Answered Prayer
One week has passed since my mom was discharged from the hospital completely healed from the ailment that got her into the hospital in the first place.
About a week prior to her admission to the hospital she had been complaining of heart palpitation, tiredness and she was basically feeling gloomy. She thought she had reached the end of the road. Then she started to have diarrhoea and with it came out blood. She only went to see the doctor at a nearby clinic when she started to bleed fresh blood. Dr T immediately told her to get admitted to a hospital. Doctor T said that she was anaemic and he also detected a lump at her stomach area. And of course there was the other more obvious symptom of loose bowels with blood.
So, Ah Loot took mom to the hospital. By that time, mom was in bad shape, she was trembling and feeling faint. Since Ah Loot had to park her car at the car park, she had no choice but to leave mom there and go and get a wheelchair at the hospital entrance. The attendant at the entrance didn’t want to give the wheelchair and said my mom should walk there. When Ruth insisted on having the wheelchair giving reasons and the referral letter from Dr T, he finally relented. In fact, when he read the referral letter from the doctor, he didn’t think it was anything serious.
Anyway, after the registration and all, a nurse took her blood pressure and said that my mom was probably having piles. Ah Loot almost flipped because my mom had already seen Dr T earlier and it was definitely not piles. Then the hospital doctor saw my mother and said the same thing, that it was piles. Ah Loot told the doctor about the referral letter from Dr T and so after some physical examination, my mom was finally taken to the emergency ward where they took the ECG, x-rays and put tubes into her nose, and took blood for testing. They also gave her a drip. Ah Loot waited outside and by the time I reached the hospital after work, it was almost 7 p.m. and my mom was still at the emergency ward. Ah Loot had been there for over four hours.
I sent text messages to my care group members and a few other close friends to pray for my mom. I went in to see my mom and the surgeon and a doctor had done some tests on her and waiting for the results. So, I went out and waited until it was almost 9 p.m. By then we were so hungry but we daren’t leave the hospital to have dinner in case we were called in. So Ah Loot called Woon to buy dinner for us which she did.
At almost 9.30 p.m. the surgeon called me in. She said she had been looking for me, but I didn’t hear her paging for me. Anyway, she wanted me to explain to my mom to sign the consent letter before she could do the SCOPE on her. She wanted to investigate the cause of the bleeding and treat it. But my mom freaked out and didn’t want to do the SCOPE. She kept saying she wanted to go home. So, I had to calm her down and tell her that the surgeon just wanted to put the SCOPE into her stomach and upper bowel so that they can see where the bleeding was coming from. Finally, she consented and she was wheeled off. The surgeon told me that my mother would be warded after the SCOPE.
So I went outside, had my dinner and we both went back to wait for an hour or so before going back to the hospital. This time it was to the ward where my mom would be staying overnight. When we reached the ward, we saw my mom at the hospital bed and she showed us the needle marks on her hands where blood were taken out. And so we put all her things beside her bed and after seeing that she was okay, we went home. By then it was almost midnight.
The next day, they did further tests on my mom i.e on her colon. At night when the whole family visited her, she said that she had one bag of blood transfusion and three drips. She said the doctors and nurses treated her very well and she wasn’t all that scared any more. I asked the nurse on duty what was wrong with my mom. The nurse said that the test results were out but I had to wait for the doctor to come on his rounds at around 8 p.m. to know the results. So, I waited and finally saw the two specialist doctors who came around and explained to me about my mom’s condition. The doctor said that all the tests were normal! So that was good news. They couldn’t detect any active bleeding, so they don’t know what caused the bleeding. I asked him about the lump at her stomach area, and he said there were no lumps at all.
After that, I thanked God for answered prayer and for healing my mother and went home. The next day, I went with Melissa to see my mom at the hospital again and she was feeling more active and happier. She said that many medical students came to examine her and one of them even hugged her after she completed answering all of their questions. She didn’t really like being “disturbed” by these students but what to do. There were three other patients next to her who couldn’t understand English or Malay, so my mom was used as an interpreter for one of them. Well, at least her stay at the hospital was well used. That afternoon, she was discharged and we took her home in the evening. It is one week already and she is doing fine although she still has her gastric pains on and off and wind in the stomach. But she is 80 years old, so she is doing fine for her age. Thank God for that. And thanks also for all the doctors and nurses at Selayang Hospital who had taken good care of my mom.
Penny For Your Thoughts