Admitted on the 7th of October 2007 at Hospital Pantai Ayer Keroh around 2pm. Admission to ward went smoothly. Later that evening, my blood sample being collected to be tested. Chest X ray that suppose to be done on that particular evening has been postponed to the next day. So, its quite a boring day in ward for me that day. As I knew that after the surgery, I will not be able to smoke for quite sometimes, (if possible I wanna quit smoking after the surgery but not a promise though…) so that night, I became a dragon.

The next day around 810am in the morning, I had been brought to the X Ray department for my chest x ray. It’s just lesser than 10 minutes processed and without no time I was again inside my ward watching TV. My dad arrived at ward around 11am and surprisingly my Virtual Tourist’s friends, Chia and Diana came for a visit just before I’d being pushed to the OT Room. I really appreciate their visit and morale supports.

As the hospital’s medical attendant pushed me towards the OT Room which is situated a level below, I think I started to felt the adrenalin pumping. Shivered a bit due to the coldness of the temperature as I wore an OT Gown plus the uneasy feeling of being operated started to cloud my mind at that time. Once I was inside the OT Room, the hospital staff and my Anesthetic doctor started to ease my tension a little bit by saying good things and positive messages and I glad they did that. I did not met my Neuro Surgeon Dr Nachii during my consciousness and by the 2nd anesthetic injection, I passed out.

The surgery went for around 4 hours plus and I didn’t realized when I was being pushed to the ICU. All that I can remember was when I opened up my eyes I saw my wife and my father was there inside the ICU beside my bed and I fell asleep again.

I think after a few hours, I woke up and started to feel that I wanted to urinate but it’s surely a stressful thing for me as I was being tubed. I can’t sleep for a quite sometimes due to the fact that I can’t felt my urination process. I asked the ICU Staff Nurse to at least let me stand so that I can urinate but she did not gave me the permission to do so. To my surprised, as I was expecting a painful ‘wake-up’, it did not happened that way. I didn’t feel any pain at all on my neck and just a light pain on my hip. I did not know at what time I felt asleep again but after I woke up next morning, I don’t feel like urinating anymore and that’s a big relief even. The staff at Pantai Hospital especially the ICU Sister really showing their caring and support towards me and other patient.

I was being being transfered to the Special Care Ward on the 2nd day and normal ward on the 3rd day. All together, I had spend 7 days in the hospital and the staff at Pantai Medical Centre took care of me very well indeed. I began to walk on the 3rd day after the operations and felt huge dizziness , so I limited my walking therapy and spend my days only laying on bed. One new experience for me is that I had spend my first Hari Raya (Eid) in ward. Almost everyday I was being visited by family members and friends.

After being discharged, its took around 2 and a half month to recover, and I had just started to go to work on last few days

Was the surgery a successful one? Yeap, it eliminate the pain on my left side but as I am writing this now, I can’t deny of feeling pain on the right side. My right hand side was okay before the surgery and I guess that something is wrong with the right nerve now. I will be going to do the MRI again next year and I guess I need to again taking painkiller as a temporarily relief measure. I also can’t turn my neck quickly as every time I turn my neck, the pain is still there. I guess the new bone graft which was took from my hip does not getting use to the new place yet.

Thanks again for all that supported me during these period of time.