Back to ICU

Last night I received a call from the doctor at TTSH. Mom had a sudden infection and had to be warded into the ICU immediately. I was very worried the whole night, and rushed to the hospital next morning to see the doctor for an update.

The doctors were not able to identify the bug, so they put her on a dose of general antibiotics, until they can locate the actual bug. She is responding well to the medicine, and has regained consciousness, and is able to squeeze my hand with her thumb again.

Another day of hopping by the hospital (three times today). But as long as mom is fine, everything is worth it.

She is supposedly due to be transferred to Ren Ci tomorrow, but due to this sudden infection, they have to postpone the transfer yet another time. My domestic helper Jovelyn has started to learn how to take care of mom from the nurses, but the training has to be deferred for now.

As I left the ICU, I placed the teddy bear gently back onto her palm.

Aaron

Departure of a good friend Chionh Eng Wee

After visiting my mom at TTSH, I dropped by at the Singapore Casket to pay respect to a colleague and friend, Associate Professor Chionh Eng Wee (http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~chionhew), who had succumbed to cancer after a three-year fight. He is survived by his wife and son.

I've known Eng Wee for many years, though not very close personally. I remember him as a very helpful and courteous guy. My closest working experience with him is the National Olympiad in Informatics, when his first became a member of the Scientific Committee in the inaugural event in 1998, and became the Chairman of the Scientific Committee in the following year, holding the position through the years except for 2002 when he was on sabbatical leave, and 2007 when he stepped down due to his health. All these years, when I started as the Honorary Secretary of NOI and later the Chairman of NOI in 2005, he had been of tremendous help and had contributed greatly to the success of the yearly event.

He had his own views about education and the students. I still remember his insistence that all Computing students must know regular expressions, and his disagreement on how mathematics are taught in schools these days.

Due to his very amiable nature, many colleagues like to tease him, and he was absolutely cool about it.

I'm saddened at the loss of a wonderful guy. May he rest in peace.

[Eng Wee's wake is at the Singapore Casket, 131 Lavendar Street, Emerald Room (level 3). There will be a service at about 8pm tonight. The cremation will be held tomorrow (21 September) 4:30pm at Mandai. They will leave for the cremation at about 3:30pm.)]

Aaron

Arrival of Jovelyn

After about two weeks of looking around and waiting (including one and a half hours of going through the Employers' Orientation Programme (EOP) online course for first-time employers like myself -- and the course is mounted by Singapore Polytechnic!), my foreign domestic helper Ms Jovelyn, a Filipino, arrived in the afternoon today.

I met her at the employment agency and brought her home for a quick orientation, and then we proceeded to Tan Tock Seng Hospital to orientate her with the enironment, and also to introduce her to mom, more for formality than anything, since my mom can't recognise and respond anyway. In fact, even if my mom had been well, I doubt if she could pronounce Jovelyn properly.
After Jovelyn and I returned from the hospital, it's time for me to bring Cowen to his weekly music class. After the music lesson, we reached home at 10pm.

Tomorrow (Friday) will be a long day at work, so I have arranged the hospital to start the training for Jovelyn on Saturday morning. I would certainly tag along. It would take a couple of days (depending on how fast we can pick things), and good thing is that next week is the university's 1-week recess, so I've taken a week of leave to attend to mom.

They plan to shift mom to Ren Ci Hospital on Tuesday, as her white blood cells count has gone back to normal.

This weekend I will also go shopping for adjustable bed. I came across the Solax health bed at a shop in TTSH, and I looked up the internet and found the Rainbow Care Equipment selling adjustable beds of different models. I think I will go for the latter, as they also sell the alternating pressure mattress which is ideal for my mom as she will be lying permanently on the bed, which will cause bed sores.

If any reader has any suggestion or recommendation, I would appreciate if you could drop me a note. Thank you in advance.

(BTW, I have a facebook account and you can search for Aaron Tan.)

As for my mom's current bed, I guess I have to dismantle it. The sorry thing is that the mattress I bought for her is a pretty good one, and it's been used for only a year plus. Now, I will have to get rid of it, as I have no space to keep it.

