Our Christmas Tree

It was a little bit late, you might say. It was! However with hectic days we had for the last couple of weeks, we really didn’t have time to decorate the house, even just to put up our small Christmas tree. Initially we planed to decorate the house two weeks ago but then My husband was occupied in the office till late, while me busy with the baby and son’s school and Sunday school’s events. Everything seemed to be piled up at the last days of the year.

That’s why I was so happy when my dear nephew volunteered to to install our Christmas tree. He was in school break and came to the house yesterday afternoon. His first intention was to show off introduce his current girlfriend but when he saw no Christmas tree he said they would do it for us.

I joked to my nephew that years ago his dad (my cousin) was doing the same thing to my mom. He came to the house with his girlfriend and decorated our Christmas tree, but at the end he didn’t marry that girl! They just laughed when I told that. Later we left the house for dinner so those two love birds could enjoy their time alone while trimming our Christmas tree .

When we came back we already had a Christmas tree in our living room, built with love by two teens! It hasn’t finished yet as there were still some decors I wanted to add. Still, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in our house .

Anyway, for our house Christmas decoration we decided to focus on the baby as we believe he will still become the center of anyone’s attention who come to our house during Christmas holiday. So we’re not going to decorate the whole house, only a few spots where we always put our baby, like the baby’s room, dining room and a corner in our living room. It will save our energy and money too compare to decorate the whole house.

There will be a lot of stuff toys like in the picture as we already bought some. And when I told our cousins that we’re looking for Christmas stuff toys for the baby, they promised to bring some of theirs for him. It will be fun to see the baby surrounded by those little cute toys

The hospital, Jakarta Eye Center, is about 30 km away from our house and easy to be reached by train since both our house and the hospital are located near the train station. However, during bad weather like this, traveling by train is not a good option. There will be many delays or even cancellations. We tried to wait until the weather was good, but it never happened, it got worse instead.

So yesterday I forced myself to drive her to the hospital under heavy rain. My mom actually didn’t like the idea of me driving in rain, and to tell you the truth I didn’t like it either, but we couldn’t delay it any longer since she ran out of her artificial tear (Hialid 0.1) and started to feel burning sensation in her eye so she needed to get a new prescription.

Anyway, despite all the troubles we went through during our drive to the hospital, we heard good news from her ophthalmologist yesterday. He said my mom’s AMD treatment was showing a great result and her eye was already back and stable to its initial condition (which was after the glaucoma and cataract surgery), praise God. So the doctor changed her monthly check-up into every three month. Her next appointment was set on the first week of February next year, unless she felt something uncommon in her vision or her eye then she needed to see him immediately.

She also got a new prescription for her artificial tear and it’s copy until the next three months. Her ophthalmologist advised her to slowly reduce her Hialid 0.1 dosage from 6 times a day (current dosage) to whatever level she feels comfortable. His recommendation was to reduce it gradually until only three times a day but it depends on my mom’s eye reaction. That’s a really good news for us and we’re so happy to hear them!

He also said it’s common happen to a newborn. What i need to do is feeding him more frequent and put him under the sunlight every morning for 15 minutes.

my two weeks baby

Thankfully, after seeing my mom’s tonometri result yesterday, he said my mom’s eye has responded well to the injection, so no need to do the second injection. Her vision was already stable at 30/100. Her eye condition post glaucoma surgery was also good, with IOP (intraocular pressure) around 9-12 mmHg. So now my mom can continue her life without worrying too much about her eye condition, but her eye still need to be checked-up every month.

A 36D hand-held illuminated magnifier for my mom

After the appointment, her doctor sent my mom to Low Vision department to find a reading aid for her. Ever since she got AMD disease, my mom’s reading ability has dropped significantly. She could not read her Bible anymore as the letters were too small. This has become her main concerns as, for her, Bible was her source of life. She used to read it regularly every morning and for the last few months she was not able to do it. Her doctor said she needed a low vision aid to read small print.

After testing several lenses on her, the optician at the low vision department recommended a hand-held illuminated 9X (36 Diopters) power magnifier with built in LED light as her reading aid. It was actually not an ideal type for reading book as its lens size was only 35 mm so she could only read few letters at a time. But my mom said the most important thing was she could read her Bible again. She would need time to adjust with her new reading aid.

By the way, for those who curious about the Chinese Calendar prediction, now I can confirm they’re correct, it’s a boy!

Thanks for stopping by everyone.

My in laws are Muslims so we’ll be visiting their house today to wish Selamat Lebaran. We expect to eat ketupat there also. Ketupat is a type of rice dumpling, made from rice that has been wrapped in a woven palm leaf pouch which is then boiled. As the rice cooks, the grains expand to fill the pouch and the rice becomes compressed. Here ketupat is traditionally eaten during Eid, usually served with various vegetable and meat dishes. Most (if not all) of the accompanying dishes are cooked in spicy coconut milk.

Unopened cooked ketupat

This is her OCT result before treatment (notice the abnormal blood vessel in the white circle):

This one is her OCT result after treatment:

We have to wait another 4 weeks to see the maximum effectiveness of the treatment. After that he will see if she needs another injection.

AMD is a degenerative condition of the Retina in which the central portion of the Retina, called the Macula, is damaged as a result of the hardening of the small arteries supplying oxygen and nutrients to the Retinal tissue. It is reported as the leading cause of blindness in people over 50 years of age.

When my mom was diagnosed with AMD last month, her ophthalmologist offered two types of drugs for her treatment, lucentis and avastin. Lucentis costs Rp 11 million (US$ 1100) while avastin costs Rp 2 million (US$ 200). The big cost difference between two drugs made us think twice before we decided which type of injection we should choose. The doctor said, “If money is not the problem, use lucentis as it’s already world-wide approved for AMD treatment.” Even though many eye-doctor use avastin as cheaper alternative for AMD treatment, the drug was initially developed (and later approved by FDA) for colon cancer, not for AMD. But he also reminded us that it’s going to be a long run treatment, and he couldn’t tell how many times my mom need the injection. It will depend on the each injection result that will be evaluated every two months.

I wish I could say “money is not the problem”, but sadly, I can’t. Money can become a problem if every two months my mom must have lucentis injection. Though my mom has her own money to support herself, she doesn’t have insurance. For years her medical was paid by my dad’s company, but after my dad died two years ago no more medical support for her. And it was too late for her to apply for new medical insurance at that time as she already 69 years old.

My brother and I can’t help that much either. I don’t know about other families but for us here in Indonesia US$ 1100 is a lot of money, it’s almost a month of my salary. However, after discussing it with my brother we agreed to proceed with lucentis for her first treatment. We just wanted the best for her whenever we could afford. Her doctor said it’s still ok to change to avastin for later treatment “if money finally become the problem”.

After seeing her OCT (optical coherence tomography) test, the ophthalmologist said she had an AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration) disease and had to be treated with avastin or lucentis injection. The difference? Avastin costs $200 while Lucentis costs $1100. I don’t have time to check further deep about those drugs yet, when I agreed to have a lucentis injection for my mom. Hopefully I will get more information before the procedure tomorrow.