16/06/2008 Jingye's turn

It had been an uneasy weekend. I noticed I had a small lump at the neck lymph. I got Blocked nose, buzzing ear, heavy head and easy tiredness too. They were similar to Danni's NPC symptoms. In fact, apart from the lump, other symptoms had been there for quite a long time. In March just before I came back to look after Danni, I had a few weeks of nasal bleeding.

It would be a lie to say I was not worrying about myself. But then there were more compelling things to busy with for the family than to receive a double blow.

The other day I chatted to a gentleman, an early stage NPC patient. Although NPC is notorious hard to detect at early stage, he was alerted from persisting blocked nose and buzzing ear at one side.

Average physical checkup won't pick up this sign unless one visits ENT specialist. But average Lao Wang (aka Joe Blogg) won't queue for two and a half hours to see an ENT specialist for cold, would he?

He was lucky out of unlucky. It was so early that he was pardoned from chemotherapy.

Danni and I didn't discuss any probability. We tried to keep calm over the weekend. There can't be so misfortune a family, can it?

First thing Monday was to go to visit an ENT specialist. It came to a point that hiding the head in the sand would be too late?

The hospital system in China works like a massive walk in clinic. No referral need-just pop in, a massive supermarket. However, one could only get same day appointment. I did use telephone booking system but it turned out that it didn't make me special in anyway. I still had to join a mile long queue to reception to pay a consultant fee and get a waiting number, then waited for my turn for two and a half hours.

In those two and a half hours, you could imagine what had been run through my mind.

It won't be double as bad for two both got NPC compares to one, would it?

Doctor sent me to nasal-endoscopy, which deploys a telescope into nasal cavity to observe the tissue.

Waiting at the corridor, my heart was pounding fast. I couldn't concentrate to think about the 'what happen'. There was a voice in the head kept reminding me it was natural and perfectly fine to be anxious and panic.

One would have to be pushed this far to share this feeling and appreciate being living without fearing the deadline.

Three months and 5 days ago, Danni had been sat here, waiting for her fate to be told. I can now fully felt what she must be thinking. It wasn’t ‘me’ that worried me. My mind kept jumping on ‘us’: Ryan, Danni, my mother etc.

The telescope moved in and out my nose. I couldn’t content myself and told the technician my worrying. ‘You know, you found my wife a NPC three months ago, I am worrying it could also happen to me.’

‘What’s her name?’ the technician asked. ‘I will give you a good check.

I swallowed the other part, ‘Please find no nothing. Ryan is just 9 months, you know.’

I could feel the luke-warm telescope moved in and out both nasal channels. ‘I didn’t see anything, they all very clear’, her eyes fixed on the monitor.

‘Please don’t. Please don’t’ I almost burst in tears.