the good, the bad, the dreaded

The Good


I've finally kick-started my revision thanks to the fact that I was stuck in my flat due to the crazy snowstorm. I literally skived all my hospital sessions for the entire week because the weather was either so bad I would be soaked from top to bottom within five minutes I walked out the door or the traffic was so congested I was stuck for well over than an hour on the road. By Wednesday, I simply gave up and decided to just stay at home to spare myself the hassle.
The good thing was that I had a long stretch of free time with nothing else to do apart from revising. I guess the cosmic must have decided to bring in the snowstorm to force me to study considering I have less than two weeks to study. I am your typical Malaysian student who study at the very last minute few days before the exam.

The Bad

The bad was the news I received on Wednesday. I got a text from my mother telling me to go online to skype while I was in the bus as the traffic crawled due to heavy snowfall (I was stuck for a good two hours, no joke!!!) and the moment I received the text I knew something was wrong because we already had our fortnightly (usually) skype session last Sunday, not to mention that we only skype during the weekend since I would be at hospital on weekdays.

When I was first told about my uncle’s problem a lil’over a month ago, I quickly jumped to the conclusion of lung cancer for he is a known excessive chain smoker. I concluded that the pain he had been feeling in his armpits and hands was suggestive of a Pancoast’s tumour and the nodules found in one of his bronchus from a bronchoscopy he had had was fitting. Later skype sessions with my sisters revealed that he was speaking in a slurred speech. I quickly referred to my book only to be confirmed that those with lung cancer would occasionally show some cerebellar syndromes (i.e slurred speech).

When I called my mother later, my suspicion (which I knew was right all along) was confirmed. My father told me my uncle had been hospitalised since Monday when he started to complain that he couldn’t feel anything at all from his waist down below and the doctors had confirmed the diagnosis of lung cancer, only it was far more progressive and advanced than what they first thought. My father also said that his voice was barely audible when he talked and my medically-tuned brain jumped to the conclusion of recurrent larryngeal nerve (which supplies the vocal cord) palsy.

It was so funny that barely two months ago I stood in front of my coursemates giving a presentation on lung cancer telling them that somking was the biggest risk factor and that the cancer would already be at an advanced stage at the time of diagnosis and that surgery would not be an option (it would be so progressive surgeons wouldn’t be able to cut the cancer out completely to leave any viable functional lung so they would usually go for chemo- or radiotherapy) and that prognosis was usually poor.

These past few days, I just dreaded every single time my phone started to ring. God damn you, cancer!!!

The Dreaded

The dreaded was the text message I got from my sister early Saturday morning. My uncle passed away Saturday afternoon Malaysian time and as much as I had expected the news, it didn’t make it any less easier especially it came a lot sooner than I’d expected. God bless you, Pak Lang. Rest in peace.

P.S.: the 'The Bad' part was written on Friday morning while the 'The Dreaded' was written Saturday afternoon UK time.