Thursday, February 25, 2010

Yesterday,...... all my troubles seemed so far away,...... Part 1

Nope, the above line could not reflect how my day was yesterday. Seemed like the direct opposite. I took a half day leave to accompany my mum to see an eye doc at SNEC cos of her eye problem. It turned out to be a shocker cos my mum totally (or almost totally) did not understand her eye condition at all. She seemed to only know what she perceived the problem to be despite the fact she has seen at least 3 different eye docs and has been explained her condition by at least 2 of them. The doc yesterday was the fourth one she is seeing by far. The reason she wanted to see the doctor at SNEC was because my auntie recently had the same issue as her and was treated by the doctors at SNEC, apparently with decent results. What my mum has failed to see however, is that my auntie has been religiously following all the doctor's instructions, including eye injections and all that.

As for my mum, she had the same oppurtunity to have the same treatment though she had the episode a number of years back. At that point of time, the hospitals did not have that drug available because it was very new to the market. However, a friend of my ex-boss had already brought the drug into Singapore and was using it. When my  ex-boss heard about my mum's condition, he immediately referred my mum to his friend to do the injection. However, my mum did not continue with the follow-up giving the lamest excuse that she wanted to wait till the condition was better cos she does not want the doctor to be disappointed. This is the most *&#%^@ up excuse I have ever heard from a lawyer.

Being the smart guy I was, I decided to leave her alone. How do you talk sense to someone who hardly has common sense? So we left it at that. Couple of months back, she decided to see a doc at my workplace just to check on how the eye has been. Apparently, the area that had affected her vision has become a scar, so the vision is just bad. And it would be permanent. Great! Basically what she sees out of that eye is what any eye would see but with a grey opaque circle right smack in the middle. She can only get to see whatever is beyond the circle. What made things worse was when a blood vessel in the eye recenly leaked blood into the contents of the eye. It pretty much covered up a majority of whatever vision she had left and she started seeing web-like particles within her vision, which can be pretty disturbing.

She returned to see her doc here and was recommended to leave the condition alone. Hopefully in time the blood would be absorbed back into the eye and her vision would improve. The other alternative is to do a major operation to suck out the blood. The issues with the operation was the risks of infection, the possibility of another bleed which would negate the effect of the whole operation and the hassle of the aftercare of the operation. After the op, she would have to sleep in certain awkward positions for a long time, coupled with the fact that the eye is overall weaker than it was before. So she decided to leave the eye alone until recently she had a fall apparently because of the eye. With that, she started to get desperate, really desperate. Having heard that my auntie had good results with SNEC, she decided to go see a doc there.

When she told me about the fall and requested for me to go see the doc with her, I told her that the only other alternative they can offer is pretty much the same at any eye clinic. But since she was insistent for me to go, I obliged, only to find to my horror yesterday how ignorant she was of her condition. After going through the whole works yesterday, she decided again to leave the eye alone. Seriously, I do not know what to make of it. On one hand I am appalled by her ignorance of her issue all these years and yet at the end of the day, she is my mum. It really is frustrating to see her like this even though to a great extent, it serves her right. I think the more dreadful thing is the possibility that I have to put up with such extreme stupidity for some time to come. God, I really need help......

No comments:

Post a Comment