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Friday, August 11, 2006

my death

Time has passed, work has come, and so has illness.


I think a lot about death. I wonder if every conversation-ending sentence I say to someone I love - my parents, C - will be the last one before I go. I rest assured when it is a 'take care' or an 'I love you' before goodbye.


I think so often about my dying, as is my natural instinct to think about possible worst-case scenarios, and visualise myself overcoming them. I often practise clenching my fists for a fight, if I were to be attacked, while I am walking down the street at night. It has never happened, but I visualise the process of me fighting someone, just so that if it really happens, it will be deja vu instead of shock. I think about me living in horrible conditions, and simultaneously thank God for simple things like the toilet bowl I have now, instead of an open latrine or toilet-with-a-hole-in-the-ground. But I would be able to brace myself to use them, as I have before, and I visualise myself in such surroundings, with my Chaco sandals and all that from my inevitable urbane upbringing, and suddenly it doesn't seem as bad, really. As what my psychologist friends would say, visualisation helps. So I also think about dying.


I wonder it is really time for me to go, and analyse the evidence, for example the things I have done and what I will leave behind in terms of a legacy. But we know we cannot second-guess these things, people always go too soon. I think about how I will go, maybe on an operating table where doctors are trying to fix my bleeding ulcer.


That is too gory, but yeah I have had flashes of those thoughts.


My stomach has been hurting more, with more than my usual symptoms of a gastric problem. I usually get gastric pains and headaches, the worst of the pain goes away with Tramadol and panadol and at one point, Arcoxia. Lately I have been getting stomach cramps and diarrhoea, bloatedness, and acid reflux. It could be a million things - bacteria, ulcers, cancer - and I am going to get a scope to find out which of these three. I just hope I have enough money for all that.


It scares me further when I think about my insurance: gastric problems are excluded from one of my medical plans because I bought it after I had exhibited symptoms, in 2003, just one of the worse years of my life. All I have that covers me properly is Medishield, and I hope it has not lapsed because I have so little in my CPF. Being poor sucks.