“Oh no, not again! Why didn’t we prepare like we said we would?!!”
That was the first thought that came to my head two days ago when I got the call.
It was the call nobody wants.
How Does Anyone Prepare For That “Cold Sweat” Moment?
The time was half past noon.
I had just finished a morning city walk with some fellow stay home dads and we were lunching at a busy hawker centre. I was half wolfing down a plate of chicken rice when my phone rang urgently.
The call was from my wife’s number but the voice on the other end wasn’t hers. It was her office colleague MP. She had called to tell me my wife was in acute abdominal pain and breaking out in cold sweat. Her pain was excruciating enough to leave her barely able to speak and on the verge of fainting! This happened in the middle of a work meeting. MP had called for the paramedics who were on their way.
Barely able to recover from the shock of this sudden turn of events, I quickly gobbled down what’s left of my lunch, bid a hasty farewell to my friends and headed straight out to find a ride.
Big Yellow Taxi To The Rescue
Fortunately, I caught sight of a big yellow taxi on the main road that was dropping off passengers. Immediately I made a beeline for the cab. By then, MP had updated me that the paramedics had whisked my wife in an ambulance to the hospital near her office and so I directed the cabbie to do the same.
Throughout the ride, my mind kept churning with unhealthy doomsday thoughts. Competing head voices were both telling me to stay calm and berating me for not being more prepared. My body was so tense I sat in the cab the whole time with my torso leaning forward in fight or flight mode, poised as it were to leap out of the cab as soon as it reaches the hospital’s Accidents & Emergencies Department.
Meanwhile, my mind drifted to the horrific incident just two months ago when my wife had caught a viral flu bug while returning from our family vacation. The bug triggered a high fever that caused her to spend over 48 hours in the hospital!
Didn’t I promise myself then and there to be more prepared? The way expectant parents would pack an overnight hospital bag with all the essentials before the baby pops. Or save all the emergency numbers in the phone so we don’t get caught off guard who to contact when a crisis like this drops? (I didn’t have her colleagues’ numbers)
After all, people always say “once bitten twice shy”, right? Clearly we need to be bitten more often! Like now, as I sat in my existential agony in the cab while my wife was in her physiological agony in the ambulance!
Both making their way simultaneously to the A&E.
Didn’t The Cancer Prepare Us Enough?
Those new to this blog may think I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, thanks to the swift action of MP and other colleagues, my wife got the quick medical attention she needed and ended up spending only one night in the hospital and returned home yesterday with a simple (and, given all the hoopla), rather humdrum, diagnosis: (acute) constipation.
But you see, my wife was also diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer last year.
With such a bleak underlying medical condition, is it any wonder that we daren’t take any health episode, however humdrum, for granted?
And yet, it felt like we were still so ill-prepared two days ago! Logistics aside, my whole mental and emotional state was in such a vortex that afternoon that I could barely hold back my tears and fears.
At one point (this was a few hours after she had been treated by the A&E team and we were waiting for a proper ward and bed allocation for her), I burst into uncontrollable tears right there in the holding room where my wife laid recuperating. That outburst was unexpected for her, and for me. It revealed how vulnerable I felt as her main caregiver. And how deeply helpless I felt throughout the ordeal.
I kept berating myself for not being prepared. Especially since we’ve lived with her cancer now for 13 months, and counting. This latest sudden shock made me see more than ever that I wasn’t strong enough to deal with these life crises.
Yet I see too that I don’t have a choice in this matter. What happened these past 48 hours was “strike two”. We clearly can’t afford a strike three!
So I’ve got to do better.
For her sake. For our children’s sake. And for mine.
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