Dealing with a crisis - no updates on this blog for a while

 Last weekend, I found my mum looking confused and unable to form coherent sentences and I ended up getting an ambulance to send her to a hospital as it looked like a stroke. For the last few days, I’ve been shuttling to and fro from the hospital.

Just yesterday my mum transitioned from the ICU to an ordinary ward and I can breathe a little easy, but the road to recovery is going to be very long as she’s lost the ability to speak.

I’m also sitting next to her while I’m hammering out this article. 

All I can say is that I’m grateful for a few things:

• I’m glad to be at Woodlands Health where I can do some work and shuttle home over one stop where I can bring what my mum needs from the house. There’s even a new bus 967 that lets me do this.
• We’re financially ready for a catastrophic event to occur, although the hospital has not even broached the subject of Medisave use to me yet. They seem to focus on patient first before payment. 
• Compared to other stroke symptoms, my mum’s were light. No paralysis of half the body and I can play charades with her to guess what she wants. My mum even had the presence of mind to get me to prepare her medical prescription to be shared with the hospital. 

For the past three days, my mind has not been calm to say the least. I suspect the weakest link in dealing with this event is me. I was still able to do my preview last night and have two days of lessons starting this evening. 

Financial preparation aside, I’ve learnt how vulnerable I am, it was hard to be along in a room as I’ll begin ruminating about what i could have done better as a son. There are also a lot of unknowns like how would long term care look like, and what my options are, so I managed to get a social worker send me brochures  for me to meditate upon. 

Everything being said, I have friends who have gone through this themselves and they are actively helping me cope. I also am lucky have a friend who was able to meet me for breakfast to just cheer me up before I visited the hospital. Relatives from across the causeway are providing heavy duty professional medical advice, going as far as to read scans and share with me what the issue might be. 

Finally, I’m super grateful that my wife and kids can hold the fort. Almost everyone has some light flu symptoms. Hope its not HMPV.

Note : I might disengage from some chattier groups for now. It’s nothing personal.