Pain for Company

I am still in the hospital because I developed a fever yesterday. The doctors are keeping me for another night. The kidney tumour has been giving me alot of pain. Because of the pain, I find each day difficult to pass. I just sit quietly and do some walking now and then. There is little time to feel depressed because pain is occupying all my time. When I talk, it brings the phlegm up, which leads to coughing. For me, its just too painful to cough right now. The doctors gave me some painkillers earlier but they were not very effective.The names of the drugs are in Chinese so I do not what those drugs are. However, they have just given me an injection and it seems to be working.  The pain has subsided.  Besides the pain medication, the doctors also gave me something for my cough. It has also helped control the cough.

The weather is cold outside. I wish to go back to my dear old home as soon as possible.

Smoothly It Went

The TAE procedure went smoothly. The procedure started at 9.30 am and I was out of the operating theatre at about  11 am. I was given instructions not to move my right leg for 12 hours and not to get up for 24 hours. Due to the period of immobility in bed, I am experiencing pain from the nerve around my butt area. I cannot walk well. The doctor recommended that I stay on for one more day in the hospital. Otherwise, I am recovering well.

Till Tomorrow

This morning, I went to the hospital for four allergy tests. I don't know what the tests are because the test names are in Chinese and I am not able to make a translation of them into English. These tests are important because it would determine if I am able to take the TAE and HIFU treatments.

So far, this is what has been planned for me. I will check-in to the hospital at 3pm today and I will be briefed on the TAE procedure and risks involved and also sign some forms. After that I will stay the night at the hospital. The procedure is scheduled for tomorrow, the time at this moment is not known yet. This is because the doctors are still waiting for confirmation from the operating theatre what time slot is available for me. I will stay in the hospital for a couple of days and the doctors will observe my recovery, especially if I have any severe side effects (known side effects are fever and pain).

So, I will be out for a day or two and hopefully by the 17 December, the doctors will  discharge me from the hospital. The doctor said a week is required to determine if I can proceed to the next stage which is the HIFU treatment.

So, I hope to provide you an update as soon as I get out of the hospital.

The Tumor Strikes Back

Since I arrived in China, I can only use one word to described my experience. Painful. I have underestimated how my body would react to the cold weather. I have been coughing non-stop. Somehow, the coughing triggers the same nerves that connects to my butt and groin area. As a result I have been experiencing excruciating pain that paralyses my body, almost freezing me when I am walking. I don't know why it deteriorated so badly. Next is the food. People here don't believe in being vegetarian. Not a single food shop sells vegetarian food. So I had to make do what is available. There are are quite a number of food shops but most of them sell noodles and everyone shop have more or less the same menu! I did not go to the bigger restaurants nor did I find food courts at some of the shopping complexes that I visited.  The pain on my leg and butt is so bad that most of the time I stayed in the hotel leaving it to my sister and my wife to pack food for me. Walking is just too painful.

Yesterday, I met the hospital representative called Cathy at the hotel lobby. She took us to the hospital which is about 10 minutes walk away but I can only do it in about 30 minutes. She did the administration procedure for me, introduced me to my doctor in charge, Dr Yang and the team head, Professor Zhu. After that I went for my blood test. They took about 10 little tubes of blood from me. Wonder what test they are going to do? They could not schedule me for the CT scan immediately after the blood test, so I had to go back to the hospital the next day at 8.30am the scan. So this morning, I had to fast again for the CT scan as they have to inject the contrast into me. The CT examination room was full of people. Somehow, I got to jump queue and did the scan after about 20 minutes waiting time. I was told to come back to the hospital at 4pm today to review the results of the CT scan and the doctor would give me a treatment plan. As for the kidney tumor, the tumor has grown slightly from 11.3cm to 11.9cm. But the bad news is that they discovered a new tumor the size of over 4cm on top of the right lung. This is by far the biggest tumor which means the rest of the old nodes are more or less the same size. Dr Yang told me I would be experiencing pain about my right chest area because of this.

