On Thursday night (7-Oct-2004), my father was going to a dinner after the Hash run. When he's crossing the road, 3 feet away from the restaurant, a motorcycle came by and knocked him. Initially he was fine but his doctor friend that's having dinner with him didn't think so. His Hash friends brought him to the General Hospital to clean up the wound. After a while, he collapse to the bed and couldn't regain consciousness.

My mom received the call about 10pm at night because his Hash friend was calling to inform that he was in the hospital. However when we arrived at the hospital, we found that the doctors were placing tubes on him and need to do CAT Scan. It went serious from the initial phone call.

However, the CAT Scan is not available in the government hospital so they have to turn to a private hospital nearby. What they did was they sent him to do the CAT Scan while I have to wait for another half an hour to wait for the film to develop. The doctor gives me a preliminary report saying that there's blood clot on the brain, so his brain shrunk 3/4 from the original size. From the CAT Scan film statistics, he has about 8 cm (about 100 CC) of blood clot stuck inside the head.

Once back, the doctor looked at the report and already advice my mom that he has to go for an operation because it's an emergency. The doctor friend who stayed with us said that what they'll do is to operate to drain the blood; therefore there is nothing done on the brain at all. So the operation proceeds at 3 AM (8-Oct-2004). Mom went back as she was wearing her pajama and I stayed in the hospital waiting.

About 5:30 am, mom arrived but I was too tired so I went to take a quick nap. When I woke up, he was wheeled out to the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) room. The doctors don’t allow even family members to visit except for visiting hours 12:30pm - 2:00pm & 4:30pm - 7:00pm. On the first visit, my grandmother & grandfather came over to check out his condition. According to doctor, his condition is stable. A few friends came along to visit and consoled us.

We went back at 7pm and came again on Saturday (9-Oct-2004) but his condition haven't improve. My brother called him and he gives a slight reaction but the vitals monitoring alarm went blaring. The nurse advised us not to talk to him yet.

So, we came again yesterday (10-Oct-2004) and the doctor was worried about his condition. From what he told us, a patient is supposed to give a reaction after 24 hours while my father's doesn't have reaction at all. The doctor said if the condition does not improve, he afraid that there might be another blood clot on the other side of the brain. He suggested we do another CAT Scan just to be sure. So the whole afternoon at 3:00 pm we've been preparing to send him over to the private hospital again.

The result came back showed that his brain has swollen due to the pressure was applied during the blood clot. Now his brain seems to be 110%! The doctor advised us there is nothing wrong with that as he might need time for the brain to heal its' own swelling. So we're waiting around waiting for his condition to improve.

A friend then asked me whether I'm alright or not, so I answered her: "What could be more worse than supporting a Singaporean customer?"

To be continued on the next post...