Dad's Cancer Journals - 3

The D-Day arrived. Mom and I were preparing ourselves for the long day ahead. We went to the hospital all positive even though I was shit scared and the weather outside didn't help either, it was a wet day pouring heavily intermittently. The other thing was the 2 doctors who were supposed to come from India to overlook the surgery, were delayed by 7 hours which meant that they would only arrive after the surgery was completed, not of much use to dad. But, in spite of all these shortcomings, dad was very positive and that was contagious. The nurses started preparing him by 10 and he was made to lie on a stretcher to be taken to the Operation Theatre. Mom, Uncle and I wished him luck and his answer was - "I will be fine, you guys don't worry". I was shocked!

We waited outside the OT for almost 7 hours for some news about the surgery. Mom, Uncle, Aunty and I took turns while the other took a short break to stretch. At about 3 we found that the flight taken by the Indian Doctors - Dr. Nandakumar (Dad's family doctor) and Dr. Neelamegam (Liver Specialist at Chennai) was arriving in a short while. That was a change from the monotonous wait. Although that didn't matter much since we expected the surgery to be
nearly done. We were told by Dr. K. C. Tan's assistant that the colon surgery took 2 hours and the liver another 2. By 5 pm when the Indian doctors just arrived, we heard back from the OT and they said that Dr. Tan had completed and the other doctors were stitching dad up. We met Dr. Tan and he explained to us that even though the PET/CT scan had only shown 3 active nodules of tumor, when they opened there were in fact 4. They were able to remove 3 of these
using Wedged Resection of 3 segments and did an RFA (Radio Frequency Ablation) to burn the other small tumor. He suspected that these tumors may have been necrose (meaning dead cells), but had to confirm that with a few more tests. I guess the future treatment would depend on this and the presence of any micro particle of cancer (which I hope does not exist). The wait unfortunately is still not over.

Dr. Tanvir showed us the specimen of the tumor in the colon and the 3 segments of the liver resected. It was interesting to see the villains which caused so much pain to dad. They were pretty big in size and ugly to look at. I wanted to take some snaps, but he said that they would give us snaps later. All this while dad was being dressed and prepared for the ICU. Gleneagles Hospital has a separate level for Liver patients and understandably a unique Liver ICU. It looked like a state-of-the-art room with all sorts of machines and gadgets. Soon dad would be a part of it.

We were advised that only 2 people could visit him at a time and also his immunity level would be extremely low after the surgery, hence it was better that not many people flock around him, anyway he would be sedated. So, the Indian doctors, Uncle and Aunty decided to leave for the day. Mom and I stayed back and waited till the nurses had done all the necessary procedures. When we finally went in, we saw dad in terrible pain. Poor thing was shouting "its paining, its paining". The nurse increased his Morphine dosage so that it relieves him a little bit. When we
spoke to him, he half opened his eyes and started asking how the surgery went and all the technicalities as though he was fully conscious! That amazed me again. Due to unbearable pain, he started asking how long the pain would be, we were at a loss and had to say not too long (which I really wish is true). Once dad started drifting to sleep we left the ICU. Had I stayed there any longer I am sure I would have cried :-(

We decided to go to the Perumal Temple at Serangoon to take our minds off the whole thing. Today being Varalakshmi Nombu, there was a big Puja happening there. It was good to see a ritual being performed so piously outside India.

I just hope that Dad's pain reduces tomorrow so he can be moved to a normal ward, but the bigger hope would be that he is totally free of the beast!

Dad's Cancer Journals - 2

This morning we were supposed to meet Dr. Tay Khoon (what an irony, a doctor's name meaning "blood") who is a Gastro-intestinal Surgeon. He would be operating on dad's colon tomorrow. He seemed like a pretty friendly guy and explained the whole procedure to us. That was the first of many times of listening to the description of the surgery on the same day. I was nodding my head and asking questions knowing very well that in spite of understanding most of it, we would still be unprepared after the surgery for many things. He warned us that there would be a lot of tubes sticking out of dad's body after the surgery, I am sure I would break seeing him like that :-( One of the things he said sent shivers through me - He said that there is a possibility that even after opening up the patient doctors sometimes feel that the tumor is positioned badly or if they cannot surgically remove all the lesions, they might close him without doing anything. What would be the point of going through all this pain then? But then I realised that it is a Doctor's duty to keep his patient and their family well informed. And also, if I were to count the number of scares I got over the past month and a half, I would probably count the number of stars quicker!

After this we went to the Muruga Temple at Tank Road, River Valley. It was a pretty big and clean temple. From here we went to Serangoon just in time for the Main Puja at Mariamma Temple. Right opposite to it was the Hotel Saravana Bhavan, we could hardly resist the temptation of lunch there. After a quick lunch it was time to meet Dr. K.C. Tan (one of the best Liver Surgeons in whose hands seems to be dad's life for now). He was busy and hence we had to complete the formalities of getting dad admitted to the hospital. Once we were allotted the room, Dr. Tan and his assistants - 2 Indian Surgical Oncologists Dr. hitesh and Dr. Tanvir, came as part of their rounds and did the second round of explanation. I was surprised how down-to-earth Dr. Tan was, he even joked about Indians being in the IT field all over the world.

Next to visit us was Dr. Ranjut Singh - the Anesthetist. I learnt today that there was a profession called "Pain Coordinator" who takes care of patients' pain post surgery. Makes sense doesn't it? She was explaining how one should not tolerate any kind of pain unless it is mild, because while we withstand pain, we are depriving our body of many important things by making the body concentrating on the pain. According to her a sedated sleep was much better than staying awake and being in pain. After that walked in Dr. Desmond Wai, dad's Gastroentologist, to explain things for the 4th time.

After all the doctor visits, we spent some good time with dad watching a Singapore Tamil Channel on the TV and reminiscing old jokes, while dad had his dinner - the last solid food for a few days. Since the visiting hours ranged from 9 am to 9 pm, we had to leave from dad's room by 9. We let him take good rest for the big day awaiting him.