Land of Lemons

I arrived at Kang De Mei around lunch time. To my surprise, it was not very crowded. We went for our lunch at Chew Ji Soya Chicken eatery. After lunch and some waiting, it was our turn! I have been having this fantasy of breaking her good news for the past one and a half years. Today, it was the day! Saturday cases were very long. I entered the room, greeted her and gingerly showed her my BBT chart. She said, "Looking at your happy face, you have good news to share with me is it?" "Yes! I just tested positive this morning!" I replied. Physician TSB looked so satisfied with herself and said, "Wow, this is natural conception, good good." She took out an old exercise book and began to calculate my due date and gave a number to my baby and said this was the number don't know how many thousand babies. She wrote some details down on her jotter book. I told her I was worried about this pregnancy because like the rest of the pregnancies, this was con...

It was the time of the month again! Not my period but my monthly appointment with Dr Tan Siew Buoy. I arrived at 5.10 pm and oh gosh! i WAITED until 6.30 pm for my turn. I overheard her clear voice in the waiting area. I like to call it a holding area because it was very narrow. She was speaking very slowly to every patient. I passed my time playing Fun Run and connecting the crosses on my chart. I felt uncomfortable because I was holding my pee. My period has not arrived and I knew in my guts that she would ask me to take the pregnancy test - her famous $3.50 pregnancy test which I rejected before and got chided. So, I knew that I would have to take the test later and I would need my pee. Interestingly, the patient before me also needed to take a pregnancy test. I heard some exclamation from the doctor and the patient went out of the consultation room with a plastic cup. While the patient went to take the test in the toilet obviously, I was directed into the consultation room. ...

I took my favorite floral dress from the wardrobe and got ready for a wedding celebration at a cosy church downtown. I loved the dress because the cutting was great and gave an illusion that I was slim and shapely. The wedding venue was beautiful though a bit humid. Everyone was given a fan. Everything was going fine until I had to control myself from crying when I heard the marriage vows "in plenty and in want". I was so taken in by the two words "in want". In the past, I used to think this is talking about money. Today, I understood it a little deeper - we desperately wanted children. It encouraged me that marriage is a big risk. You have to stick with the person in want. The pastor was praying for the wedding couple and the congregation just said their amens when a toddler shouted out loud, "Amen!" , a delayed reaction and everyone burst out laughing. That was how a toddler could bring joy to people around him. When would my child arrive? I looked to ...

I saw many visitors on Dr Tan's posts. In fact, it is my most popular post. I shall do a detailed post of what a visit to her clinic is and I hope that this would benefit you if you are considering to consult her. First of all, the address in Chinatown - Health and Beauty Pte Ltd 康得美 38 Upper Cross Street, Singapore 058341, Singapore 6534 4137 Two days ago, I received a call from her clinic. They would always do a reminder before the appointment. I went to Chinatown and managed to find a lot. Her clinic is situated within a large Chinese Medical Hall called Health and Beauty - Kang De Mei. I tore out a coupon of an hour as the car park attendant is rather active in that area. I will always park along Mosque Street. I walked along the row of shops and reported to the receptionist. The lady would ask for my number (every patient has a number) and write my name on a piece of paper. She would then place the paper according to the sequence of appointed time with the other...

Despite my grief over my loss and helplessness over my dismaying tests results, I managed to pluck up whatever courage was left in me and looked for my fourth TCM Physician - Dr Tan Siew Buoy, someone that I found myself visiting for the longest period. I was pregnant for the third time in May. I started spotting and my pregnancy was failing around end of May but my first real bleed was only around the beginning of July because I had consumed too much oral progesterone. The sac had miraculously disappeared on its own when I went to visit Prof Mahesh to be scanned around June. The doctor said that my body had absorbed the sac! I visited Dr Tan Siew Buoy the same period I saw him. I was not looking for Dr Tan Siew Buoy. I did not even know who she was. The person I was searching for high and low was Dr Tan Siew Lan as my colleague was healed of her infertility through her when she prayed to God. She was supposed to go for a surgery for her fallopian tubes but she went to Thong Chai i...

I was feeling very lost because Dr Tan Kian Sing's prescription was always the same. Along the way, three people from my church spoke to me about another TCM physician in Thomson Medical Centre on three separate occasions. She was Physician Xia Ai Wei. I thought it might be a sign from God. Since I was losing hope with Dr Tan Kian Sing, I might as well try Dr Xia AW. She was young and pretty and pregnant. Very patient. Spoke English. She said my body was yin in nature and that exercise is very good for yin people.  Her acupuncture sessions were like facial or spa sessions. The room was classy and relaxing. There was music playing. It was the best acupuncture experience of the three TCM doctors that I had seen. The powdered medicine tasted nicer because it resembled Liang Teh (cooling herbal tea) instead of disgusting bitter liquid. But the charges were also twice the market rate. In order to start acupuncture sessions with her, I had to pay a one lump sum for ten sessions of a...

I was growing increasingly impatient with Dr Tan Kian Sing for reasons stated below. Once again, just like Dr Ang Mui Choo's prescription, I experienced no improvement in my health and cycles. I was still ovulating late and my BBTs were not ideal.  It was dubious that the prescription would be the same for every woman. I thought the best part of TCM was that the doctor could prescribe individual medication according to the body's constitution? I got increasingly uneasy over eating tablets that were unnamed, let alone regulated. I was okay with eating herbs but I really had no trust in those tablets.  Dr Tan's prediction of my ovulation was not very accurate. I hated the long waiting time at the waiting area. I disliked sachets of powdered instant herbs mixture. They were awful to drink to the point of gagging at times. I also read bad reviews of instant herbs mixture online. Furthermore, those sachets were made in China and recently, there were so much bad press abo...

I have been visiting TCM ever since my first miscarriage if you have been following my previous posts. Recently I changed to Dr Tan Kian Sing in Clementi as my colleague was also under him. I goggled him and discovered that he was a famous fertility TCM specialist. My hubby and I went to see him. His clinic was very small but clean and modern looking. His waiting time was also around 1 hour. He looked very fatherly. The first thing he asked us to do was to go for a hormone tests for me and a sperm analysis test for my husband. His clinic had a tie up with Raffles Medical clinic which were some shops away from his shop so it was quite convenient for me to have my blood drawn. My husband had to go to Novena to have his sperm checked. He told me that he went into a cubicle with pornographic videos and magazines to masterbate.  The results are out! His sperm was deemed to be in a very good condition and Dr Tan said that he did not need to see him at all. He was so healthy that the do...

On the day I received the terrible news that I had a chemical pregnancy, I headed straight to Yu Guo, a TCM clinic in Kembangan. Yu Guo is not a fertility clinic. I did not know that TCM fertility clinics existed. Helpless and devastated, I remembered my friend, who had suffered from Bell Palsy at 14 with half her face paralysed, visited Yu Guo. After a few sessions of acupuncture, she was completely healed. I was amazed with what TCM could do what western medicine could not. Since then, I was convinced of the healing abilities of TCM.  My husband drove us there. We took a queue number and waited for our turn. I really needed an answer which Dr Adrian Tan could not give. I needed some advice which he too, could not give. I needed a shred of hope to keep my body functioning. When we entered the room, Physician Tan was exactly the way I remembered he was. When I told him my story, he looked so empathetic that it touched my heart. His voice was so soothing and caring.  He com...