KT

When I saw him a week ago, I couldn't tell that he was dying. We met Jes and her mom coming out of the ward as we enter, they were far from dejected - they were laughing. Half an hour later, when we left the ward, we too were laughing.

When I saw him at his bed, it took a while to register in my mind that it was him. He was skinny, which I should have gotten accustomed to, and his hair longer, so he looked like an older man. But he soon came alive with his usual antics.

He had two communication tools with him, a boogie board and a hearing aid to allow him to hear our voices with the help of a microphone to pick up our voices and amplify it for him through a earpiece. The last time we saw him in August, he could still hear a little when spoken to one-to-one.

With these aids, we could speak to him and he would reply by writing on the boogie board. It was as close to normal communication as we could get and he was extremely responsive, scribbling away energetically and decisively, just like his usual self. I marvelled at his handwriting, way better than mine by far despite his condition.

At first we all leaned towards the microphone gingerly, afraid that our voices would not be adequately picked up. He looked at us half reproachfully and half amused. "Stand naturally" he wrote and then gestured and we all laughed.

He also wrote that he may be going home the next day and he doesn't get enough rest in the hospital, with visits by family, friends, doctors, nurses and the frequent tests done on him. He looked a little exasperated, but in a funny way. He showed us his notebook in which he diligently kept records of his condition, systematically, just like he always does. Jes told us later that on the morning he left, he even recorded in the notebook how much blood he vomitted.

Seeing him so animated and so much like his usual self, I felt no sense of heaviness at all. I heard about others who had visited earlier and left teary-eyed. There was none of this when we last met him. It was engaging and light-hearted like the good old days. His pain had been alleviated and he could communicate effectively and it was obvious that he was in high spirits.

He soon had to be fed through the tube and asked that we make a move. He is no longer able to eat through his mouth and the introduction of tube feeding seemed to have made him stronger. When the nurse asked if he needed certain medication, he asked logically is she thought he needed it in her opinion. He was in every way the KT I always knew, before the pain took over.

We shook hands and left, extremely relieved that he seemed to be getting stronger and is in a better condition to fight cancer. On hindsight, perhaps this is his last gift to us, the happy memory of my dear boss and friend as he has always been - quick to cheer one up, cheeky, at times irreverent, but always logical and extremely organised.