being put through series of daunting tasks, made to endure pain and suffering throughout all those exercises. But then again, it works! And in Man's own words - when I mentioned to him that I feel like I was improving - he said, "That's my business. If you don't get well, then what's the point of me doing this anyway..." So true.

So, here's my endorsement. If you  need any kind of physiotherapy or rehabilitation treatment, PCMC is the place! Mention my name and I'm sure they will have stories to tell about me but don't believe them!

By now, as you already know, the only reason why I am still here is just because of my internal infection. They conduct weekly blood tests on me. The two "markers" to measure the level of infection in me are the CRP (C-reactive protein) and ESR (Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate) which basically measure the internal inflammation. The target is to get two consecutive zeros of CRP and a reading of below 20 for ESR. I don't quite know how it works or how do they actually measure all those readings but all I know is that those are the KPI's that I have to achieve so that I could go home. I did rather innocently asked Dr. Jag on what I can do in order to get those results quickly. He pointed to the infusion machine as said, "Never miss those and you'll be fine..."

At this point, this blog posting is finally current. And I am exceptionally happy to announce that Dr. Jag as of two hours ago had confirmed that I can go home tomorrow! They are removing my long line and I will be home free by tomorrow morning. I deliberately ignored the fact that my blood test results actually wasn't really showing the results as per the agreed KPI. What happened was the CRP has gone back up to +6 and the ESR is still above 20 but Dr. Jag believes that this time, it could be the long line that was causing the infection. So, they are going to remove it and switch me back to oral antibiotics. I will be home free but I would still have to come back here on weekly basis for my blood tests and will still have to achieve the set KPI. I am not going to argue with the decision and I was not going to entertain any negative thoughts either. I just want to go home...

Eventhough my drama was about to reach the end, this will certainly not be the last posting. With all that happened in the last nine weeks, I still have a lot of experience, thoughts and reflections to share. Of course after a short break to enjoy being at home again...