cakap cakap...Life.

8.48 PM Monday 24th October 2016:

In my mind, I have already decided to take a break from blogging. 

The hard part is trying to find a good enough reason to do so....and if truth be told I have no other reason then to tell myself that the time spent working on this blog keeps me from spending that time with my wife. 

I want to spend more time with her...not more time at my keyboard writing. 

I find that even when she is in the bed a few feet away from my desk resting or trying to go to sleep....most times I see her looking at me. She cannot say anything but she looks at me and I know in my heart that she is asking why I am at the keyboard and not lying down beside her....and if truth be told, I would rather spend time with her than blogging.

So what am I to do now?

Yes, my Gout is bothering me but I have worked through pain before. This time around the pain from the gout is a good excuse for me to not write! That is why I know that I needed time to think this through and find the real reason why I am not driven to write as I have been doing these last year or so.

It has been two weeks since my last posting. Exactly two weeks....and I made myself sit down to write this and explain to you guys the thoughts that are going through my head now. 

I do not know when dementia will take away from my wife all her memories of me. Even now there are times when she drifts away into a world of her own. She does not respond to anything that I say to her but when I hold my hand towards her....she will reach out to hold it. 

When I am getting her ready in the morning there are times when she reaches out to touch and hold my face for a while and she will look at me and I know that she does recognize me but she is unsure who I am. But then there are also times when she knows it is me and we are comfortable in our own company. Increasingly, those moments are not as often as I would like them to be....so that is why I want to spend as much time as I can with her now while she can still remember me.

The long goodbye has started and I am dealing with it the best way I can.....time with each other is the only way that can make my heart and my mind be at ease for whatever is to come.

Enough for now....I am going to try and work out how to deal with all this....my wife and my desire to write and blog....and see what I can come up with. 

For all the thoughts and best wishes you have all sent me...many thanks. I do not know how all this will work out but all things must pass.....and so shall this.                    

cakap cakap...Life.

Different as we all are, we are alike in more ways that we would care to admit. 

When morning comes breakfast would be had by me in Melbourne. A steaming hot cup of Nescafe, a bowl of Weetbix with Soy Milk, grapes, peaches and possible a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a sprinkle of sugar to go with it....and as I eat breakfast I will be sitting at my desk surfing the Net to bring me up to speed on what else is happening in other parts of the world.

In Bangsar when morning comes there will be some of you sitting down to a breakfast of Nasi Lemak and a cup of steaming hot Nescafe with two spoons of condensed milk in it to give it that "oomph" and as you eat breakfast you too will be sitting at your desk surfing the Net to bring yourself up to speed on what else is happening in other parts of the world. 

 All over the world  people are doing the same thing in the morning...having breakfast and catching up with what else have happened around the world while they were asleep. 

Now can you remember what you read this morning? 

I think by the evening not much would be remembered by you because as the day unfolds what is retained within your memory are only those things that really matters to you and you only. Anything that does not affect you personally you will dismiss with as much ease as you would throw a burger wrapper in the bin once you are through with eating the burger. 

But there have been a few things that time has not erased from my memory. I was a student in London when the first sketchy news of the May 13 riots reached me and I rushed to Malaysia Hall for more news. I remembered where I was when Kennedy was assassinated - both Kennedy's. I remembered I was with my wife negotiating the Jalan Pahang/Jalan Tun Razak roundabout when news of Elvis death came through the radio of the car we were in. I remembered the passing of my Mother and Father with painful clarity... all these are what my memories are made up off.

I also remember the first time I met my wife, the day we got married and many many days of our life together. I remember too the happiness of spending time with our children before life and circumstance required us to go live our own lives the best way we can...my daughter with her family in Canada and me with my son and wife in Melbourne.  

All this I am sure have been what many of you too have gone through in life and you will know that when all is said and done....it is family that matters. It is family that you go back to when times are good or bad, it is family that you turn too in sadness and happiness and when all is lost or won, it is family that you want to have around you in that exact moment of failure or triumph.

And that was how I felt yesterday when I was told by the doctor that all was not well with me. I spoke about it to my wife first.... I think she listened to my voice talking to her but I do not think what I was saying registered in her consciousness....but it made me feel good that I had shared it with her. And then I spoke with my son and we discussed what has to be done next to "manage" the situation. Diet, treatment at St Vincent, medication, further tests...all the usual suspects....and then as I googled "renal failure" to learn more about it, he brought me a glass of water and reminded me that I must drink more water as it will be good for me.

