Many of you have heard that my wife, Sun, had been sick for the last two weeks.
Since early February, Sun had been feeling nauseous and sick in her stomach. At first, she passed it off as being perhaps a viral attack or food poisoning. But as the weeks passed and the symptoms persisted, her regular LA physician, Dr. Sugerman, advised her to see Dr. Feldman (gastro-enterologist), Dr. Fine (internal medicine) and Dr. Philips, a director at Cedars-Sinai Hospital at Beverly Hills.
When Sun was a little girl, she had a severe case of appendicitis and her appendix was removed. As the injured tissues tried to seal themselves back, tissues that should have been separated started to adhere to one another, causing “adhesions.” The adhesions prevented the organs from moving freely, causing them to become twisted or pulled from their normal positions. (Apparently, more than 90% of patients develop adhesions following open abdominal surgery.)
When Sun was a teenager, she had an operation on the same area of the appendectomy to remove her adhesions, which explains her “famous” scar across her flat tummy.
This time, after a series of tests, Dr. Philips discovered that there were adhesions again. They were in the small intestines, twisting the latter around and obstructing the flow of food into the digestive tract. On March 3 (Tue), Sun was admitted to Cedars-Sinai for a laparoscopic surgery, a keyhole procedure, to remove the adhesions. She was discharged after two days and was expected to go back to the recording studio within 10 days or so.
However, a week later, on the night of March 10 (Tue), Sun felt pain in her abdomen and fainted in the bathroom. She then vomited and the pain became very severe. She was readmitted to the hospital and they started doing tests on her. By March 13 (Fri) morning, her stomach was very bloated and the level of pain had increased to 9 on a scale of 1 to 10. X-ray results showed obstruction again in the stomach. The adhesions had relapsed. By now, her stomach was swollen like that of a 5-month pregnant woman. Dr. Philips rushed for an emergency abdominal surgery to remove the adhesions.
Sun was in surgery for 6 hours. When she came out of the OR, she was totally worn out. There were many tubes going into her body, administering fluids, painkillers and antibiotics. The worst was a plastic tube, 1 meter in length and 1 centimeter in diameter, that had to go through her nose into her stomach to drain out all the liquid waste. (See the photo below.)
That tube caused tremendous pain and built up lots of phlegm. Sun had to cough out the phlegm to prevent pneumonia, the inflammation of the lungs. But each time she coughed the phlegm out, her stomach convulsed in pain. She could hardly move a few inches without the tube hurting the walls of her organs. The fact that it went through her throat gave her a severe sore there. But to protect her vocal chords, the doctor couldn’t prescribe her painkillers for sore throat. Because of all the pain, Sun hardly slept more than an hour at a stretch for the next few days.
Meanwhile, due to the trauma of the operation, the intestines were “asleep.” So, every couple of hours, Sun had to walk around the ward (with all the tubes attached) to “wake up” her bowels. Besides that, she had to grapple with an on-and-off fever. It was a heart-wrenching experience for me to see her in such agony, and yet so determined to get well.
By March 17 (Tue), her intestines began to “wake up” and function again. Within the next 24 hours, all her tubes were removed. The doctors were very pleased with the speed of her recovery. (All her physical fitness training in the past helped!)
Sun is still not totally out of the woods yet. The stomach is still mildly bloated and the pain is still there, although much less intense. She is still recuperating in hospital. For the next few days, she is under close supervision to see if the adhesions will regroup and reform again. The doctors won’t discharge her until all the intestines have fallen into their rightful positions.
Thanks for all your love and prayers. I know that many of you are praying for her speedy and total recovery. Obviously, her US album launch in the summer is delayed by a couple of months. But the priority now is to get her back on her feet in good health.