it's not everyday that a loved one of mine goes for surgery in my hospital.
two reasons actually: i don't have many loved ones. and besides, the only person who comes to my hospital of employment for medical check-ups anyway, is the paternal grandmother. now, that's what i call a loved one. in more ways than one, the paternal grandmother is one person that i will be eternally indebted to for making my childhood wonderful.

back in the days of the primary school, the canteen would serve unbelievably small meals at exorbitant prices. in case there are any ang moh readers out there who assume the canteen is like your typical American high-school cafeteria, let me just clarify. there were no cafeteria trays involved, no cafeteria assistants who donned aprons and gloves and served mac & cheese, no jello, no mysterious green substance that all the students avoided and definitely no random Columbine-styled shoot-outs. what they had though, was a miniature food centre of sorts which sold everything from laksa to fried dumplings to chocolate-chip bread. and miniature they definitely were. most of the students in the primary school felt that one serving of whatever they bought was enough to last through the rest of the day. i have never seen eye to eye with them. maybe it had something to do with height difference or a BMI that indicated i was morbidly obese.

but there i was trying my best to scavenge the most of what i could from the school canteen's various food sources. one of these, came in the form of an underweight classmate who was in the 'Milk Program'. the school, you see, wanted to encourage all the skinny shrimps in the school to fatten up, possibly to a size worthy of Tiger Prawns. and they did this via daily ingestion of milk. i remember this fattening up made me shudder because it reminded me greatly of the story of Hansel & Gretel whom the witch wanted to fatten up and sauté for a Christmas dinner with her fellow cannibalistic loved ones. but greed came before fear and my underweight friend would pass over his weekly-issued milk coupons. mainly because he spent recess playing soccer and he also hated milk. and just to digress, he was a formula-fed baby. we found that out one fine day when we were comparing our ministry-issued health records.

so i already had a choice beverage that came in a variety of flavours (chocolate, strawberry or plain). what was lacking now was a diet that came in a portion worthy of my morbidly obese Primary School frame. that, was when the paternal grandmother stepped in. she was the only relative other than my Godmother who would occasionally slip in a coin or two for that extra bit of food. from the eyes of a typical primary school-going kid, these amount were pretty big: a dollar sometimes two. these amounts were enough to buy an extra serving of food for at least several days. i was as happy as a Gourmand could be.

the father didn't like the paternal grandmother doing 'underground' stuff like that, because he wanted to instil discipline in his children - he wanted them to live within their means. but she still persisted and always without the father's knowledge. it was really risky for her as back then before the father saw the light of Christianity, he was like a vial of Chemical X that had been shaken, heated up and tossed around one time too many - he was violent, volatile and temperamental. my buttocks and the cane constantly came into contact with each other, and not in the same way that they would meet in the deviant gay sex context of mine today. i would have gotten more uppity and corporal punishment from the father if not for the paternal grandmother's constant intercession. she was always the one who would stop the father from overdoing the harsh shouting and scolding. and the father, being a son, had no choice but to listen to the grandmother. this is the second reason why i will always be indebted to her.


my paternal grandmother has always had osteoporosis. she takes a really long time to recover from falls and no matter how much Analene and glucosamine she ingests, her bones still remain as brittle as stunt glass. she's already had two surgeries and i have no idea the number of nuts and bolts she's had in her limbs. all i do know is that she's halfway on her journey to integrate man with machine, and give and take a few years, she'll have a vice-like hand grip so firm that she can break the father's arm if he ever gets violent again. i realize how extensive my grandmother's medical history was when i counted the number of x-ray films (44) with the operating theatre reception nurse yesterday.

i was doing the morning shift and extremely lucky to have been able to get to the orthopaedic ward right at the eleventh hour. the health care assistant - a very nice Malay lady - was waiting for the ward nurses to complete the pre-operative check-list. and like a Grandson in Shining Armour, i appeared just at the right moment, smelling of sweat and patient crap. while the ward nurses were busy counting all forty-four of my grandmother's x-rays, we made small talk with the Malay lady. we talked about family and we talked about work. we talked about the fact that there were at least four nurses in the paternal family on last count.

somewhere along the lines of conversation though, the topic of great grandchildren popped up. i knew that i would somehow be dragged into the whole foray about girlfriends and when i was going to bring one along for a show & tell. BAH! what use are grandchildren if they don't produce kids of their own?! truth be told, it was the last thing i expected coming from my grandmother. after all, this is a woman who's about to go for an operation and currently having a high blood pressure reading (fasting for the operation gave her headaches).

and almost like a conspiracy of sorts, the malay lady and grandmother started ganging up on me, trying to softly cattle prod a girlfriend out of my social circle. of course, it's times like these that i have prepared an entire barrage of excuses that i shoot back to relatives with ease. these include basic reasons like 'Oh! I'm too busy at work!' or 'I have no money to feed myself or buy cigarettes, what more a family of four?' the more elaborate ones would beat around the androgynous bush: 'oh i have a partner already, but my partner is still shy to meet the family, give me a few more years, 10 perhaps?'

but i was tired and smelling like crap, so i just gave the all too simply answer of 'Don't have lah!'. thank goodness we reached the operating theatre reception at that point of time and there was no more talk about girlfriends. the OT reception nurse, a familiar face whom i've seen many times and made stupid jokes with, recognized me and helped check my grandmother into the OT. when i told her that this old lady here was my grandmother, she gave me a look on the face that said 'What? you mean you have a grandmother?!'

despite the incredulous look on her face, she still manage to blurt out in Malay, 'Hey, your grandson, does he have a girlfriend or not?'

and here we go again....

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