Quick drive to Suria

Currently waiting for my sandwich at Suria KLCC. Enjoying some mango smoothies while at it. I wanted to browse for some photo magazine at Kinokuniya but none caught my eyes this time. Bought a couple of mags, then it was time to head home.

Will have to do a few slides for the revision course tomorrow. I looked at the list last week and found out that there would be around 45 candidates sitting for the coming exam. Looked like I have to cancel the mock exam and switch it to clinical sessions instead. It would be a nightmare organising sessions for this lot due to the sheer number. Frankly I don't think I can cope at all.

Have to put my thinking cap on for tomorrow and hoping for the best.

Lunch at Yo! Sushi

What should I order?We went out to Pavilion earlier today since I thought we could all do with some retail therapy after what has been going on in the last week. I firstly went to visit Dad and did a quick visit to my transplant ward before having a nice 'daun pisang' lunch with Anita. It was not often that the two of us were left alone. Irfan called while we were eating and told us he wanted to have some fried rice at Yo! Sushi. Why not eh?

I can explain the miso and the MSG, but this drink? I wonder why the boys like it.True to form both Idlan and Irfan finished their portion of fried rice. Idlan wanted me to feed him using chopsticks. That took twice the time it should but he wanted to try. Looking at Idlan, Irfan also wanted likewise. The important thing was their appetite was good. We had a lot to be thankful for.

Both of them finished up an order each .... well done!By the fountain laterThen come the time for shopping. Puan Anita was looking for some dress as there were a couple of reunion events coming up soon. Irfan wanted a new light saber. He has already got the red (Darth Maul), blue (Obiwan Kenobe) and orange (some random Jedi character). Now he wanted Yoda's green. Puan Anita duly obliged. Spoilt!

Hopefully Dad will be home in the next couple of days. That will bring things back to normalcy somewhat. We have moved most of out stuffs back to Dad's place. I have yet however to move my iMac. I'll probably do it next weekend. In the meantime, I had to be content with my MacBook Pro.

Talk in Ampang

Yesterday afternoon, I was invited by my colleague from Hospital Ampang to participate in a public forum on Multiple Myeloma. Apart from myself, they invites a Nurse from Dana-Faber Cancer Center in Boston to address the questions from the partiipant about living and coping with the disease.

The session started out with a short talk on myeloma by yours truly all in Malay. We then took question from the public ad that went on for a good half hour. At the end we discussed about the need for a patient support group that were pretty common abroad. It looked that there were some interested party in there. Hopefully something will come out of it similar to the MaxFamily for CML.

We highlighted that part of the reason why cancer parietal support group were not very strongly supported here was the fact there there was stigma attached to the diagnosis of cancer in out society. Patient once labelled as having cancer often felt shame and wondered if it was punishment from God. Worst so, this view was reinforced by the people around them. These people ended up retreating into a shell and suffered by themselves.

I was pretty certain that part of challenge would be to chance the patients perception of their disease, overcome the stigma, empower them and make them confident. Only after the inner battle were address, they can start changing te public perception of their predicament. The problem also held true for other non-cancer conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. Even diabetes support groups locally struggled atthe beginning. I guess we Malaysian still have perception that having any disease was a direct consequence of punishment from God, be it cancer, lupus, diabetes. Even my Mum-in-law once said that when she was bringing up her children re my wife, they never had fever until they attended school. Since out children were both asthmatics, bearing in mind that Irfan was just discharged from hospital, the infections that they regularly picked up were due to us not looking after them properly, and even due to us 'tak buat baik' to other people. I realised that those statements should be taken with a pinch of salt, the point I was making was generally we Malaysian were wary to people having illness and all illness must always have a reason behind them.

Frustrating I know but those were one of main hurdles we had to jump in order to make any support group successful. Over the years in Malaysia, I was involved at helping up the beginning of support group for Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML), lymphoma and now myeloma. So far, only the CML group really took off. It helps when most of the members were youg and relatively fit and vocal. I would be happy if the myeloma was half as successful as their CML counterparts.

Doing the Booking

Now that things had settled down, we were able to sort out a few domestic things. Top of the agenda was finalising Idlan's birthday party booking. Even though it was a couple of months away we thought it might better to sort it out early. So off we went to te Bird Park.

I was doing the morning rounds earlier and will have to be at Ampang after lunch for a talk, so Anita had to go with the driver. They were caught in a jam while I got there almost half an hour earlier. I guess coming from PJ has it advantages. So I was now starig at the entrance waitig for them. I hope it won't be long as I was starving!

In the rain

I was stuck in the car in front of the house when I wrote this. I was back into the swing of things with the Dad doing very well. In fact they are starting his warfarin again today at half dose. Hopefully no more mishaps. I wa also planning to buy a monitoring device where I jut need a pin prick to check how thin his blood was to guide the warfarin dosing.

The Unit had a full afternoon program today with the afternoon CME sponsored by Pfizer. I also did a talk on febrile neutropenia for the new set of MOs. That was followed by a session with medical students. Puan Anita visited Dad earlier but I was unable to accompany her due to my busy schedule.

I think Dad should be back home by early next week. We were certainly already making plans for him at home, to make surethat he will not need to climb up and down the stairs. It also looked like we will be movig back to Taman Setia while he recovers.