A helping hand from the person you least expect always brightens the day. Yesterday, it came from a lady at the cashier in SJMC. My usual visits at Tun Hussein Oon cost not more than RM120. Mindful of my pocket and the extra charge a visit to SJMC would entail, I brought a little more than usual.

But the bill came to three hundred dollars while I had two. The hospital ATM machine rejected my card, so sheepishly, I hoped they would let me settle with what I have now, and pay the rest tomorrow.

But a lady was standing in my place when I returned. This lady was meticulous. She went through every bit of her bill with a fine tooth-comb, using her handphone to calculate and her credit card to pay. I thought of how she was holding the line behind..

In between my negotiating with the cashier, this lady stole glances at my direction, as if wondering why I looked the way I did. Then, before she departed, the lady pointed at me and then spoke to the cashier again.

Later, the cashier explained. That lady paid for my balance.

Posted in Health | 3 Comments

The best person to speak with when using the Auditory Brainstem Implant is Ms. Marion Arumugam, the Psychology lecturer in Segi College. Being able to understand her speech in simple sentences thrills me so. I heard Ms. Marion is a Child Psychologist when I asked why she teach only certain subjects. So, I suppose working with children trained her to produce words articulately, so that children can learn the right phonetics,

The ;last person I met who spoke like that was an audiologist at House Clinic four years ago who tested my residual hearing before an appointment with Dr. Friedman. She spoke very clearly and deliberately although I could still hear. But Ms. Marion isn’t an audiologist, yet she knows to speak in a way that people who are deaf ( and becomes hard-of-hearing when the ABI is turned on) can understand. I am impressed!

Posted in Health | 3 Comments

The girl in this photo is Jorja Steele from New Zealand who lost her hearing before she turned one years old. She could not benefit from cochlear implants because meningitis damaged her inner ear. This left her with only one choice which was the auditory brainstem implant - the one I got in 2006. Six months after I had mine implanted, Jorja and her parents travelled to Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. The surgery, that made her the first child recipient in Australia, involved neurosurgeons from three hospitals. Click here to read the full story.

Jorja looked so cute, that I could not help stealing her photo.

In case you wonder, I had my surgery in L.A. because there was a tumor to be removed before the ABI could be implanted in me. Moreover, another tumor was unexpectedly discovered and de-bulked while surgeons accessed my brain to place the ABI electrodes in my brainstem. So if you are an NF patient like me who wants to get an ABI done in Australia, make sure the surgeon is also experienced in removing Acoustic Neuromas while he avoids damaging the facial nerve. At House Clinic, this is accomplished by two surgeons working together - a neurotologist and a neurosurgeon.

Posted in Health | No Comments

Before leaving the door, I thought it would be good bringing along a book should class finish early. So I went to my room and grabbed a big and blue comb-bound, laid on the floor last night. ‘Getting In Touch With Braille: A Fresh Approach’ by Margaret M. Smith.

Class finished early, so I spent the afternoon in the library. No one is to bring bags or books into the area where bookshelves are. Although that side of the library is smaller, I find it more comfortable to read in, so unlike other days, I brought in my Braille book thinking if they stop me, I would protest by the fact that they did not have books for the blind and mine was obviously not belonging to the library.

When our lecturer had left the classroom, one boy hung around to chat. He saw me before while I was studying at Life College. As I packed up, he flipped through my big blue comb-bound gently. I was afraid of the need to explain, but in no time, he knew why the pages were pure white and blank. But I pretended not to notice as he tried to feel them. Like someone peeping into a deserted art gallery: although I want to share my paintings, I hate to break the serenity of that moment, so instead, allow him to enter on his own accord.
I’ve memorized the 26 alphabets in braille and succeeded in stringing sentences on paper with the slate and stylus. Now I am practicing to read uncontracted braille at least one page each day.

Reading and writing in braille is a solitary activity, something I can find joy with on my own. In the contrary, sign language takes practice between two people. One needs to accommodate the learning pace of the other. Since I live and study among people who can hear, my attempts to remember signs have been futile. Fortunately, Pei Wen who knows finger spelling, uses it to communicate with me around college still.

