100th Post: Happy Birthday Daddy

Today marked my 100th post entry and it coincided with daddy's birthday. We started daddy's birthday dragging ourselves out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4am to transport my parents, brother and his family to LCCT, Sepang to catch a flight back to Sandakan.

We left our place at 4.30am and reached LCCT at 5.15am. I proceeded to Air Asia wheelchair counter as soon as I got there to get mom a wheelchair and paid a fee of RM12 for the service. The RM12 paid was (supposedly) for the Meet and Assist service where there would be an attendant assisting mom right from the point of check-in counter to boarding the plane and finally alighting from the plane. I read from some blogs about the horrifying encounters of passengers using this service. I will blog more about this in my next post.

After waving them off at the departure hall, as Sepang beach was just 20km away, we decided to drive there. We took a stroll along the beachfront while enjoying the view of sun rising over the horizon and it was truly calming and breathtaking.

We stopped by Sg. Pelek for breakfast before taking a slow drive back to take dad and mom in-law to Holiday Villa in Subang Jaya for a buffet hi-tea to celebrate daddy's birthday. The food there was nothing to shout about and I will blog about it later.

After lunch, we went to Carrefour to get some vegetables and ingredients for the coming winter solstice dinner (Dongzhi Festival). The perishables at Carrefour were not as fresh so we proceeded to Tesco instead. By the time we got back to our condo after sending parents in-law back, it was already 7pm. After shower, Ian and daddy knocked out on the bed and only came alive the next morning. LOL... The initial plan of eating out after a quick nap went unmaterialised. Sorry, daddy.. we promise to make up for it this coming 25th, okay.

JC's Year End Party Day

The Duckie costume

Before leaving the house

The duckie with his pretty lady bug, Ann

With Jonathan, the bee

With Samuel, the "rotten" apple

With class teacher, Teacher Siew Num

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I had promised to get Ian a Garden Theme costume suit for JC's Year End Party Day. I come to know about Costume World from this mommy. We went there a day before the party after picking up Ian from the kindie. Ian actually wanted a grasshopper suit but because of the limited collection available for children costumes (they cater more to adult costumes such as The Pirates of The Carribeans, Star Wars etc.) we ended up getting a duck costume and Ian was all excited about wearing the costume to his kindie the next day.

The next morning, I accompanied him to the hall where the party was held and the party spirit was already in full swing with parents snapping away photos of their kids dressing up as bees, flower, apples, carrots, lady bugs, etc. I took some photos of Ian with his class teacher and classmates.

Driving a Sports Car

I find this photo interesting so I posted it up. While on our way down from the escalator after shopping at Tesco the other day, we passed by KFC and saw a display board resembling a sports car at the entrance and Ian requested that a photo be taken with the sports car and of course I did some editing work, and da..da..da.. the end result.. LOL.

Hypokalemia (Low Potassium) & Chronic Diarrhea

A&E of UMMC

Here I am again at the hospital taking care of mom. This is the second admission since last week's when mom was discharged after being hospitalized for 4 nights due to persistent diarrhea and total loss of body strength. It really scared the hell out of me. She looked as if she was paralysed and could not even sit up without assistance. It took us all energy and strength to transport her to the car and drove her to A&E of UMMC. She had 3 falls at home and her potassium level dropped to 2.1 when tested at the A&E. She was allowed home when her potassium level went up to 4.6 after few rounds of sodium and potassium drips although her diarrhea still persisted. The surgical doctor asked mom if she wanted to go home and of course she said yes! How wrong could that be.. because she was again readmitted 4 days later due to the same problems.. Loss of potassium and fluids from severe diarrhea.

Mom has been having diarrhea after 5th cycle of Folfox regimen and her renal function result wasn't satisfactory ever since due to low reading in potassium and high creatinine level. On her 6th cycle and onwards, the oncologist had dropped oxaliplatin for good and only proceeded with 5FU as they suspected it could be due to oxaliplatin that had caused her poor renal function. Mom's response to the chemo drugs had been excellent until post 5th cycle when she started to develop chronic diarrhea and it persisted till now. The oncologist prescribed Lomotil and later Imodium but it did not seem to help much.

