Our IDS said they made an initial reading of the MRI scan/s and said they’re clear! The thickening of the colon lining is no longer there and the lymph nodes are all gone. It’s really TB and they have been resolved. Twin A has no malignancy or any symptoms of autoimmune disease, her TB is also gone!

We’re just waiting for the official reading of the scans.

Thank you, Lord!

IDS said during the course of TB treatment, there are instances that lymph nodes will increase as the infection is still putting up a fight (“nanlalaban”) and then they dissipate. Our team of doctors are just making sure nothing is off, especially with quality of tests and reading of scans and test results vary wildly from hospital to hospital. Since Twin A’s TB is atypical, our doctors have to be thorough. Plus genetics is shit.

Part of the thorough examination is the running of TB quantiferon test. Our IDS said she expects it to be negative, otherwise a positive reading means Twin A’s TB strain is drug-resistant. However, the result would be released next week since it’s a holiday tomorrow and on Monday.

We’re going to be discharged tomorrow.

I spoke with IDS and hema-oncology fellows on separate occasions/rounds. All of them said the tests are so far all normal, nothing remarkable that would prompt them something is wrong. Even the stubbornly high uric acid is normal. I checked our billing statement to see if they did some blood protein test or CTC or any kind of test to screen for cancer, so far none. I only saw a TB quantiferon test, lactic dehydrogenase (liver? cancer?), erythrocite sedimentation rate >>> which could just be checking for infections?

She’s going to have her MRI scan tonight, which will determine if there is something big to check/get tissue samples from, hema-onco fellow said. I guess it translates to if there are large lymph nodes present.

I’m storming the heavens with prayers. 🙏 Everything will be all right.

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I thought we wouldn’t be back like this but here we are. I got a smaller room because I assumed we would be here for only a few days… Keeping my fingers crossed.

Left home at 4 am, arrived at 5:30 am, got admitted and got into the room at around 8 am. X-ray, blood tests, urinalysis, etc done. Scheduling of MRI and biopsy still underway. Much to Twin A’s dismay, she is again inserted with IV.

I’m still left in the dark. I don’t know what they’re thinking. I was able to talk to our hema-oncologist’s fellow tonight and asked, if there’s malignancy, shouldn’t my patient feel sick? She said yes, she should be having fevers and losing weight. But she gained 50% weight within a year and she even had volleyball training this school break and she was fine, I said.

I don’t know if I’m ok if they’re suspecting some autoimmune disease. But I am definitely going to freak out if it’s still malignancy and lymphoma is still in the mix.

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Whew, pedia resident said my daughter’s uric acid has gone down to normal even without the maintenance medicine and her bilirubin and other indicators of liver health are all ok. 🥲

We’re just waiting for her creatinine result and off we go to MRI soon!

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For our daily dose of realizations:

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No wonder the atmosphere was heavy, hazy, and very humid yesterday…Taal Volcano is acting up again and the ashes are blowing up this way. The local government has suspended classes today because of the heavy vog we’re having.

Yesterday morning, the world was still fine and I walked to the weekend community market to buy food for the entire Sunday because I didn’t want to slave in the kitchen.

I encountered freshmen college students walking in blocks for what seemed to be a campus tour. It was probably the first time they met their blockmates. Ah yes, today is their first day of classes and it’s better to get acquainted with the buildings or else they will get lost going to their Math 11 class or Crop Science 1. Jumping to one class to another more often than not requires a jeepney ride.

I walked to the market without any umbrella and I really felt the oppressing heat. I sweated so much and I wondered if it was just me or it was unusually humid.

This freed me from slaving in the kitchen all Sunday. It gave me the freedom to lounge in my bed before we went to church. I should do this every Sunday, no?

So for today, we’re just stuck here inside because the vog was bad. Our Philippines reporter sent me this photo she took this afternoon in her condo.

She said she can hardly see anything. It rained so hard and it was unusually heavy. Rain mixed with vog has certainly reduced visibility. She told me that España was already flooded. Gee, that means Taft Ave is already underwater as well.

Good that we’re leaving at 4 am later and hopefully my mom’s other driver (the first one bailed out on me) can drive my car. Its clutch + accelerator mix is finicky for those who are not used to driving it. My sisters gave up on my car as they can’t get the proper combination—and to think their cars are also manual transmission.

Anyway, we’re already packed for PGH. 😴

My two outside kittens are healthy but I have yet bring them to the vet clinic for their shots. I have too many things on my table right now but I’ll get to that soon. They don’t stray too far, they just stay within our compound when they’re not on my doorstep. My indoor kitties have grown more tolerant of them but I still keep them separate. Until the outside kittens have been vaccinated and dewormed, they won’t be able to enter my house, just to keep both indoor and outdoor groups healthy.

Save for our trip to PGH next week and the unknown that lies ahead, life is generally good. I’m so easy to please and maybe what turns off other people is that I don’t have any ambition to climb the social ladder and/or try to wield power and prestige. 

What I want is the polar opposite. I want this for myself, the life this artist has created for herself (see below).

