screwdrivers, anybody?

Damn.... the wildest things happen to me!

I am rather hesitating to write this here now, but I'm going to go ahead on the off-chance that maybe someone can actually help me. Sigh. Not that I'm expecting anybody really to be able to help, but stranger things have happened.

I went for surgery yesterday to remove the plate in my arm that was put in two years ago from the accident. Everybody assured me it was a simple procedure, and it IS a simple procedure. Just cut, remove it, close. Easy-peasy!

I got to the hospital at 7 am. After waiting for a loong loong time, I finally was wheeled into the OR. It was strange being the patient (not that I'd ever been the doctor). But during my internship I would follow Dr. Bohl around, and observe pretty nonchalantly the patients in the prep room being wheeled into OR. It's been awhile since I've been the patient (not to sound like a regular to the operating theater!), and the last time I was there I was so doped up I don't remember a thing. This time, I had plenty of time to muse about how nervous I was feeling, how weird it was to lay on the bed, feeling pretty much helpless and small. NOT a very nice feeling for control freaks like me.

Anyway, in the OR the anaesthesiologist put an IV in me.. very skillfully I must say. It hardly hurt at all! There was also this funny thing he put on my forehead - apparently it's to monitor the brain waves. He injected the anaesthesia, and I felt a strange liquidy thing pulsing through my veins (or maybe that was just my imagination). Things started to get woozy real fast, and the next thing I knew I was awake, my head pounding like it was going to explode. I felt like I could hardly breathe, and was gasping and gasping. Not a very pleasant experience at all, to say the least. Somehow I managed to gasp out the fact that I felt like I was going to die (heh), and the doctor came over and gave me something (morphine I think). The nurse also gave me an oxygen mask and told me to breathe in and out slowly and deeply.. which I did. It helped somewhat, but it seemed like eternity before I finally calmed down and could relax again.

The pain. Ugh. Well.. let's just say I've forgotten how painful these things can be. It didn't help that I had this weird misconception that it wouldn't hurt so much just because it was a simple procedure! Of course I woke up with that throbbing pain in my arm, so much that I thought I would start screaming. I suppose the painkillers hadn't kicked in when I woke up. Still, it was pretty unbearable for the first part of it, and it only got better after I fell asleep.

Despite feeling really dizzy, I couldn't really fall asleep at all. They wheeled me back into the ward, and I lay there for awhile drifting in and out of consciousness. My parents came in soon, and then I had this sudden urge to call Caitlin. Don't ask me why... maybe it was the bonding experience we had through the accident. Heh.

******
OMG OMG OMG OMG. THE DOCTOR JUST E-MAILED ME.

******

Anyway back to the story before I explain what that above sentence meant. I was very insistent about calling Caitlin, and I couldn't understand why my parents were so reluctant for me to do so. My mom then took my hand and told me gently that they didn't manage to remove the plate. I'm not proud to say I started bawling my eyes out at the end of that sentence. She went on to explain that they couldn't do it because the screws that were used in my plate was different, and they didn't have the proper screwdrivers for it. Man.. I really started to sob the place down then. I was sharing the room with 3 other people, and thankfully my mom drew the curtains around me so I had some privacy.

I don't remember how long I cried. But halfway through I started laughing.. at the irony of it all. I dunno.. I'm thinking the morphine must have done funny things to the neurotransmitters in my brain, thus the yo-yo mood. Hm. Anyway.. I still insisted on calling Caitlin. Unfortunately she didn't pick up, so I left this really convoluted voicemail. Then I tried Saki - voicemail. Finally I called Eush. She was asleep, but she did pick up her call. She was so confused... poor Eushie! I started sobbing down the phone again... and she didn't know what to say at all. I must have traumatized her so much. Heh. Poor girl had to put up with my emo-ness.

Anyway.. like all things, everything calmed down after awhile. I drifted in and out of sleep. There was once when I felt so antsy and started talking non-stop to my mom. After which I had to go to the bathroom, and I felt like my wind was knocked out of me. NOT smart of me to be so hyperactive after anaesthesia. I even had to be wheeled out of a wheelchair to the car - I think I'd just have collapsed on the ground if you got me to walk.

Before I got discharged the surgeon came around and talked to me. He was so sorry about it :( Everybody was.. it was just totally unexpected. He said he had called the agent, and apparently these screws were new and not yet launched in Southeast Asia. So they couldn't get the screwdrivers from another hospital around here if they wanted to. At that point I suggested contacting the doctor who operated on me, and also the doctor I shadowed during winter term to see if they could help me out.

Subsequently I came home, slept off the anaesthesia. Woke up at an ungodly hour again. Have been checking my e-mail obsessively since waking up.

*****

So, the OMG is because I saw that I had a new e-mail in my gmail inbox, and it was the surgeon who operated on me replying me. He said he contacted the agent from the company, and they're going to send it over! HOORAY!

Ok, I'm exhausted with all this typing. This emotional rollercoaster thing is tiring. AHHHH.

:D

it all comes to an end eventually..

I suppose I never thought this day would come, but here I am - sitting in front of my old home computer, the fan on full blast behind me. The house is comfortably silent, with it's familiar creaks making up the background noise at 3.30 am. Yes, jet lag does funny things to you.

I'm home.

It's weird to be home. Not in a bad kind of way though. I walked out of the airport in Penang and was immediately sticky all over. Ugh. Yesterday I went out for a walk with my friends at the local Youth Park, and without even trying I was perspiring like mad. Hooray for tropical humidity! Sweating just makes the bath at the end of it so much more worthwhile. Heh.

