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.