Due to the discovery of this new tumor, their original plan of treatment has also changed. Besides costs implications which would grow from RMB60K to between RMB100K - RMB150K if treatment of the new tumor is to be included. Also instead of just using HIFU treatment for my kidney tumor, the doctors are recommending I do transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TAE) because of the size of my tumor. What this means is that prior to the HIFU procedure, the doctors will inject TAE into the arteries that supply blood to my kidney tumor to block the blood supply. This would enhance the success of the HIFU treatment. I would then be monitored on the progress of my recovery and the side effects are fever and pain. If within the week, there are no further reaction, then the treatment for HIFU would start sometime next week.

I told my doctors of my pain problem and he suggested I do an other MRI to pin point the actual problem. He said my MRI scans that I brought along is not clear. The doctor told me that this is just to find out what causes the pain on my groin and butt and he has ruled out cancer as the cause. He reminded me that the main focus is on the kidney tumor. He then prescribed me some drugs for my coughing and pain management. He said he would like to know if the pain killer he prescribed to me did help to stop the pain or not.

Dr Yang and Professor Zhu suggested that they can also use HIFU treatment for my new tumor. However, in addition to the HIFU treatment, they would also want to do a pretreament procedure by injection some targeted radiotherapy directly to the tumor. This is just a suggestion and they will discuss it with me further after the outcome of the HIFU therapy on my kidney tumor. Dr yang also said it is not possible to treat the other tumors as there are too numerous and small all over my lungs. So they prefer to treat the biggest tumor. Anyway, its too early for me to decide now. I will wait for the outcome of the HIFU treatment on kidney tumor first.

Greetings From Chongqing, China

I planned that I will spend about 1 1/2 days in Chengdu for a rest before proceeding to Chongqing.I was really tired on Sunday. After waking up, I went for a quick breakfast and then to the railway ticketing agent to purchase 3 tickets to Chongqing on Monday morning. After getting the train tickets, I went back to the hotel to continue my sleep while my sister and my wife took a trip to the Chengu Gian Panda Breeding and Research Center. Both my legs are getting from bad to worst. It seems to be more painful now. Just after a short walking, I would have to stop and take a rest. My sinus came back and I have been getting nose blocked everyday since I arrived. I have also been coughing and everytime I cough, the pain on my nerves around the groin and right butt area is also becoming very painful. This is especially so if I am not on the pain killer. So, most of the time, I spent at the hotel lying in bed.

The TV programs stinks. Getting vegetarian food is so difficult that I had no choice but to make special request like chowmien and told them just to add just vegetables (no eggs and meat), low salt and low oil. In Chengdu, every food must be laced with chilli powder, so I have to tell them low chilli powder as well. Yesterday evening, I ordered fried rice, again no eggs and meat, low salt, low sugar and low chilli powder. What I got was plain fried rice (with some oil and salt) but nothing else in it. So, have to teach the cook to add vegetables when frying the rice. The proprietress was very accomodating and apologising as she did not know how to do a vegetarian fried rice.

I have been sleeping better. Despite taking a nap on Sunday, I was able to sleep last night. This morning, I took breakfast at the hotel, with some simple food like bread and pumpkin porridge. At 9am, I check-out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Chengdu Railway Station East. The railway station is huge, as big as the KLIA main terminal building and security is much like airport where passenger has to show identity proof as well as scanning of all luggages. The morning jam was bad but since the railway station was away from the city, it took about 20 minutes to arrive. The train is very modern and departed Chengdu on time at 10.25am and arrived at Chongqing at just about 12.25pm with one stop in between. The first part of the journey, the train was travelling at speeds of 195kph while after the stop in between, the train slowed down to a speed of about 160kph.

Chongqing railway station is also very big but not as big as the Chengdu station. It is connected to a underground MRT and also taxi station. Although the queue was long, getting a taxi was easy. This time I was more prepared and showed the taxi driver the name and address of the hotel in Mandarin and he was able to take us there in about 20 minutes and the fare cost RMB25. Chongqing is much warmer than Chengdu but I found the air quality a bit of a problem. I could sometimes smell foul smell and the air seems polluted. The hotel where I stayed is not too bad, got everything including a microwave oven. The only problem was the noise. The hotel is surrounded by construction going on and you can hear the construction sounds such as knocking and sawing, etc. In front of the hotel is a MRT station and the city center is just about less than 5 minutes walk away. There streets seems to be full of people and you can see shopping complexes all round. The hospital is about 5 minutes walk away. That's the reason why I chose this hotel.

