847. MYANMAR STORIES - An 82-year-old father in Yangon can't sit up at all. Renal Cortical Carcinoma.

28 Jan 2012. 

"Why can't my father sit up for more than a minute?" Khin Khin asked me. Her father had difficulty in breathing and lower back pain on the left and she went home to Yangon to get him treated by the Specialists. I rushed down to her Peninsular Office to see if I could help as her father was 82 years old but had alertness of mind and body. "He can walk to the hospital but nowadays, he can't sit up," Khin Khin was sad.

Basically, I checked the drugs given to him asking her to google for info since a doctor in Peninsula Plaza told her that he did not know about the drugs given to her dad. Tramadol, Lyerica and celophrix (non-steroidal anti-inflam). No wonder he could not sit up as the first two cause drowsiness. Being so old, his body could not eliminate the drug fast like a young person!

With this knowledge, what did Khin Khin do? Nothing. So today, before I left for Bali on Air Asia, I followed through and phoned her to ask the father to stop taking the 3 drugs if he has no more pain (CT scan catheter in Yangon via femoral vein had hit the kidney and cause intense pain, Khin Khin said).

If pain returns, take the Tramadol first and consult the doctors for a review. For 2 weeks, the poor father could just lie down the whole day and night and had no appetite. I asked Khin Khin to speak to him over the phone. He could not answer me promptly as if his throat was choked. Most likely water in the lungs had returned. But there was some medicine to reduce the phlegm and none to remove the lung oedema. The CT scan said there was an atypical RCC (Renal Cortical Carcinoma). 

If her father could sit in the wheel chair, his daughter would spare no expense to fly him to Singapore for a second opinion. I had met the father in Yangon when he was in good health.

He was a very intelligent educated man, working during the old British colonial days of Yangon in a bank. 

It is so sad that he could not sit up for a minute and was vomiting and drowsy and did not enjoy his life. That was why he had not want to go to the Hospital but his daughter got him there. Now he can't walk!

FURTHER TESTS in Yangon showed he had kidney cancer. He passed away later.