tell tale sign of heart problem

Last sunday (26 april) afternoon while playing mahjong with Thean Soon and Tan I received several sms informing the sad news that Law Kong Fook, a former colleague , suddenly passed away in the morning. Later I learned from the late Mr Law's family he had a chest pain on that fateful morning and collapsed in the toilet. 

I met Law about three months ago in the ex-JPS Chinese New year gathering. I could still remember vividly I congratulated him looking so radiant, relax and kind. In fact Lee Hin Lee told me that Law had made appointment to see her on the  afternoon of  27 april not knowing that Law had just passed away the day before. A few  friends called to enquire how Law felt before he suffered the heart attack. Law might be unfortunate to belong to the group of heart patients, about 20%, who did not have any warning sign and symptom of forth coming heart attack. However my personal experience and observations are that we tend to use the excuse "old age" or 'age is catching up" to dismiss the tell tale sign of heart problem  such as getting tired easily like dozing off in the meeting , getting sleepy when driving long distance which never happen before in younger days. Since I had my engioplasty done I seldom doze off in the meeting and can drive non stop from KL to Penang without having to stop halfway to take a nap. Another tell tale sign of forth coming heart problem is the feeling of heart burn and or feeling of  bloating  after meal especially after dinner ,  which we normally blame it to indigestion and it is correct but not knowing that the indigestion is caused by short of blood supply to the stomach due to blockage of heart vessel. A few months before the episode of heart problem, I felt slight heart pain after having a lap (abut 400m) of brisk walking and i just brushed it off as stamina problem. Two weeks before the episode, I suddenly felt breathless after walking down from three story building and continue to walk just about 20m or so, by then I suspected my heart had problem. I was watchful with my heart responses since then until that fateful night which I mentioned in my earlier episode. 

About 5 years ago, one day when i went into the office of Raj, a colleague in the Ministry of agriculture, I saw him sweating profusely in the air-conditioned room, I advised him to drop everything and go to seek a cardiologist advice. He took my suggestion and the doctor diagnosed  him having vessel blockage in the heart and he had since successfully done a by-pass. 

My classmate Kian Yong wanted me to share my experience when we were attending a world wide assembly of Chung Ling old boys in  melbourne in 2007. A few months after coming back from Australia I received a call from him that he had just an engioplasty and he was appreciative of the tips I gave him.

By the way the late Mr Law was a vegetarian for about 20 years and he had been doing regular brisk walking three times per week. Many could not believe that he had died of heart attack. Of course I cannot offer an explanation to this as we know that there are various causes of heart problem. But what i want to say here is  we should always be listening to our body and do not hesitate to consult doctor when we feel some thing is not right to our body. Of course we should also be careful not to be a hypochondriac and scared ourselves to sickness.

If Malaysia has more of this family.....

Yesterday (13 April 2009) I took a taxi from KLIA to my home after my site visit to Sg. Perai Project. In the journey back home I struck a conversation with the taxi driver. It was an enlightening conversation and gave me ray of hope for my country, Malaysia. He spoke such a fluent English that aroused my interest wanting to know him more. 

According to him when he finished his primary school , a Malay medium school, in 1965, he had a choice to continue his education in Malay medium or English Medium secondary school. He took the advice of his mother to have his secondary school education in an English medium secondary school although which meant that he had to spend one extra year in remove class instead of starting straight in year one if he chose the Malay medium school. To his mother if he chose the Malay medium school he had to be sure to get to university  in order to be guaranteed a job after graduation;  if he chose an English medium school and could not manage to get a place in university he would not have a problem to land a job with his Cambridge School Certificate ( the Cambridge School Certificate  was later replaced by MCE which was then replaced with SPM until today). 

He landed a job in a factory and rose to quite a high position but during the financial crisis in 1997 the factory was not doing well and he took a decision to resign. He moved the whole family to Johore Bahru selling "nasi lemak" to make a living. The whole family, his wife and four children (3 boys and one girl) chipped in to run the business of selling "nasi lemak". He and his wife decided to stop at four at the age of 32 worrying that they just could not bring up the children well if they had more children to look after. The biggest worry in his  mind was drug. When the eldest child went to kindergarden, he and his wife decided that the wife quit the job and stayed at home to look after the children. He instilled in his children that they must make it to university  otherwise when they grew up they might have to have 2 to 3 jobs to raise a family. He smartly and rightly spurred his eldest child to study well to give a good example to the other siblings. He did not allow his children to watch TV programme during school days. Considering that in Johore Bahru there were so many channels available from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, it must be very tough to discipline the children not to watch TV programme during school days. He made it a point to have early dinners like most Chinese families so that the kids could have more time to study after dinner. After 10pm every night all the children would come out of the room from studying and march into the kitchen to help in the preparation of next day's "nasi lemak' business.

