Part 2
At the Jakarta eye center, while waiting in the queues, my mom keeps nagging saying that why I didn’t accurately share about my situation, if she knew that I was blind a week ago she would bring me to hospital. I told her that I thought I have shared clearly about my situation but at the same time, I believe I still needed to finish my exams.
In the diagnosis room, the doctor did various checks from the vision check, eye muscle check, light-responsive check, and few others. The doctor concluded that my eyes’ physical conditions are healthy even for the blind eyes, the reason being for a blind person their eye muscle won’t be able to move yet mine was able to. The doctor recommended us to go for MRI check to ensure that I did not have brain cancer or a tumor.
Due to some of the considerations, we decided to get a second opinion. My mom remembered about Mr. Tseng who run alternative therapy using Chinese medicine and Qi Gong healing. Mr. Tseng treated my father light stroke and a few of her friends from sickness such as diabetes and cancer. He recommended us to do the check-up at either Singapore or Malaysia rather than in Indonesia due to the high rate of malpractice in Indonesia healthcare.
Since there was enough time before traveling to Malaysia, he asked my mom if she wants him to treat my eyes. He always assured my mom and me that everything would be alright in each of my treatments. The condition of both my eyes were deteriorating to the extent that I could not see any digital generated vision such as TV, Handphone, etc.
One day before I needed to travel to my grandparent’s home, both my eyes were temporarily cured and I used that reason to cancel off the traveling due to my past bad experience when I stayed in my grandparent’s house. Until my secondary school time, we often travel to my grandparent’s hometown at Singkawang (Singkawang is a small town at Borneo Island and located near the equator line which means the weather there is hotter than my hometown in Jakarta).
My grandfather’s house is a three stories shophouse, the first level is my grandfather building contractors supplies shop and they stayed on the second and third levels. The house was constructed with wood and metal materials and it has a zinc rooftop, which trapped heat. I am born with eczema breakout tendency, which heat and sweat are two of the worst triggers of it, thus my grandfather’s house is not an ideal condition for me to stay. Moreover, I still remember vividly on my last trip, my twin nephews were still babies and they were always left unattended on the day time without wearing pants or diapers in the living room. Every once awhile they will poo anywhere indiscreetly and it is unsettling for me.
No matter how I tried to convince my mom that I would not need to fly to Singkawang, she replied firmly that I needed to fly to Singkawang and travel to Sarawak by bus trip together with my aunt because this is the most affordable route for me to go to Sarawak for the check-up.
The whole night in my bed, I experienced a terrifying vision of visiting hell, which changes my way of thinking, I used to think heaven and hell might just be some story that religion shared to create fear in us. Thus by having the vision of visiting hell, it did change my belief. The next morning, I traveled alone by plane from Jakarta to Singkawang. On the plane, I kept imagining how hot the weather will be at my grandfather’s hometown, how dirty the house will be and imagining my eczema breakout again.
My uncle picked me up from the Pontianak airport, throughout the 3 hours drive journey, I continued the same visualization as I was having on the plane. When I reached my grandfather’s house, I stood in front of the shophouse and realized the exterior was the same as before.