This semester ended on a much better note than it started out to be. Waaay better. It wasn't exactly that I got more productive, or that I necessarily did more things.. but somehow my mood lightened, things stopped bothering me so much, time-wasting was not such a torture anymore. This semester has been an enlightenment to me in my ability at : cramming for exams, staying up late, sleeping as procrastination, eating as procrastination, 'blobbing' around campus in desperation for some human contact (and more procrastination). Oh, and let's not forget the triathlon that took Caitlin and and I all of -two- day to train for. Haha.

It also helps that grades are out and I didn't do as badly as I thought I would. Or rather.. given my effort this semester, it's amazing enough that it turned out the way it did. I suppose at the end of it I did realize I wouldn't be failing any classes (insert a *slap slap* moment), but it's also not very nice to think about the way I approached my classes. Ok 'nuff said before I start sounding even more like a pretentious little prick.

Man.. I had all these plans of things I wanted to do when I got back home. Unfortunately, inertia and lethargy is setting in...AAAAAH. Must.. Be...Productive! I promise I'll be more productive after Monday.. I promise I promise.

For now.. I'm going to stop here. I hope I've entertained Szerlik enough with this post. Not that it is a very cheerful post anyway. Ugh.

paralyzed

ever felt paralyzed by fear?

i am right now =.=

H.E.L.P!

disappointments, expectations, life

Looking at my upcoming schedule for the next few weeks, I feel about ready to bury my head under my covers and never get up again. Exams in all my classes, papers in two of them, and then finals after that! Whee =_=

I came to the realization today part of the reason I'm so disappointed with myself this semester while I was talking with my neuroanatomy professor. Somehow or other, I got myself into this vicious loop of not keeping up with the work in classes, and even though I somehow or other manage to scrape through the exams alright whenever they come up, I don't feel as though I am learning as much as I should be, and want to.

Four more weeks left in the semester, and a ton of work to be done before it's all done. At this point, I feel like I have failed myself utterly in every way possible. I'm thankful that my professors and friends here are so understanding, and have cut me so much slack, but at the same time, I wish that they didn't have to...

musings...

It just occured to me that every single time I go to a performance, be it music, theater, dance or whatever in Oberlin, I get very contemplative.

Just watching people on stage performing makes me think about the days that I would do 'stuff' like that. I also just came to the realization that since primary school, I have performed in some way or another at every institution I've attended, except Oberlin. (Well...I guess I DID sing with College Singers last year...)

When did I change, I wonder? I used to feel strongly about a lot of things.. yeah -_- People who know me nowadays wouldn't really use the word 'passionate' to describe me for sure. In fact, it was Leekie who first coined the word 'semangatless' to describe me.. was it then when that started?

I thought I'd found the old me again last semester, when I came back to Oberlin in the fall. I was busy, but felt such strong satisfaction in everything I did. Then.. somewhere in midst of all that, it just started getting downhill, work didn't seem so fun anymore, and everything just lost its flavor. Even Christmas ... was tiring.

There's 5 more weeks left in this semester. I look back at these two months and wonder, where did it all go? It just seems like one whole stretch of grey mush in my mind. Looking at my calendar ahead of me, there's nothing really exciting. I quit tumbling, and won't be in the circus this year after all. It just wasn't fun anymore... for some reason or another. [read: anhedonia]

one dysfunctional sem

Alright. This is it. I'm giving myself one semester, this one semester to go haywire.

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, surely this 5 months won't matter right?

So there it is.. I'll be a better person after this sem. I promise.

Friends

Yesterday, a friend of mine left school.

He wasn't a very close friend, although nowadays I don't really know how to define that word anymore. I first met him second semester freshmen year. We were never really formally introduced, but he was at Wilder a lot, and since I worked at the front desk, we somehow became friends in that funny way that things happen sometimes.

This year, I was in Third World Co-op with him. At the beginning of fall semester, when we were still having game night regularly, he would come by sometimes too. He was one of those people that I wanted to get to know better, hang out with more, but never got around to it because school, work, life and so many other things seemed to be more pressing at hand.

Spring semester, I cooked Friday lunches with him. The way he cooked amused me - he was always very precise, very careful in his preparation of food, whereas I lived up to my mom's philosophy of cooking - 'agak-agak', 'cincai' and 'luan luan lai' :P

A little digression: Americans love to ask you how you're doing. It's always at the beginning of every conversation - what's up, how you doing, how are you. Yet it's not always a real question - it's sometimes so much easier to say 'good', 'ok' and leave it at that. Anyway, back to the topic: one Friday we were cooking lunch, and of course we had the usual 'how are you doing' conversation. For the millionth time that semester, I said 'not so great', because that was my very honest answer.

Somehow that led to a conversation about how crappy I was feeling this semester, how unmotivated I have been, my lack of focus in everything, my inability to concentrate, the feelings of hopelessness, my increasing anti-social attitude towards the world. He also shared how he was doing, which was amazingly similar to what I was going through. And I also learnt some things about him that I never learnt about before.

And then just this Friday night, he told me he was leaving.

I didn't know exactly how I felt. I was sad to see him leave, but sad wasn't the right word for what I felt when I found out. It was more like.. a sort of resigned feeling. A feeling of lost opportunities. Even a slight feeling of panic.. will I end up like him?

I went to his room and talked for nearly 2 hours on Friday night. It was the first time we really talked. It was also the first time I'd talked to somebody and realized that I could very well be the person I'm talking to, the first time I really truly could say I knew, on some level, what he was going through.

He also showed me some of his photos from college etc. I was struck by how different he looked each year, and how different other people that I knew looked too. Isn't it strange how people change?

And so.. he's gone now.

********

Sometimes I wonder why this is happening to me, why am I withdrawing from everything, why am I seeking solace in eating uncontrollably, which then makes me fat, which then only makes me more miserable?

Why is it that I seem to have lost who I was?