MCL: Treatment in Singapore Part 1

This is a long overdue post. I wrote a series of posts, charting that period of my life when I was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma.

If you missed the earlier three parts, click the links here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

 

So here it goes.....

So I was told that an appointment was set with the oncology specialist at the National University Hospital, Singapore on the immediate Friday. I was in the middle of a training session when I was called and told about the news. I bid farewell to my friends and colleagues, not knowing when I would be seeing them again. That evening we had a doa selamat and solat hajat.

The mood at the Airport the next day was somber. It had been a while since I left Brunei with tears in my eyes. I could not remember if there were any dry eyes that morning at the airport too. I left Brunei with my parents and my sister. On a different trip, this could have been a happy occasion, but not at that time. The two-hour flight to Singapore felt long.

During the appointment the next day, I was explained more about the disease. I recall the doctor expressing his surprise that I was diagnosed with this, as it would normally hit older men. The doctor also explained to me the treatment that I would have to go through. As the disease was quite rare, the doctor was opting for a more aggressive treatment. I would have to undergo seven courses of chemotherapy of increasing strength and the last course was expected to be so strong that it would probably kill most of the cells in my body making me very weak and very susceptible to infection. I would have to be isolated in a room for about two months with minimum human contact. The doctor was also planning to harvest my stem cells in between the courses of the chemotherapy. The idea was that they would try to harvest as much as stem cells as they could, which would later be given to me after the final course of chemotherapy. One permanent effect of the chemotherapy would be that I would become sterile. I was to see a reproductive system specialist to discuss on the options of storing some sperm samples.

During the first consultation with the oncology specialist, I passed along my medical records which I had brought over from Brunei. However, the doctor told me that I should have brought the more important item, i.e. the samples of the lumps that the doctors in Brunei had removed. Also, the doctors in Brunei had not completed scanned my body (using CT scan). So he ordered me to go for another round of CT scan, which I learned later to be quite unnecessary if only the doctors in Brunei ordered it. Apparent--ly. I would have had chemotherapy if these were available.....

To be continued....