Life Is About Challenges...Welcome Those Challenges (Part 2)

Was reading the comments from dear old school friends school and friends that I made through this blog world....and I realise that I have to update this post...I think I come to a point in life where money is not so much an issue any more (no...I haven't got that heaps of money, hidden underneath my bantal or stashed in local banks...), am happy the way I am, even though once in a while mata tu dok brouse jugak the LV's and Loubutin and Zanotti online (like I'll wear them lah!)...but there is so much more to life than all this material being!!

At my age that is coming closer by the day to sunset (tapi hati rasa macam 17, kira ok lah)...I have to deal with more "real" issues...looking at my nephew and niece yang mak bapak bercerai berai, them left terkontang-kanting to deal with their own life because their parents have their own so-called mega issues to deal with, my BIL is ging to nikah for the third time next week, my SIL yang sakit abdominal TB (yeap, the CA125 turned out to be negative somehow), but she doen't have a child of her own...she onced jokingly said to me...let it be my turn to beranak this year...my younger sister who hasn't got any financial challenges at all, but forever complaining about the politics in her office (woi! amongst doctors also got this ah!?), my colleague in the office who has been trying very hard to conceive...of course moi's Yusof yang tersangatlah liat nak belajar, moi's books yang berterabur in the family living upstairs, moi's car yang tak berservice for the past 6 months...etc...

And of course, what we went through in 1999....that time hubby's firm was on top of the world, there were no problems whatsoever with his practice...so tuhan tu maha kaya.....he gave us this ujian...... yeap, Kauthar had a heart like it had been shot many times, with a few valves not closing and the muscle of the left chamber of her heart thickened, and also a right lung that had collapsed (hypoplastic)...the first day Kauthar in the NICU, the doctors refused to tell me what was wrong with her...I knew about her condition 2 days later...I just told the doctors that I knew that something was wrong, so they could explain to me in plain language, which they did...when I asked her chances of survival, they kept mum. I am one person, come what may, I had to know the truth, good or bad, as I had to prepare myself....

The second day, the nurse forced me to express my milk, I said mana boleh, my baby couldn't even suckle....her oxygen will plunge drastically...I was asked to use the hospital grade pump, which to my surprise was very very good....at the end of the whole ordeal I managed to express close to 45 bottles for Kauthar, one lesson learnt...you can breastfeed your baby if you really want!! (so, Ibraheem and Umar were all on my milk!).

On the third day, I was asked to discharge myself from the hospital...so I had to travel daily climb up and down the stairs of my apartment (then we were living in an apartment), fourth floor for my visits to the hospital. Of course my mom and MIL marah, but I thought I never knew how much time left for me to spend with Kauthar, and the least that I could do was to give her my milk...and spend the day time sitting next to her in the NICU...I imagined the NICU like a dark and gloomy cave (yes, it was dark and gloomy), very quiet and one can only hear the beeping of the monitor which were all connected to the nurses' island at the entrance, and there were somewhat like a 3 stage level/depth/layer of the NICU, The closest to the entrance were where the babies recuperating and awaiting time to be discharged placed, the middle part were where the babies who are in incubators and the 3rd layer, where Kauthar was placed, a very cold place, the only lights were from her "cradle" with complete monitors and warmer. Next to her was this baby boy (now aruah) who came out at 24 weeks gestation, covered in a cling film, a baby belonging to childless couple after 16 years....and they were poor! I sedekah diapers to aruah, that all I could contribute...

My routine were to come in (only parents were allowed in NICU), wash my hands and express milk, baca surah Al-Waqiah, dozed off, express milk, have lunch with the other moms who bothered to visit their child there, exchange stories, continue baca surah Al-Waqiah, so on and so forth until hubby fetches me in the evening.....somehow I tak bentan pulak...alhamdulillah...so my belive o all those pantang larang orang bersalin, goes down the drain...I think as long as you take good care of yourself and take good food, you'll be fine..think all those meroyan is your state of mind, you have to get hold of yourself and grapple with wahtever that you are facing with with strength!

One week passed, Kauthar had "an attack", her hypoplastic lung gave way to her weak heart....and the 70% oxygen didn't help! Kauthar had to be intubated, put to a coma/sleep state so that she doesn't resist and pull out those tubes that were going through her, she was not taking my milk anymore, she couldn't, and she was fed with nutritient through iv...but I kept pumping my milk....She was also wheeled to a room, deeper in the NICU, seclusion, and there were only 3 babies at that time in that room...all were critical but stable...only one survived at the end...So, now that Kauthar is asleep, no more Kauthar who would gaze at me as if asking for help, no more cries.....all I could think of that time was to pray to Him...if she was going, take her fast, if she was going to heal, to do it quickly....her medication that went through her tiny veins wer like flat SanPeng...they came in tubes in a stack, how many ml over how many minutes...

To me, my life spent in the NICU was a re-orientation of my past life...there were so many heart ache there, nope not the condition of the babies, but of the parents.....there were babies who were purposely left there as their parents couldn't afford to pay the bill or simply didn't have the means to raise those babies......sebab tulah I tak paham why orang buang nak!!???? Mine...I wish I could swap me with Kauthar...

On the third week, one specialist doctor who was taking care of Kauthar asked if we wanted to shut down, I almost screamed at him....but no, I told him, it's not your job, it's kerja tuhan....I remember one Wednesday, Prof Boo (a brilliant specialist and head of NICU there) asked me to bring Khadijah and Yusof to see their little sister, an exception for us....we took the elder siblings to see their ailing baby sister.....2 days before Kauthar passed away, she actually opened her eyes...by then she already had bed sores on her back and the only means of food and medication to enter her body was through her pusat (belly-button), all the veins were bunked....too much for her! I thought she was going to recover!

It was 7 am on Thursday 09091999, the phone in my room rang, I knew something was not right, I could just felt it ...the lady voice on the other end said ..Kak, please come to NICU now, Kauthar isn't so good....I reached her bed...the doctors were resuscitating her, her chest was already blue with thumb marks...I told the doctors to stop and let her go, the monitor was already showing a flat line.......innalillah, dari Allah dia datang, kepada Allah dia kembali...I felt like a burden lifted from me........actually the night before I saw a glimps of her in the sky, was not sure whether I was dreaming or whether it was real..

That night I dreamt of her playing happily with other children in a garden...and am happy and redha...We went to see her doctors the day after her funeral, to thank them and pay the hospital bill. It ws only then that they told us that babise like Kauthar hardly surpass one week, the fact that she was a fighter and made the second week, they were euphoric, but then had she lived, the congenital effect of the thickened muscle of the heart was not treatable, no medication or no surgical intervention would help her...

When I look back, what we went through with Kauthar was just a path we had to go through for us to learn all the other lesson and hardship of other people that's usually more grave and severe from your own! And Allah memberi rezeki dari berbagai sumber and menduga dengan berbagai-bagai cara......