I was born and raised with the ability to hear. In school, I sang in the choir and later signed up for music in college. Total deafness did not come to me until 19 years of age. I was unprepared to live in silence, so when I turned deaf and tried to learn sign language, I hoped that my friends would learn with me. I wanted to ‘talk’ with them animatedly like they would do with others. But the response was depressing. My friends either said they were busy with too much to do, or they pushed the responsibility of bridging communication back to me, by telling me to read lips. Unknown to them, lip reading is not a skill to be learned like we take classes to learn English. Lip reading comes from habit when two persons spend so much time together, they get used to each other’s expressions that become predictable over time.

This singled out friends who would go the extra mile. In college, Reuben and Pei Wen took the initiative to learn sign language. It hasn’t been very progressive, owing to our different schedules. When I decided to learn Braille, Cordy agreed without hesitation when I suggested her to buy a set of everything I bought even though the bill came to quite a sum. We put learning braille aside and when I pick it up again now, Cordy has no qualms of doing the same. She said that she’s been trying to read braille in her condominium elevators.

Whenever I sat down to read in braille, I was overcame with a certain kind of grief. Without feeling despair, I wondered how strange that life has given me such peculiar experiences. John Ling once said that friends can only travel with me so far, until a point when I have journey on my own. There are places that others cannot go with me.

No wonder someone else also said to me that life is a lonesome journey.

This reminds me of something. A friend once remarked that since I couldn’t hear, there was no need to chat with me in person while he did so with others. We can chat online.

That was more than one year ago, before I discovered tumors affecting my eyesight. Even then, his opinion made little sense. What if something happens and we no longer have the internet? What if I can’t even see to use it? Would that mean we cease communication?

Fortunately, Cordy has never thought so.

Posted in Matters of the Heart | 5 Comments

One day, a friend showed me articles concerning hazardous contents of commercial pet food. “I know you don’t love animals, but do read it.”

I was shocked beyond words when she said that(It was later discovered that my friend spoke without much thought and did not mean what she said)

My opinion that mom should keep pets out of the house is for hygiene reasons. That doesn’t mean I dislike them.

Since the day I could remember, we have cats around the house to my dad’s dismay. Mom would use every last cent she has buying fishes (Ikan Kembong) from the wet market in multiple kilograms each time. Twice a day, mom would steam some fishes and mix them thoroughly in white rice with her fingers before separating them into a few bowls for the cats that gather at the back of our house twice a day.

Since the day I could remember, mom brought back kittens she found abandoned in drains and by the roadside, nursing them back to health by feeding them milk with the use of a syringe or teaspoon. She would carry the kitten in one palm, forcing it’s mouth open with the tip of her thumb and index finger, just wide enough so the spoon or syringe could enter, and then releasing her grip once the milk is gently emptied.

The child I was grew easily attached to these pets that I cuddled and played with. But few of these kittens could survive without breast milk. Some made it through adolescence only to die later. The child I was took these kittens as my own, eventually forced to watch them lie motionless one day until their little lives expired.

One day in 1993, mom visited grandma in PJ OldTown when she found a puppy yelping in the drain. Mom went in and carried the puppy up. But it was drenched, so mom brought it indoors, bathed and dried it. But when mom was leaving with her car, the pup barked and trailled her. Mom got off her car and took the pup back home for me as a house pet. That dog was Snoopy as you all know. Snoopy grew up with me from 1993 till 2008. She was put to sleep last January.

None of the cats and dogs my mother had, including those under her care before she married my father, were Pedigrees or branded. They were all homeless, abandoned animals. Some were blind, without a leg, injured, or sickly. They were kicked and scorned at until my mom took them in.

We were at the market yesterday when mom again heard a kitten mewed in the drain. With me in tow, she went into the drain, brought that kitten out, and decided to bring it home.

It has a limp leg. Mom said it must have been stepped on.

This white dog was born with two others. My mother knew at once, when it was still a puppy the size of my palm, that it would grow up with skin problem. Although many expressed their desire to adopt, my mother insisted not to let go believing that others would abandon this dog the moment it’s skin problem becomes apparent.

