My Dad had his CT scan earlier today and now he was allowed discharged. I was rather tied up with the ward duty and was only able to sort out the bills and stuff right at the end. He was really bored by now and he was really glad that he can go home. Back to his usual magazines and TV. On my end, I was giventhe duty of checking his blood until his Warfarin dosing stabilise.

Irfan and Idlan were in good spirit at home. There will be a small matter of Sports Day coming up this Saturday. He did not tell me which event he will be participating. Managed to free my Saturday morning to be present.

It was one of those days that did not start off well. On the way to work, while queuing on the Smart Tag lane, a Proton cut off in front of me. I don't mind that. The problem was, it then had issues with the toll plank. It came up with a notice 'Hubungi Plaza' and we ended up in a long queue. I felt like smashing the windows in. The car behind me was really giving him grief. It took about 30 seconds for the attended to come across and another 30 to get him going. The honk was funny!

Ward round and visit by a trial sponsor ensued, followed by tutorials, lunch and a clinical sessions with the MMed candidates. The session went well although we can tell that the candidates was not well prepared. After all, the exam was so that the theory will be conducted first in around 4 weeks followed by a month gap for which those that passed the written will attend the clinical exams. The clinicals will be conducted in UM. That was enough to send shivers down their spine as traditionally, it was harder to pass in UM. That was just rumours though. Ne'er clinically proven!

We also had some bad news today in which the husband of the chief clerk at the Medical Department passed away today. Apparently it was not expected even though he had heart troubles and was on dialysis, he was pretty OK. Didn't really know what happened. Will catch up on the gossips tomorrow I am sure. In the meantime, the Revision Course was really kicking. The sessions so far have been going OK. The shame was I can't organise a mock exam for this lot since they were far to many of them. It was just impossible. If I were to go ahead, I'd probably only finished by 9 pm. And we don't want that!

Yesterday afternoon, I was invited by my colleague from Hospital Ampang to participate in a public forum on Multiple Myeloma. Apart from myself, they invites a Nurse from Dana-Faber Cancer Center in Boston to address the questions from the partiipant about living and coping with the disease.

The session started out with a short talk on myeloma by yours truly all in Malay. We then took question from the public ad that went on for a good half hour. At the end we discussed about the need for a patient support group that were pretty common abroad. It looked that there were some interested party in there. Hopefully something will come out of it similar to the MaxFamily for CML.

We highlighted that part of the reason why cancer parietal support group were not very strongly supported here was the fact there there was stigma attached to the diagnosis of cancer in out society. Patient once labelled as having cancer often felt shame and wondered if it was punishment from God. Worst so, this view was reinforced by the people around them. These people ended up retreating into a shell and suffered by themselves.

I was pretty certain that part of challenge would be to chance the patients perception of their disease, overcome the stigma, empower them and make them confident. Only after the inner battle were address, they can start changing te public perception of their predicament. The problem also held true for other non-cancer conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. Even diabetes support groups locally struggled atthe beginning. I guess we Malaysian still have perception that having any disease was a direct consequence of punishment from God, be it cancer, lupus, diabetes. Even my Mum-in-law once said that when she was bringing up her children re my wife, they never had fever until they attended school. Since out children were both asthmatics, bearing in mind that Irfan was just discharged from hospital, the infections that they regularly picked up were due to us not looking after them properly, and even due to us 'tak buat baik' to other people. I realised that those statements should be taken with a pinch of salt, the point I was making was generally we Malaysian were wary to people having illness and all illness must always have a reason behind them.

Frustrating I know but those were one of main hurdles we had to jump in order to make any support group successful. Over the years in Malaysia, I was involved at helping up the beginning of support group for Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP), Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia (CML), lymphoma and now myeloma. So far, only the CML group really took off. It helps when most of the members were youg and relatively fit and vocal. I would be happy if the myeloma was half as successful as their CML counterparts.

Now that things had settled down, we were able to sort out a few domestic things. Top of the agenda was finalising Idlan's birthday party booking. Even though it was a couple of months away we thought it might better to sort it out early. So off we went to te Bird Park.

I was doing the morning rounds earlier and will have to be at Ampang after lunch for a talk, so Anita had to go with the driver. They were caught in a jam while I got there almost half an hour earlier. I guess coming from PJ has it advantages. So I was now starig at the entrance waitig for them. I hope it won't be long as I was starving!