I have a sleepless night. I am waiting for confirmation that the cab I have tried to book will come – it is impossible to get a taxi in rush hour, especially if its raining and, it transpires, so is pre-booking one. So at 6 a.m. I am calling them again – nada. The system here is that the cabs responds to a call out if they feel like it and are nearby. Thinking it will take at least 30 mins to track one down using the latest app – Grabtaxi – I press all the buttons and, bingo, one arrives in 3 minutes. Feel I HAVE to take it as I might not be so lucky later…. So there I am, one and half hours early for my appointment with the gynaecologist, sipping green tea with toasted rice in a large shopping centre, finishing Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour. I always take my iPad to medical appointments.

Dr Tay is part of a Women’s Cancer Screening consultancy group, and I am depressingly surrounded by thin, bald ladies having chemo in a side room, overlooking the city. Doesn’t fill me with good cheer, I must say.

The appointment is over quite quickly; he takes a look and some photos – a bit lurid for me I have to admit – and tells me that he recommends a D & C and hysteroscopy – a diagnostic telescope to see what is happening inside. The good news is there is an 80% all is fine and that it is a simple reaction to the HRT I have been taking. We don’t really go into the 20%, though words like pre-cancer and cancer are mumbled.

He wants me to go in ASAP, but of course Tommy and Olivia arrive Saturday and the following Thursday we have a big party for Ross’s boss and the local team at home, so we decide that Tuesday is the earliest and latest I can do, given that I have to have 3 days bed rest after the op – he performs it under a day-case general anaesthetic.

Being Singapore, where nothing is left to chance, he wants me to have a pre-op ECG, blood tests and, wait for it, a chest x-ray. I suppose this is quite useful as it means I needn’t have another until Christmas! Silver linings and all that…

So off I trot to the exceedingly bustling Thompson Medical Centre, which is mostly full of pregnant mothers and new-borns (and a shop to sell them everything they could possibly need), where I am processed for the op – passport, ID card all required plus prepayment – and the three tests are taken. My pulse and blood pressure are still extremely low.

All of the above takes place in just over 2 hours; pretty impressive.

My little friend the sunbird has been visiting me daily, and chirruping away, so I thought I would share this photo I took earlier in the year.