Coming back to the domestic helper. Given a choice, I would never have wanted to employ one. I am just worried about the impact on Cowen. Not that I am worried about any negative influence from the helper on him. I have seen kids who scream at their domestic helper and boss them around (well, I have seen kids who scream at their grandparent too). I had to explain to Cowen that she is here to help take care of his mah-mah, and not a servant. He still has to tidy his own belongings, get his own drink, and we still have to do our own household chores. First and foremost, he has to respect her and greet her.

As a first-time employer, I am also apprehensive about whether she is comfortable with us. You know, I am not a person of words, so most of the time I just keep quiet and do my own stuffs, and she also keeps quiet. From time to time, to break the silence I would ask her "do you have any questions/problems?" as though I am conducting a lesson (sorry, occupational hazard). She just sat at one corner quietly, as I didn't have anything for her to do. At one point when I spilled my drink I took the table cloth and cleaned it, totally forgetting that she was just sitting a few metres away. And when I brought her to the supermarket to buy some stuffs for her, I found myself queueing up for the cashier! So I think her first day of work must be very uneventful and a complete bore.

And now Jovelyn is sleeping in my mom's room. In fact, the whole family is sleeping, except me. I'm still slogging with my work (but taking a break typing this). Always the last to sleep, the first to rise (at 5am in the morning). Sigh...

I don't quite understand how some employers could bear to mis-treat their domestic helpers. You read the news, some of these employers are educated professionals like the teachers and doctors. Even some people whom I know are also known to be quite harsh to their helpers, sometimes scolding them in public (using words like "stupid" and "idiot"), or the 'kinder' ones might scold them in a language the helper wouldn't understand. And some of these employers are usually the nice people you meet on a normal day!

When some people knew that I was looking for a domestic helpers, they gave me 'advice' like "don't give them any off-day", "don't be too nice to them". I wonder, oh my, why?

When my mom was well, sometimes we did discuss how people treat their domestic helpers. She is of the same mind as I, that these domestic helpers are here to earn a living, and we have no right to treat them as lesser beings, just because we are financially better off or we are their boss.

I bought a small teddy bear for my mom last week. I tried to look for the letter "M" on the bear, but it wasn't available. In the end I got one with the letter "L", as it is the first letter of her surname.

I bought mom this teddy bear because she likes to grab my hand and squeeze, so I wanted her to have something to squeeze when I am not around. Indeed, when I visited her today, I found her squeeze a little bit stronger, and she is now able to turn her wrist a little.

Aaron

我的母亲 (6): 勿忘我

14 September 2009

It has been a month since that fateful day.

My mom has been lying on the bed in the hospital since then.

Today, they will transfer her to Rec Ci Hospital. My maid will arrive this week. I hope she will be able to go for some training during my 1-week recess, so that I can attend the training as well.

The past few weeks were lousy. When everybody was telling me to take good care of myself, I had to fall sick. Really bad bout of flu, high fever, headache. One came after another.

There was one night I was screaming in pain when my headache struck. Really 'lame'. The last time I had such an acute headache was when I was a school boy, and that was years ago.

My whole body was so tired that basically I dragged myself everywhere I went. I dozed off at every opportunity, on the bus and train. One day when I visited mom, I dozed off on her bed while holding her hands, in the hospital.

When you are supposed to be strong, such mockery is laughing in your face.

I refused to be laughed at though. I talked to her non-stop. I sang to her even. All the Cantonese songs she used to hear me singing at home, hoping that she would recognise them -- Danny Chan's, George Lam's, Leslie Cheung's, Roman Tam's, Sam Hui's. All the oldies.

When I am at home, I play Danny Chan's songs on the computer.

There must be hopes.

Last week, she started to move her thumb on one hand, and then day by day, the other
fingers on one hand, and then the fingers on the other hand.

She is now able to squeeze lightly when I hold on to her hands. She is beginning to even move her wrist a little; I can feel it.

Hopefully, she is able to gain back control over her body bit by bit, including talking.

But what I most desire is her ability to recognise us, which at the moment, seems to be just a hope.

"How can you forget me?" I keep repeating this to her.

I always have this disbelief that a person can suddenly forget the people he knows. I can't believe my mom can forget me, the person she has known and has been living with for almost half a century.

It is an unbearable pain that goes beyond words.

"How can you forget me, mom?"

Aaron

[Update: The hospital has postponed transferring my mom to Ren Ci, due to low white blood cells count.]