WED
So the price guide at the NUH website is not completely accurate.
Class C Ward, the cheapest 8-bed ward that's fan-ventilated, costs $33 per night. The 6-bed fan-ventilated Class B2 costs over $60 per night.
Class B1, the cheapest air-conditioned ward and has only 4-beds per ward, costs $260 per night instead of the $180 shown on the website.
This also excludes all the medicine, treatment and consultation fees.
Furthermore, government subsidies only apply for patients staying in the 2 fan-ventilated wards. Apparently I can upgrade from a subsidised ward to a non-subsidised one and still might retain some subsidies, but I cannot get anything if I downgrade the other way.
The upside is that non-subsidised patients get their choice of doctors, although that's useless for me when:
1) I have no idea who's good or bad at NUH
2) We aren't trying to save her life; the point is only to make her end as comfortable as possible
It's not cheap being sick although I'd say Class C wards are still pretty affordable. $33 per night is only $1000 per month. That's the least of one's worries when we take into account the treatment and stuff.
I'll list those when I get the bill in the future, if I'm ever in the mood to dwell on it then.
For my case, I'm prepared to spend half my inheritance on this. I don't expect this to happen but I also understand it is possible that it could exceed that amount.
Not a problem because I also expect my brother to split the bill. I'm not trying to be an ass but I believe in buffers, both in time and money. I need a financial buffer in life constantly, and if I do spend half my inheritance on this, I don't want to think about my buffer for the family business.
So I've been summoned to talk to her neurologists tomorrow morning. 9am. Ugh. I wake up at 9am for when I have to get to the office early.
The doctor told me they had a psychologist assess her and she was found to be unfit to make her own decisions due to her depression and some other problems.
I've already asked her directly last night to confirm this and also judging from her (in)actions for the last 10 years, the answer is simple.
All I'm planning to do is ask them how likely it is to save her, if it is possible to prevent her from suffering if we do not drain her brain and how long it will take before it's over if we don't drain.
At this point I'm very sure it's a waste of their time to save her and they should focus on other patients who are keener on staying alive. Moreover, my mum has already given up on life. Saving her will only make her go through all these crap again in the very near future (her diabetes has to be extremely serious by now since she stopped taking her meds a few months ago, and even a year or two ago, her doctor had already advised her to begin using injections instead of pills).
The expected outcome for tomorrow is that I will ask them to start palliative care for her if possible, and sedation when necessary. I believe right now it's better for her to be unconscious than let her lie on the bed waiting to die, but the next best thing is just to prevent pain.
I've been through a surgery for my shoulder before, so I have an idea what constant pain is like.
So a girl I know who was studying law in Hong Kong the last time we met is now a flight attendant. She was a teacher before that.
Law school must be pretty different from what I thought it was supposed to be.
THU
So it was a very simple conversation with the neurologists. They just told me what to expect and I told them what I expected.
They recommended to the "main team" to refer her to a palliative care team and I got a call from a representative of that group in the afternoon.
The neurologists put my mind to rest when they told me that she will eventually become unconscious sometime in the future due to the tumour in her brain even though it will also give her pain at some point. If it gets painful before she goes completely unconscious, I believe the palliative care people will sedate her appropriately.
Contrary to what some might think, it is nothing like what they show on TV. Family members don't cry all the time, we don't look gloomy constantly and we don't contemplate suicide.
I've lost both parents, so I know.
Crying is of course necessary. IMO it's therapeutic. Holding it in will only cause mental issues in the future.
I still crack jokes, I still laugh and I can still smile when I go to see her despite the fact that she is no longer the person I used to know.
Her memory is messed up, her speech is incoherent and she has been proven to be depressed. Yesterday her employees brought some chicken essence when they visited her. Today when I asked who brought those, she told me it was my bro's gf.
She did buy her chicken essence, but that was weeks ago and that box is still untouched in the living room.
The best thing I can do is to make sure I can handle the business. It's the busiest time of the year, so none of us working here can afford to be too disturbed by this. There are orders to make, goods to check and money to be remitted.
My very first shipment of goods has just been ordered. I'll be finding out for myself what the process is like. Fortunately the factory has agreed to handle the shipping on their end so all I need to do is handle the freight forwarding. I could have handled the shipping too but at the moment, I don't mind the risk of them ripping me off in exchange for a simplification of the process for me.
I think I know what to do. Whatever questions I have, it is now too late to ask my predecessor. I have been given the contact details of everyone I need to call for everything, so I will just call the company I think is the freight forwarder on my end.
All her instructions were given to me in Chinese, so when I made the deal with the new factory online in English, everything's a little less clear for me.
Money is a little problematic at the moment due to some old habits of hers, but I can handle those. I'm a much more honest person, so I dislike owing them money.
Still in the process of getting used to looking at such huge numbers in RMB and recalling that they become very small numbers when converted to SGD.
On the other hand, this new factory demands payment in USD. Hopefully this doesn't complicate things too much.
Hmm... probably not. In fact this could simplify my life a little since unlike the RMB, there is no annual limit on the remittance of USD to China.
For example, I just kinda wasted two trips' worth of cab fare today because of a problem related to this limit. Damn that pointless restriction. Everybody knows it's so easy to bypass it. All it does is inconvenience the very people are who throwing money into their country.
Tomorrow I'll have to go back to the bank and remit again.
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