I have seen these animals at the worst points that life is permitted to continue. I have seen them brought back to life, but as soon as there was hope, they met their eminent ends. I have seen my mother attempt, time and again, to save each of them. My mother is not very educated and care little about worldly affairs. She does not rally animal rights’ campaigns or know to speak up for injustice done to these animals no one would want. But what she knows is to follow her heart. There is no plan as to when or where she would save another life. She just does it whenever she comes upon a life that should be saved.

Some of my friends profess to be animal lovers yet they admire and rear only good, adorable breeds. Then they would tell me that commercial pet food is detrimental to animal health and they only feed their pets with specially prepared meals good enough to consume themselves.

Very fanciful. But when you’re out here anxiously hoping each cat you rescued would continue to breathe and not succumb prematurely like the rest, talking about good food would be asking too much.

Despite my capacity to grow attached with animals, I have not seriously joined pet forums, attend dog shows, or dream of championing animal welfare for real. I have all that here in my home, ever since I could remember. I have witnessed the harshest of animal reality when others would not admit.

Posted in Matters of the Heart | 6 Comments

I am at present reading the autobiography of Dr. Howard Payne House, who was honorary alumnus of USC School of Medicine and founder of the world renowned House Ear Institute.

During the 2nd year of his residency at Los Angeles County Hospital around 1936, Dr. House became curious about a common affliction in the nurses by his side. They had what was known then as ‘stuffy nose‘. Dr. House turned to the hospital library for better understanding of this problem, and in between clinical duties, created his first innovation, which was a procedure he named ‘submucous resection of the inferior turbinate’.

The nose is made up of three turbinates, with the largest being the inferior turbinate. It enlarges upon contact with irritants, as well as the change of weather. He discovered that by removing the tiny bone in the inferior turbinate, he could reduce it’s size and create a better airway without disturbing the mucosa. He applied this procedure on patients who evidenced stuffy nose and successfully cured their longstanding problem.

Dr. House’s first breakthrough innovation was at the ripe of interdisciplinary medicine. As an otologist, he had discovered a procedure for the field of rhinology.

During his time, only Neurosurgeons removed hearing nerve tumors while nasal allergies were thought to have no place in medicine. But Dr. House paid no heed to such conservative restrictions for his pure curiosity. Seeing his enthusiasm, Dr. French Hansel invited Dr. House to attend a short course under his tutelage during which, Dr, House was the only student who thought enough of nasal allergy to want to learn.

The knowledge gained from studying with Dr. Hansel and others would later form the foundations upon which he built the pioneer House Ear Institute.

My own curiosity aroused when a radiologist reported my enlarged turbinates. But a reader, who likely came through the website of MMA, said enlarged turbinates are ‘normal’ conditions and advised me not to read too much into these reports.

Enlarged turbinates may be a normal reaction when our body deals with the surrounding. But being normal does not mean we stop asking questions and definitely not a reason to stop reading own own medical reports.

Posted in Health | No Comments

This aunty at PJ Oldtown cut my maternal grandmother’s hair, my mother’s hair, her sisters’ hair, and now my hair.

Guilt got the better of me upon seeing this lady who ‘gave’ a few hundreds for my brain surgery in 2006. You ‘donate’ to strangers, but you ‘give’ friends. After that surgery, I got swept away by fashion frenzy at the hands of a young L’oreal professional hair stylist who gets paid doubly much by vainpot college lads.

It took me less than a year to quit that stage of life. In my nerves are take-away orders, slip-on tees, cotton shorts, and hair that can be done under 1 minute.

This aunty did not charge me today, She was glad, too glad to see me again. We should spend her ice kacang next time, across the street at the PJ OldTown wet market.

I like going back to PJ Oldtown, where old men ride tricycles, young ones play catch, and everybody knows my grandmother.

Posted in Reviews | 1 Comment

Dad and I were at UMMC again this morning. The doctor who checked his eyes noticed mine at once as I entered and asked about them.

We were told to come back in December to set surgery for next year.

Taking care of dad’s medical records on top of my own files get confusing sometimes., I lost the receipt for dad’s optic lens so we went back to the pharmacy at Menara Timur. I was sorry to cause trouble. It took them awhile digging through stacks of papers for dad’s payment record before issuing me a replacement.

