14 February

14 February
Today is the third day my wife spends her night at the hospital and I am already missing her so much. I guess when people say, absence makes the heart grows fonder, it actually tells you that the person you really love is always in front of you and you will be reminded on how much she means to you if she is absent from your sight.

Last monday, mrs had to undergo a surgery to remove her gallbladder which since we came to Geneva was amongst the hardest decisions that we had to make. When she was diagnosed to have a cyst growth in her gallbladder more than a year ago, we had been monitoring on its growth in the hope that it stopped from growing. Unfortunately just before we came here, the specialist doctor at Bungrungrad, Bangkok whom we had the opportunity to meet for a second opinion advised us that the cyst was growing and advised us to remove it through a procedure known as laparoscopy or a key hole surgery. This was supposed to be a less invasive form of modern surgery. The cyst growth we were told could be cancerous if it went beyond one cm in size. But this was based on statistics and there was no way of knowing if it was cancerous or not without taking the gallbladder out as the cyst growth was inside this organ. I actually wanted my wife to do it much earlier before we came to Geneva but I got the transfer order with little choice but to delay the decision. The specialist informed us that we could perform the surgery in Switzerland as this country has amongst the best hospitals and surgeons anywhere in the world. It was three months before mrs finally took the scalpel partly because we couldn't settle down as the house hunting and registering the kids at school took us awhile and our whole container load of stuff from our previous posting did not arrive until after the new year. And of course this was made even harder as we were not able to have any maid to take care of the kids when my wife was expected to spend a couple of days at the hospital. As a minimum wage for a maid as required by Swiss law here is around chf 2600, there was no way we could afford it. So we had to decide that the best solution was for the surgery to take place when the kids were having their first break of the year when they would be at home taking care of each other. Of course daddy will now have to play the role as the supermum the kind of role that mrs has been doing over these years whose chores include preparing breakfast, dinner and tucking haziq into bed. Fortunately enough Afiqah my second daughter is already big enough to help out. Today she prepared nasi goreng for dinner as I arrived late from visiting mrs. It was tasty and I complemented her.

Absence does make the heart grow fonder and I cant wait for the supermum to come home. I love you sayang. We all wish you for a speedy recovery. Amin.

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