The rest of the day was spent in contemplation of life....especially life as we have been living it since my wife was diagnosed with dementia...living life in and around her needs and her wants. I slept early exhausted mentally by the events of the day. 

It is now 5.28 AM and I have been awake since 4 writing my thoughts away. Life is still good....and good morning to those of you who do read what I write....and now I must again gather my thoughts on how the rest of the day, and the rest of my life, is to be lived.    

  

cakap cakap....life.

Gout and Hernia are two very painful afflictions...and when you are burdened with both...it is not very pleasant...and that my friends has been bothering me these last six weeks.

Gout I have had these last three years but it only dawned upon me that it was gout only two weeks ago when I googled the severe burning, tingling pain and swelling that I keep having in and around my right toe. Google told me that it has to be Gout!

And the bulge in my groin and that dull ache from my groin right down to my testicles (testicles seems to me to be a more polite way to say "balls"...so testicles it is!) that has bothered me intermittently these last two months or so, is Hernia.

When the pain became unbearable these last two weeks I finally went to see the Doctor this morning at 9.30.

The Hernia he confirmed as soon as he saw the bulge in my groin area. The Gout he said , would require an Ultra Sound and blood tests to confirm. And that will be done tomorrow morning at St Vincent Hospital at 11am.

This is not the way I wanted to go into the weekend . Not the way I want to be when I need to care for my wife.....but that is the way it is. .....that is life!

cakap cakap....Friday Early Morning.

Friday early morning and Winter is really over! It will be over 30 degrees today and rising. I am back to wearing shorts and singlet again around the house and even when going to the local supermarket....and enjoying again the freedom of being able to walk around just decently clothed - a welcome change from the layers of clothing necessary to keep yourself warm when in Winter. The nights are still cool but that makes for easier sleep!

At last we have a time frame for moving into the upstairs apartment - by the end of October. There was some worry about some dampness hanging around the apartment but that has already been rectified and what is left is just to process the paperwork - and we hope all will be over and done with by next week  - and then we start the actual physical process of moving from the 4th floor to the 7th floor. Apart from having a shower unit in the bathroom for the convenience of my wife, the view from the 7th floor over the Fitzroy landscape is refreshing. On the 4th floor our windows and balcony are facing other apartments that towers over ours that requires us to keep the curtains drawn for privacy. The 7th Floor apartment faces the sky and nothing else but a view of Fitzroy. How good is that! 

In the time since I last wrote about my wife - less than three weeks ago - walking has become almost impossible for her. When she is able to stand up with our assist, her knees would start to buckle and her whole body tremble with the physical effort of trying to hold herself up. So now we have a wheelchair for her use and with that wheelchair we have once been able to take walks around the neighborhood and go grocery shopping together again. Small pleasures that makes the drudgery of life more pleasant. 

Last week, for the first time in my life, I had a hernia!

her·ni·a

1. a condition in which part of an organ is displaced and protrudes through the wall of the cavity containing it (often involving the intestine at a weak point in the abdominal wall).

And the immediate pain made be double over! Too much physical lifting to move my wife here and there must have caused it. I could physically feel something protruding through the wall of my stomach. I have been doing a lot of lying and sitting down these last few days and today, for the first time in days, I feel well again. The pain and swelling is gone and all is back to normal again -at least for me!

Everything else in KL seems to move towards "breaking point!". 

Things cannot remain as there are now. The momentum for change has moved up to the point that Najib can no longer studiously ignore. When the Conference of Rulers issues a comment on the problems that now ails our nation surely the "tipping point" has been reached? Has it not? 

The only other "authoritative" voice within Umno that is still missing is Pak Lah's....but then I guess with KJ still in the cabinet Pak Lah is playing the  "better be safe than sorry" mode so that his son in law still has a job but I am sure KJ has enough wealth stashed away somewhere to be able to put principles before politics! Still you do not really know with these people...money without political power is not that much fun for them! 

Enough of politics for now. It tires me out and takes too much out of me to try and second guess what these idiots will do next! I have become so tired lately with their antics that I seem to have lost some momentum in my "need to write"....and always, when I do, I get a few thousand clicks less on my blog on every day that I chose not to write anything new! Such is life.

It is almost 8 am now - 7.49 am to be exact. I will take my leave from writing this for now. all things considered...life is still good. 

One last thing...a cousin of mine sent me a blast from the past yesterday - a picture of my wife and our daughter taken over three decades ago...and I would like to share it with you guys here. That is Lucy on the extreme left and our daughter Terrina is sitting on the lap of her cousin. Salam...