He made it. All the children are now university graduates except the youngest one who is still in university.  I congratulated him for his success and said to him that driving taxi now is his hobby and not his job. To my surprise he disagreed with it. Tax driving is still his job because he has no pension to depend on. Although the children do give the mother money but they would keep the money for the children. He and his wife are now saving up his hard earned money to go for their first pilgrimage to Mecca.  

This is such a marvelous man  who brought up his family with such success on his own feet and  does not feel that  others and the government are owing him and his family a living. En Md Nasir Nordin ( I got his name from the name card he passed to me hoping that I can call for his service the next time I want to go to KLIA from home), I am so proud of you and thank you for brightening me up and giving me ray of hope for this country. If  Malaysia has more of this family like yours there is no doubt our future generation would have a very bright future. I wish my former colleague En Kassim, who is now very involved in literary work, has a chance to read this and decides to write a story on you because you are such a fine role model for others to emulate.  

The day we were born, we began to face death

" The day we were born, we began to face death" . This is a line I pick up from a preview of a book written by a medical doctor giving  accounts of his his encounters with the terminal patients. It sums up how one should face death  and be positive as long as we are still alive.

Besides the the death threatening experiences in hospital I mentioned in my earlier post, I actually had a few more experiences of brushing with death in my early days. In 1970 Jin Tang, Tjin Hong, the late Gim Tian and I (we were all classmates) came to KL to start our university life in Malaya University. Four of us were crammed in one tiny room in Len Seng Garden. One night we decided to explore the area looking for room to let. As we were riding our motor cycles we were looking out for houses with sign board of " room to let". We came to the end of the tar road and in front of us was a path. As it was dark with no street light , I could not remember was there moonlight, we could not see what was in front of us. Some how we decided to explore  where this path would lead us to. It was pitch dark and we just rode along the path and turning our head left and right trying to figure out what was around us. After some time we still did not get to any housing area and I decided to stop to discuss with my classmate at the back whether to explore further. As I stopped and looked in front of me,  sensation of chill running down my spine. Just about two meter away, I saw through the light from the head lamp of my motrocycle, there was one big disuesd mining pond lying ahead of me. At that spur of moment if I did not instinctively stopped my motorcycle, we would definitely ride right into this deep mining pool and become loss persons for few days to be found later floating in the pond.

In 1971, I was sharing a room with my classmate Say Keong in Section 17 Petaling Jaya. One afternoon as we were studying in our room the weather suddenly turned bad with thuder and lightning . We were sitting facing each other and Say Keong was sitting near the window with his back facing it. Suddenly one lightning struck through our window, piercing passed Say Keong's left ear and the spark just stopped short right in front of me. We just missed being electrocuted! How lucky we were.

In 1972 a few days before our term break ended Say Keong and I came back from our hometown Penang in a 700 cc car. This was the first experience for Say Keong to drive on the trunk road. Those days  the trunk road from Penang to KL was a narrow two lane road with no emergence lane and the road shoulders on either side of the trunk road were poorly maintained. One needed to know the road manners to travel safely in the trunk road. Unless the vehicle in front made a left turning signal or its driver waving his hand to signal you to overtake, it would normally be  unwise to overtake. After about one hour on the trunk road, we caught up with a lorry. Before the lorry gave any sign to allow us to overtake him, Say Keong became impatient and swerved out his car trying to overtake the lorry. As we started to overtake the lorry suddenly an oncoming car appeared. Say Keong frantically pressed on the accelerator but the lorry driver did not seem to slow down for us. Say keong had to do something to avoid head on collision. In panic he swerved his car towards the road shoulder of the opposite lane. Before he could stopped his car on the road shoulder an electric post appeared in front of us. Somehow the car stopped just in time and the electric post was just inches in front of our car. That was another lucky escape from death.

With all these near death experiences and some may call them miracles, I knew we could not worry about or fear death. Death would not only definitely happened to everyone of us but would also happen anytime that it chose to. I am convinced since young that we had no control over death and I should be positive to live on every second that I am still alive lest I would waste my time worrying about it and causing unnecessary stress to our loved ones and friends around us. Last year I conveyed a message to share this attitude towards death with a former colleague whom, I was told through an other colleague, was in distress because of the life threatening  illness. I was not sure whether the message helped him or not but I was told recently he was back to his normal jovial self.

With all these experiences I could not explain why I am still not attached to a religion until today. But like I wrote in the earlier post I do believe there is  GOD and HE is  in my heart. May be Liew is right that I am confused and lost or may be as  Cheng said I am still searching.