June 2009

Operation took place on Sunday at about 1.30pm and ended at 6pm. This morning, Granny able to stand up with assistance already. According to the therapist, she will try to let her walk a few steps tomorrow.

We are arranging now for her to be transferred to Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital for rehabilitation. Hopefully in about 4-6 weeks, she can at least be independent on her own.

Thank you everyone for their concern.

This is the last part of the series. If you want to start reading from Part 1, please click here.

Operation took place on Sunday at about 1.30pm and ended at 6pm. This morning, Granny able to stand up with assistance already. According to the therapist, she will try to let her walk a few steps tomorrow.

We are arranging now for her to be transferred to Ang Mo Kio Community Hospital for rehabilitation. Hopefully in about 4-6 weeks, she can at least be independent on her own.

Thank you everyone for their concern.

This is the last part of the series. If you want to start reading from Part 1, please click here.

Waiting for Granny’s operation to finished…

I spend my whole Saturday in the hospital. Luckily i have my laptop and the mobile broadband to accompany me. Parking on weekends is cheap. Square 2 only charges $2.20 per entry on Saturdays.

The surgery which is supposed to happen Friday night did not happen due to other emergency cases that the doctors need to attend to. Oh, I shouldnt call them Doctors, Their badges says they are “Medical Officers”

The rescheduled operation today also did not happen. The medical officer told me it will happen on Sunday morning. I told them to try to make it happen tomorrow because it is mentally very stressing on the patient and the family members until the operation happened. Granny was practically on “Nil by Mouth’ the whole day. I guess we have no choice since this is a government hospital.

Looking at the way the Medical Officers and the Nurses worked, I think this is really a very shitty job especially for the nurses. ( well at least the MO earn big bucks ) . I think they can never work on this job just for the money. They need to have that caring heart for the sick and elderly because this job means there is no day/night, no weekdays/weekends.  The one attending my granny is a sweet, pretty Singaporean girl who just graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic. Probably tomorrow i will suggest to her to become a air stewardess instead. lol.

Crossing my fingers, hoping the operation will happen on Sunday morning.

Gonna missed the S Group BBQ and Transformer movies this weekend liao. sighz….

To continue reading the Final Episode, please click here.

This is part 5 of the series. If you want to read from the beginning, please click here.

This is a continuation of Granny’s treatment for her fractured leg in Tan Tock Seng Hospital. If you want to start reading from beginning, you can start from here.

I was expecting her to be better today mentally. When i reached the Ward, i asked the nurse how is she doing last night. The nurse shake her head…

“Your Granny, took her clothes off and want to jump off the bed. When we feed her, she spit the food back at us. We got no choice but to tie her hands up “

I saw her hands being tied up, feels like she is a convict in Changi Prison. Feels like she is a prisoner-of-war during the World War II also. So i requested the nurse to free her up since we are around. I ask Granny why she is so noisy at night and why she keeps jumping off her bed. She said,

“They want to poke the needles into my leg, the leg is mine, I decide if I want to let them do it “

Well at least the comforting thing is she can recognize us today for a couple of times. She keeps talking when we are there, talks about things that happen 20-30 years ago. Well maybe is a good thing, so she gets tired at night and will go and sleep soundly.

She done her Brain CT scan and today she is supposed to go for abdomen scan. If everything looks okay, I believe the doctors will have a family conference to decide if we should operate her.

The parking lots in the hospital is very limited due to the H1N1 situation. I ended up parking at Novena Medical Centre which has a linkbridge connected directly to the hospital. It costs $1.60 to park there for an hour. Tomorrow i think i will take MRT there….

Continue Reading part 4

Granny got shifted up to the another level where it will be more convenient for the specialists to attend to her. The nurse told me that she didnt sleep the previous night again. This time round she insisted on getting out of bed because she needs to go to the toilet. However due to her situation, she is not allowed to put more pressure on her fractured left leg.

She ended up controlling her toilet needs until her bladder bloated up. The nurses has no choice but to tube her up and tie her up. When we reached the hospital at about noon, she is sound asleep, probably too tired after one night of vigorous struggling and battle with the nurses.

Last night at about 11.30pm, the police from the hospital called me. I got a shocked because i thought something happened. The police said “Oh , this is just a routine followup on your grandmother case . How did she fall down?”

I replied “ you do routine checks at 11.30pm?”

Policeman “yeah, I just got your case, so I call you up. Sorry I didnt realise is already 11.30pm”

Due to the H1N1 pandemic, the visiting policies has tightened. Only 2 people are allowed to visit the patient during the visiting hours. I went with my aunt and my sis-in-law. I ended up at the starbucks below because I could not go up. I try to requeue to get myself up , but they are smart. There is a computer system that tracks how many people are visiting the patient at that time and they only give you 2 stickers. So if I want to go up to visit the patient, I need to get one of them to come down to pass me the sticker. And dont think of keeping them, because they keep changing colors…

To continue to part 3, click here

This is a continuation of my Granny’s road to recovery. The journal starts here.

For those who like to track my granny’s progress

1) Day 1 in Hospital

2) Day 2 in Hospital

3) Day 3 in Hospital

4) Day 4 in Hospital

5) Day 5 in Hospital

6) Final Episode

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Granny fell down last wednesday, for whatever reason, she went to the MRT station and fell down. According to her, she “got a letter” to do a ezlink refund and decided to make her way there on her own. She is able to walk on her own. She always goes and buy 4D herself.  However, two kids were playing and i think she was tripped and fell down.. She was brought back to the house by the passerbys. At that point in time she still can walk about. On Friday , I brought her to the family doctor , Family Doctor diagnosed it as just a sprained of the muscle and gave her pain killers. Over the weekend, she starts to feel more pained and cant even walked. Auntie has to take care of her toilet needs and other stuff. Seeing the situation isnt getting any better, i got her a wheelchair and ask Aunt to monitor her medication before we decide if we want to send her to the hospital.

On Monday, after the XRay shows that she indeed has a fracture, We called 995 and get the ambulance to bring her to the hospital. The nearest one is Tan Tock Seng. ( So much for the family doctor diagnosis. He sucks! ) . Due to the H1N1 condition in the country now, the checks at the hospital is very intense. I think i have at least 5 temperature checks before i get into the consultation room to see her.  The patient in front of me even has fever, flu and sore throat. OMG! She should be on 993 !

The wait for the consultation is took about 4 hours. To make things worst, Granny got dismentalised. Thats a new term i learnt, meaning mental deteriotation . Till now, we still do not know the root cause of it. Could be due to the lack of sleep ( She didnt sleep the night before and even manage to climb out of her bed and stand beside my aunt ), could be due to the medication , could be she knocked her head . Granny starts to say she saw all her sisters and relatives. But all of them were already dead. It makes my hair stand. She couldnt even recognise anyone of us.

When she finally gets into the ward, the nurse has a hard time to calm her down. She has the impression we are selling her away…. Took us some time before she calm down.

The doctor says that we have 2 options

(A) Do a surgery – She will be able to walk the following day and will take 2-3 weeks to recover through therapy. Only risk will be the implications but that is very low .

(B) No Surgery – Will be bed ridden for 4 –6  weeks and will have side effects implications. Mortality is 30%

Will continue to monitor her situation and keep all those who cares about her updated. Thanks for the concern.

Continue reading Part II