Anyway, I did take some photographs and will upload them later. I am still very tired and spend most of my time in my room resting.

Greetings From Chengdu, China!!

I arrived at Chengdu, China at about 1.15pm local time. The plane arrived early, 25 minutes ahead of schedule. After reading in the forums, I decided to take the official taxi to my hotel. The taxi queue was very long but with so many taxis waiting, I managed to get a taxi very quickly. I told the taxi driver the name of the hotel and he quickly said he knows where it was. I spoke to him using the pinyin because I did not have the Chinese characters of the hotel name. The traffic leading out of the airport was good but as soon as the taxi entered the city center, we were caught in a traffic jam that seemed endless. Every turn that the taxi made, we became part of the jam. By the time I arrived at the hotel, it was already about 3.00pm. After dropping us, we proceeded to the hotel reception only to discover that the hotel that the taxi driver had taken us was not the correct one. Apparently, the hotel that I was going to had the same English pinyin name but differ in Chinese characters .I was feeling hungry and it was way pass lunch time and I am now in a wrong hotel. The hotel staffs were very helpful to ensure this time I would go to the right hotel. The funny thing about my hotel booking is that they have the booking information in both English and Chinese with the exception of the name and address of the hotel. Even the phone number on my hotel confirmation slip was wrong! Luckily, I had a map to the hotel printed and the map contains some roads names in English and some in Chinese. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a taxi came and this time I made sure that the driver knew which hotel I was talking about. After looking at the map, he said no problem. Again, the trip took another hour or so with 40 minutes lost in the traffic jam while trying to get out of the city center.

Finally, at about 3.30pm I arrived at the right hotel and was glad. The taxi driver told me that the jam at the city center is 7 days a week. For the last few days, it has been cloudy in Chengdu and today it is rather sunny. People took advantage of the sunny weather and came out shopping for Christmas and New Year. As such the streets in city center were crowded. The temperature is good at 9°C, not too bad for me. The taxi driver told me that there will be no shopping crowds during the days leading to Chinese New Year. Why? Everyone is at home gambling mahjong!

After checking into the room, I was quite pleased with the hotel, quiet and most importantly the room is  clean though a little small. This hotel is located about 1km from the city center but that made a vast difference. Traffic was sparse and hence not noisy. I then went out for lunch after asking for a recommendation from the hotel reception staff. I was surprised at the place where I went. I still don't know the English or Chinese name of that place but it resembles an ancient movie studio like what you see in the costume movies/TV dramas.Full of ancient looking buildings. I will try to upload some pictures for you to see. I will tell you more of what I discovered while exploring the nearby areas.

I am a little tired and have called it a day, now resting on my bed.

Chongqing, Here I Come!!

I have been busy, still doing last minute stuff. Got all the errands done in the morning and during lunch time, a friend called and wanted to drop by. We had a quick chat. He said I have not been very active on my blog lately and I said "yes, while in India I was on the move. After I came back, I was recovering from fatigue and therefore did not post that much." Earlier another friend called and wanted to come over in the afternoon but I told her that I would most likely not be at home because I still got some things to do. I have been cramming too many things in the last minute.

Last night I met my group of friends who went India with me and we had supper together. Everyone seems to be happy about the outcome of the India trip. There was also talk of planning a few days driving trip from Kuala Lumpur to Krabi, Thailand. That would be nice.

Well tomorrow, I will be going to Chongqing, China for my HIFU treatment. It has been busy, busy during the last two weeks. I am looking forward to the treatment. Just checked, the temperature at Chongqing is sunny/cloudy, between 6°C and 10°C. I am just wondering if I will have any problems adjusting to that kind of temperature. Anyway, I have adequate clothing and hope things would work out fine for me.

I will try to update my blog and and when possible may  include some photos of some of the areas that I visited in Chongqing.