She’s free to experiment with her art because she has no financial pressures. Her overhead is minimal and she has the luxury of having leisurely coffee or tea breaks among the trees. She doesn’t have to worry about healthcare because Australia’s healthcare is free for urgent and necessary care.

Someday I’ll get there.

Meanwhile, I got stressed with just reading about this story about Brandon Miller and his Instagram-whore wife, Candice Miller.

I know some people who had aspired for their kind of life but maybe I’m just built differently. I’m stressed by it. I think the desire to become like them comes from a place of insecurity and general lack of joy and satisfaction.

It’s no longer keeping up with the Joneses. It’s keeping up with Ivanka and the Olsens in the Hamptons. It’s hard to keep up appearances. 🥴 Unless you’re a trust fund baby, you have to toil away until you die just to keep the mansion in the Hamptons and the multi-million home in Manhattan.

It’s not the way to live. You’re barely living with that kind of lifestyle. Candice wasn’t even monetizing her Instagram content; she was just showing off her life, which some people on Reddit have estimated to be costing them USD 10m a year. It’s money they don’t have because they owe creditors at least USD 17m, not counting the money they owe friends and the lawsuits Brandon was facing. Brandon killed himself just to be able to live the Instagram life Candice was keeping.

So nope, I’m fine just where I am now. I don’t have debts and I don’t plan to have them. I will devote time to writing columns, books, researches. Arts and crafts. I do not desire to hang around parties and be photographed as a socialite.

Once my obligations to my children end, I may go back to teaching and lead a simpler life. Teaching is just to keep my brain sharp and to join the government pension fund.

After I have my solar power system up and running, my overhead costs will be minimal. I will lead a life like that lady in the bus in that YTube video.

I had been invited to be an adjunct in my old college in this uni but I declined since I can’t handle my job’s current stressors and if I transition into another job, it will just be so complicated. Handling the thesis of graduate students is not a walk in the park. I can give occasional lectures but time commitments are tricky.

Lord, help me get through next week then I’ll figure out what to do with my life.

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From a macroeconomic perspective, this is a disaster. However, I cannot fault the Thais for choosing the child-free path or delaying pregnancy. You see, unlike in more developed countries in Scandinavia, the Thai government (or governments in Southeast Asia in general) do not provide structural support for families to encourage having children. In Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries, they have free healthcare (giving birth is almost free or affordable), public schools are excellent, and maternity leaves are years-long. Those things are unheard of in Southeast Asia.

The problem with raising children in this part of the world is unaffordability, especially in capital cities where the jobs are. The village that raises the children (“it takes a village to raise a child”) doesn’t exist in cities—unless you’re lucky to have your extended family with you to help with child-rearing. Middle class families are trapped between the need to have two working parents and having one parent to stay at home to take care of the kids. With rising cost of everything, especially private school education, many couples are opting to go child-free. Public schools in this part of the world are crap, except for specialized public schools that are hard to get into. The comments section of this news feature by CNA reveal that. Many Southeast Asians chimed in, agreeing that this is not only a Thailand problem.

Alongside that are the pressures that the “sandwich generation” face; it’s really hard to think about having a child of your own to raise. The sandwich generation are the children who are trapped between supporting ageing parents and raising their own families. This social phenomenon is caused by, among other things, the lack of adequate pension system so the children are forced to become the pension source of their parents/in-laws until they die. In the Philippines and Indonesia, it is very common for eldest children to bear the burden of being the breadwinner of the family and sending siblings to school while the parents have completely stopped working. These children could not even support themselves, how can they even think of getting married and having children?

Another problem is the very low wages in Southeast Asia—these haven’t caught up with inflation for decades. Our governments are adamant in keeping our countries affordable for foreign investors so we can replace China as the world’s factory. How can anyone raise a family with PHP 10,000 – PHP 15,000 a month?

Even I was terrified of having children. I keep telling people I wasn’t ready because being a journalist is a vow of poverty, whether I like it or not. My mom told me, “one can never be ready when it comes to having children but we managed.” With that, I jumped off a cliff and prayed that I will survive…

And speaking of Thailand, the latest political upheaval brought in a new face but the same people. Thaksin’s daughter takes over and there goes the circus. Very Southeast Asia. This will further divide the country. But then, as one of my Bangkok sources told me, it’s business as usual in Thailand. “We have been through many coup d’etats that it has become commonplace and so we continue to plod on.”

These are some of the universal themes played over and over in Southeast Asia and only we fellow Southeast Asians can truly understand each other. My Korean manager couldn’t understand the story she was editing, why banks/lending companies must go to the provinces to offer motorcycle loans. She doesn’t understand that it’s a very big business in Southeast Asia; motorcycles are the main means of transportation in far-flung rural areas, be it in Medan in Indonesia to Da Nang in Vietnam. Our infrastructure is very broken and motorcycles are the only means to private (and public) mobility in rural and urban areas in this region.

What I’m trying to say is such events like the return to power by Thaksin (in the form of his daughter) is very much understood by Thailand’s neighbors.