Bornean Sun Bear Conservation

Category: Siew Te Wong, conservation | Date: Jul 05 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

I survive!

Sorry for the long silence.

It was a very very hectic times (well, seem hectic all the time but last week was even more so) over the past two weeks as I have many things to cover in my agenda. This is my agenda look like which I have to do them all in a week:

• Traveled from Kota Kinabalu to Penang where I am from and to visit my father, who is 84 years old.
• Took my sister’s car to Kuala Lumpur the next day to apply for my US Visa from the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
• Visited University Putra Malaysia to deliver a talk to professors and students at Department of Veterinary where they plan to have a series of studies on sun bears.
• Met with a potential funder for BSBCC in Kuala Lumpur
• Visited a captive sun bear, Wang-Wang, who is raised by private owner at Batu Pahat, Johor state, southern part of West Malaysia. I did made 800 km round trip driving but failed to see the bear. Long story … Will tell you more about it later.
• Drive back to Penang to have an operation at Pantai Hospital to remove a “lipoma” near my left armpit.

The lump near my left armpit, size of a goose egg, has been surgically removed finally after I found out about it early this year. The lump or a kind of tumor, is actually a fatty tissue that grow in a clump known as “lipoma.” The good news is, it is a benign tumor and not the nasty malignant cancerous tumor. I was “knocked down” by general anesthetic (GA) for an hour and recovering well, I guess, so far. I have been administrating in many anesthetizing events on animals, mainly bears, for research and management, now finally know how it feels like. It feels weird actually. There is a very small chance that I will never “wake-up” from a GA, according to the statistic. However, I woke up. Here is the first thing I did when I gained conscious and capable of holding my cell phone to take a photo of myself- I survived~!

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