So be aware. When you see the doctor at UMMC, be sure to keep every piece of paper. The hospital hardly use computers.

Posted in Caring For Dad | 2 Comments

Whoever put thoughts in her mind that drove this unfortunate soul to race against herself ought to feel the consequences themselves.Education isn’t for everyone, particularly not for those whose minds are so confused, they become stressed in class and pushed to the brink of exhaustion.

For this unfortunate soul, the world the way she sees it, is a baffle. She has now moved from Prozac tablets to injections at the Psychiatrist’s office. They calmed her somewhat, but exhaustion remains painted on her face. Calling thoughts to awareness is harder than solving trigonometry.

But when thoughts do come out, they have just one concern.She must go back to college.Finish her degree. As if that’s all to life.

Thank you very much, whoever you are for putting thoughts in her mind, pushing her beyond limits. Now will you please solve this mess too?

Posted in Feature Writing | 4 Comments

Fellow Brandon Teoh sent me an email with the title, ‘Blogger being sued by an arrogant corporate company…’.

These days, bloggers involve in so much branding, so that when I read the word ’blogger being sued…arrogant company’ I almost flipped. Oh man, not again. These bloggers are having a ball of a time.

Nolah. It’s just the way Brandon wrote. The matter here concerns Mr. Edward Skading, a man just like any other man, who bought a can of F&N TeaPot condensed milk and found mould in the can.

Mr. Skading brought up his concern with F&N Customer Services. Having received no response, Mr. Skading wrote them two consecutive letters of complaint detailing his case in black and white. They replied, by tip-toeing around the issue, and tried diverting attention too.

Following that, the manufacturing plant was inspected by Petaling District Health Officers. The filthy plant was found to be an ideal breeding ground for bacteria and microbes, that Mr. Skading said could have been lingering in the air. Although the tins were sterilized, microbes and bacterias could still enter the can during the process of packaging. Spores thrive with oxygen, and luck had it that this can was dented and it had a hole, supplying the tin with oxygen, bringing mould to life.

Mr. Skading isn‘t interested in monetary compensation. He‘s not suing them. All he wants is for F&N to come forth, make a statement and apologize. But what Mr. Skading received were intimidations through F&N‘s own appointed lawyers. At one point, they even demanded Mr. Skading to pay RM1,000 for allegedly hurting their image. They even had the cheek to ask Mr. Skading give that money to F&N‘s choice of charity.

Why, of course, F&N couldn‘t take that money themselves. It wasn‘t a court order. So that‘s why they came up with a plan, by asking Mr. Skading to do ‘charity‘ instead.

The latest Mr. Skading received was a letter concerning a hearing session at the Shah Alam High Court. It seems F&N wants to bankrupt this old man.

Oh, not my words. Mr. Skading himself said that he‘s a poor old man.

I have to urge you on something. Please hold your opinions until you’ve read his blog through and through. The latest post didn’t sound convincing to me, for Mr. Skading wrote in a casual tone. Further readings proved Mr. Skading to be someone simple but streetwise. He also happened to be an ex-soldier who had served with the UN. His stand against the lawyers and intimidations are notable. Mr. Skading sounds calm in his blog, sometimes witty as well. Folks around his age are like that, huh?

If you’re familiar with my blog, you might recall the case of Pei Lee at SJMC, and the incidence when I almost drowned at the swimming pool. Recall the people who questioned and called names. The nitpickers on Mr. Skading’s blog sounded exactly like those who picked on me. They almost said the same things, same words, same style, same reasons. Their reasoning similarly hold that corporate companies are always right. You small consumer, small fly. You know nothing. You got it all wrong. Quit whining and go back into hiding.

That’s why when I read Brandon‘s email, I could not be so moved as to cry bloody murder. Not anymore, after being told to shut up so many times. But it is also for the same reason that I began identifying with Mr. Skading.

And I feel Mr. Skading’s case should stand alone, without being masked by the word, ‘blogger’. We don’t want people dismissing him as just another blogger playing up issues. Not that it’s true, but that’s the impression created by our traditional news media.

Posted in In My Humble Opinion, Reviews | 3 Comments