Vulnerabilities

Some worrying news this morning regarding Boon. He was looking well earlier in the week when he and Mei visited us at Sungai Petai, so we were very taken aback to hear that he's now in hospital again, in Woodlands (despite having seemingly recovered from his heart problem in late April.) He woke up in the early hours of the morning losing blood several times, and on the final occasion he blacked out in his bathroom, banging his head, creating a bad gash that needed 14 stitches to close it.

The doctors are now reassessing the medication that Boon is on. I know he's been taking some potent blood thinners, because he told me so, and he was also telling me about the problems he has controlling his cholesterol levels as he's allergic to statins, so conventional treatment just doesn't cut it for him. It sounds like whatever unconventional treatment he's receiving is a good deal less than optimal. I think his drug cocktail stretches to at least seven pills daily, so there's obviously a lot of room for experimentation. 

It would be easy to make the entirely false assumption that Boon is the kind of guy who hasn't really looked after himself, but nothing could be further from the truth. He's extremely savvy as to issues of medication and has been super-fit for most of his years, working out regularly. His lifestyle has always been supremely sober, so his recent travails on the heart front can only be due to the sheer bad luck of inheriting the wrong sort of genes. Which is a sobering reminder of just how vulnerable we all are.

I can't help but think of the breakdown that afflicted me in September 2022 which just came out of nowhere, for no reason. And I can't help but be aware that my recovery was due to luck and getting the right treatment somehow or other from the team at the National University Hospital. I suppose I showed some resilience, but that was a minor factor in circumstances that went well beyond my control. 

Anyway, the good news is that Boon has resilience and good sense in abundance and if anyone can bounce back from all this, he is the man to do it.