The evil that some do, you would never believe until you experience it.

On Thursday night, I went with some friends to attend a seminar on 'camoludin' and as the people with me were ex-colleagues of mine who knew me well, they asked about my life after my wife's demise and from there to the sickness that took her away from me.

I remember November and December 2000 very well as that was the time when my wife started feeling pain in the stomach region and weakness. We went to a clinic where she was told it was her old gastric problem returning. The problem stayed; appearing intermittently until we believed she ought to enter a hospital for a thorough checkup and found that she had gastric ulcer and needed an operation immediately.

She went through the operation in January 2001 and seemed to come out of it without much problem as she had always been strong, with sufficient exercise and proper home-cooked balanced meals. Unfortunately, at that time we did not realise a danger found in operation rooms, the dreaded MRSA, a virus which cannot be eliminated, therefore preventing the healing of wounds. According to what I hear, the MRSA virus is still as dangerous and without any method to destroy it. Well, that virus prevented her wound from healing till the day she passed away in August 2001.

While in the hospital, she was found to have another medical problem, Cushing Syndrome which was the uncontrolled over production of hormones in her body. This lead to all sorts of sicknesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, bloating of the body with too much water retention. When the doctors, first in the Sungai Petani Hospital, then Nam Wah Ee Hospital in Penang and finally in Hospital Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Cheras, gave her medicine to remove the excess liquid, another problem cropped up; the loss of too much potassium from the body with the heart in danger of stopping its beating. They quickly injected her with potassium while I rushed out to get some bananas.

As she got weaker, she got pneumonia and water was found in her lungs. When her lungs weaken as it got worse, the doctors tried to suck out the liquid with a syringe from the lungs and in doing so punctured one of the arteries. She was immediately wheeled into the intensive care unit where she passed away the next day.At the time of her death, the wound with the MRSA was still not healed.

Since she had not taken drugs containing steroids and she had never taken Chinese medicine which, according to the doctors, contained steriods which can cause Cushing Syndrome; what could have brought it on?

As for her getting the stomach ulcer, I personally believe that the cause came from her work as a teacher and senior assistant in a Chinese school where the headmistress was a sadistic tyrant who was happy to see the teacher under her control suffer in one way or another. I had even made a complaint against her but the system is such that the people at the top seem to not want problems to be aired. However, she did manage to get a transfer but then as events proved, it was too late for her to escape the consequences of the pressure she had to endure.

There was a time when friends did ask me,"So, what did you do?"

I could only tell them I had done all I could when she was alive. No matter what I did after her death nothing could bring her back. I had to accept that. But I believe in karma and that those who had done her wrong were in a worse position; my wife was no longer around to pardon all the wrongs that headmistress had done her. She knew what she had done wrong and would have to bear all that forever. That is a universal justice I do believe in. You see, I do believe in God.