There Is Hope

I would like to thank my friends for coming to visit me during the last week or so. In particular, thanks to Jasmine for bringing the lovely organic porridge. One of the best I tasted in a long time and also to Yeong and Khadijah for bring me some Koren made organic nutritional cereals drink to supplement my liquid diet.

My doctor has started me on liquid morphine as the new painkiller. Liquid morphine taste like cough syrup and is very effective for immediate pain relief. Theoretically, each dose of 2.5ml which supplies up to 5mg of morphine is set to last 4 hours but in my case, it can only last 2 hours. The plan was to take 10ml (20mg of morphine) during the daytime and 5ml (10mg of morphine) during the night and in total, 15ml should be sufficient for my whole day needs. However, I needed to almost double the dosage to get the relief. In particular at night, I am awaken by the pain and then have to take another dose. This is quite disruptive. More that that, I think I may actually end up taking up to 30ml (or 60mg of morphine) to manage my pain. This amount of morphine intake is more that what my body can bear and I believe the side effects will be as bad if not worst than what I am experiencing. So, just after trying for half a day on liquid morphine, I have to stop and revert back to morphine sulfate instead. At least at 40mg, I can get reasonable pain management throughout the day and occasionally supplement it with tramadol to ease breakthrough pain. At this dosage, I can tolerate the side effects and have a decent meal with minimal vomiting.

Earlier, I thought I had stomach bloating but it's more than that. It's abdominal distension with the complication of tumors. Or more correctly called Ascites, which is a gastroenterological term for an accumulation of fluid in the peritoneal cavity. So, I am planning to be hospitalised this coming Monday at the KL General Hospital to undergo direct removal of the fluid by needle or paracentesis (which may also be therapeutic). My brother has been pestering me to undergo this procedure when the symptoms started appearing but I wanted to try other less invasive methods of treatment first. Strangely enough, none of the urologist and gastroenterologist that I consulted proposed this procedure.