This time she is readmitted to the surgical unit, they did all kinds of blood tests, urine tests, occult stool test to find out the cause of the chronic diarrhea and that mom would not get discharged unless the cause is identified. Mom developed UTI (Urinary Tract Infection) while in the ward and the surgical doctor put mom on antibiotic (Rocephin) drips. She urinated very often and could not hold her urine and most of the time she would wet the bed eventhough she was on diapers. I searched the internet and realised that when one has UTI, it is common not to be able to hold one's urine and that flow of urine would increase.

Mom was then wheeled down to the oncology unit to see Dr Ho, the oncologist in-charge of mom. I was told that mom would stop receiving chemotherapy for good after 8 cycles (5 cycles of FOLFOX, 2 5FUs and 1 De Gramont). He said as the initial plan was 8 to 12 chemo cycles, it would be good if the drugs are well tolerated and the 12 cycles be completed but it would not justified if the drugs had started to affect her quality of life. I told him that Imodium did not give the desired result and he wrote a prescription for octreotide injection (to slow down the bowel movement, well, supposedly) to be administered.

Today is the 6th day of admission and mom's diarrhea still did not see much improvement, she is still having an average of 6 times of diarrhea daily. The surgical team just came for their afternoon round and I could hear them discussing the possibility of tumour growth that caused the persistent diarrhea seeing the administration of Ostreotide by the oncologist. I did a search on the internet, apart from suppressing tumour growth, ostreotide also uses for side effects of 5FU. Hopefully it was the side effects that has caused the diarrhea and not the other way round. No, mom needs no more and could no longer tolerate anymore chemo cycles. God Bless Her.

Apart from getting persistent diarrhea, mom can eat and sleep really well. She wiped off the supper consists of kuey teow soup and dessert of sweet potatoes soup I bought for her as supper last night. She can walk with a walking stick now but still weak in body strength and stamina. Her feet swelled due to water retention from the drips and she is wearing TED stocking to prevent bood clot. She exercises her lung using the spirometer we bought during her post operation six months ago. They administered heparin jab on her this morning and she gets octreotide injection, supposedly to slow down the bowel movement once daily. The surgical team has started giving mom 4mg tds of Imodium and lomotil once daily today. I asked the doctor if it was alright to have octreotide, Imodium and lomotil at the same time and he explained due to the different mode of actions of each drug, so it would be fine.

To be continued........

JC's Graduation & Awards Night

Drama play in action. The one holding newspaper is Ian

The moment of Award Presentation

The Award

Last but not least, cheers.

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Ian's kindie had their Graduation and Awards Night for the 6 year olds' on a Sunday evening. He was chosen to play the role as a rich man and father of two sons, one obedient and the other rebellious, in a drama named “When there's Love”. I personally felt that my son's acting skill was just so-so and obviously not a born actor. Haha.... this bad mommy. On the other hand, I was amazed with the performance of his classmate who played the role of the rebellious son. He was so gifted in acting that he could carry his role so well and natural even in front of hundreds of audience! Guess he was sent to some drama classes or whatsoever.

I already knew beforehand that Ian was going to get an award on that night as he had told me earlier that he was made to stand in the front row on stage and those who sttood in that position would get some sort of awards. He also told me he would get an award for Best Reader in Bahasa Malaysia.

When Teacher Siew Num, his class teacher announced his name as the Best Reader in Bahasa Malaysia and his graduation photo being screened out, he walked out and received his plaque from his teacher. I wanted to take photos of him but all the pictures taken from my auto digital camera came out blurred. Luckily, we had the option to purchase the photos and VCD which for RM20. They were supposed to call me for the pick-up anytime now and I would post the photos once I get it.

Ian was very weak at this subject when he was five and on few occasions he got zeros in his Ejaan. Apart from guiding him on the basics of “sukukata” at home, credit must also be given to his ex-class teacher, Teacher Sukie for her patience and dedications towards teaching her students. She only served as Ian's class teacher for the 1st half of this year and their B.M. Teacher for the rest of the year. Kudos to her.