%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |  The misadventures of a full-time working/ housekeeping parent! Quill nominee. |
|
** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** So that's the Wife and the Kid in the photo. Not the Better Wife -- that's me. Or at least who I'm forced to be, and try to keep being, most of the time. I've never blogged before, and never felt inclined to do so. Before I got married, I was too busy gaming.  World of Warcraft demands a great deal of your time, devotion, and sanity, especially if you're in an end-game raiding guild. After I got married, I was too busy being married. It turns out that being a husband, a father, a homemaker, and a professional rent-maker is even more demanding than being a guildmaster! Now who could have imagined that? Well, certainly not me.  When I started this blog a few months ago, I had kind of reached a boiling point. I was stressed out juggling all my commitments and responsibilities, and had hit the Mariana Trench in my career. I'm still mired in the deeps, and during this period I needed something else in my life to haul me out. It turned out that poverty is not conducive to creating a healthy and supportive home environment. To add to my depressing financial straits, Lynx's (the Kid) health started deteriorating. From one epileptic fit a month, he started suffering up to three times, sometimes within a single day. Numerous hospital visits and specialist consultations ensued, forcing me to take unpaid leave from a minimum wage job that paid me less than half of what I made as a fresh graduate -- twenty years ago. Silent blame from the Wife began to seep out through resentful tones and then blatant accusations. In this era of 'empowered females', somehow men are expected to earn more and do more at home as well. Ironic, isn't it? What I'm going through is similar to what many women go through every day, and only a tiny fraction of what my mother and the working women of her generation endured. But one thing I am denied which most women enjoy is a group of confidantes they can open up to. Most men I know aren't comfortable talking about, or listening to another guy talk about their emotions and struggles. Maybe it's an ego thing, or machismo speaking. Maybe I need to grow out my hair and a pair of boobs, slap on some makeup before a guy would at least pretend to listen and commiserate. Anyway that's when the blog started, and I started pouring out bits and pieces of my frustrations and elations into the nether of digital space. Beyond the Cloud9   was one of my first few readers, and I enjoyed chatting with her through blog comments tremendously. She's helped me so much by providing perspective and sharing her own stories and experiences with her own family and children.That's what this is -- a little space where I occasionally come in and rant or share odd, interesting, or exciting events in my never-mundane life. A space I hope will attract a few others to come in sometimes, look around and share some words. Enjoy sharing my life with me! ![Merit Badge in Music
[Click For More Info]
Thank you for your participation in the 48-HOUR CHALLENGE: "Return To Innocence by Enigma" Media Prompt hosted by [Link To User support] ! We appreciate that you tackled this challenge... *^*Smile*^* *^*Thumbsupl*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Music-1050.gif) ![Merit Badge in Queen of Comedy
[Click For More Info]
I wanted to send you a little something to thank you for your humor! Your blog entry: [Link to Book Entry #936771] made me laugh so much that I spit my coffee everywhere, so thank you very much! *^*Laugh*^* ~Lornda A.K.A. The Queen of Comedy *^*Crown*^* Refer to for more details on how hard it is to make me laugh. *^*Wink*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Queen_of_Comedy-1875103_14.gif) A big thanks to Lornda  for the magnificent merit badge above! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Family/ Parenting ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Blog Featured in "Comedy Newsletter (August 1, 2018)"  |
| Anyone who has been to Japan (either in person or via internet travel) will know that one can get all kinds of weird stuff here. Some of the stuff that shocked me most when I first arrived here over ten years ago was how one could obtain naughty magazines from the neighborhood convenience store, which were located on the bottom shelf where even a toddler could easily reach them (in Singapore, such materials were illegal), and of course the variety of weird stuff you could get from a vending machine. (Not just soda) From toy figurines and used underwear to beer (how does a vending machine perform age verification?), it seemed there was no end to what wackiness they would be able to come up with. A quick search on Google informed me that the Japanese have at least 28 varieties of tea, such as macha, sencha, genmaicha etc. which are essentially made from different ingredients like barley, rice, or even roasted buckwheat kernels. They are not just different flavors of tea! To an ignoramus like me who only knows tea by their brands (and I only know three brands -- Lipton, Boh, and TWG. Lol), this is like having a wine novice listen to a connoisseur describe a '95 Chateau Lafite (I honestly have no idea what this is, just that it sounds expensive and posh, but I am probably wrong haha) Anyway all this stuff about tea came up during an early morning conversation with a student who missed school yesterday, which went something like this -- (Note that the following contains non-politically correct and possibly insensitive language!) Me: What happened to you yesterday? AJ: Oh, I had asthma. Me: My dad has asthma. Must be really bad for you to miss school. AJ: Yeah, I think I've been drinking too much straight tea. Me: (Making a bad joke) Maybe you should switch to gay tea instead? AJ: (Laughs) No, as in kocha. Me: What's that? Black tea or red? (Not making a joke this time!) AJ: No, it's emo tea. Me: You're kidding me, right? How do you make tea emo? Stuff it full of melancholy? Or brew it with teenage angst? AJ: No, I meant it's i-m-o, imo. It's like a potato. Me: Ah, you should have just said potato tea then. For a moment, I really thought the Japanese invented a tea with feelings... I blame my ignorance on the fact that I rarely drink either tea or coffee, but usually prefer the former. I used to drink everything super sweet (like as much sugar as the tea will absorb) but ever since my hospital scare, I've only been drinking mineral water and plain soda water. Interestingly, I don't feel sugar-deprived at all. I also changed my snacks from potato chips/crisps to roasted almonds if I want something salty, and from gummi bears and candy to raisins for something sweet. Hopefully this lifestyle change adds a few more writing years to my life! And my questions for today's blog are: What are you a connoisseur of? Coffee or tea for you, and how do you take it? |
| Continued from Part 2. Onset Day 11 — Deterioration (Friday, May 11th) My mother and sister arrived from Singapore for their visit, but I was too sick to pick them up. My wife went instead. I spent the whole day in bed. It was hard to move. My abdomen felt stiff and tense, and I could only take small, slow steps like a ninety-year-old man. My fever ranged from 38 to a high of 41.4 degrees celsius. Every time I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, I had strange and vivid dreams. My heart pounded rapid and shallow, and I worried that it would give out from the exertion. In one of these dreams, my heart was needed for an under-the-table deal to get Iran and the US back into the nuclear agreement. Apparently it was a perfect match for the Iranian president, and special operations forces were arranging for my transportation. My heart would be taken out and given to Iran, and I would be kept alive on a machine. I tossed and turned, and woke up in a panic, drenched in cold sweat. My heart fluttered like a hummingbird. I badly wanted to sink into deep, restful sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I would be plunged into another dream. When my wife returned from the airport, she commented that I looked bad — as in rotten banana bad. My skin had turned a nasty shade of yellow, a sure sign of severe jaundice. I insisted that it was a common allergic reaction for G6PD deficient people, but she was having none of it. “Look at yourself in the mirror,” she commanded. I did, and didn’t see anything amiss. Wasn’t I always yellow like this? “We are going back to the hospital,” she declared. # The thing I hated most about about going back to the hospital was having to repeat everything I already said to the doctors on Wednesday to another doctor. It happened to be a public holiday so only the A&E remained open. Naturally, despite my insistence that everything about my case could be obtained from my file, the doctors repeated all the tests I already took, except for the CT-scan and X-ray. They took ten vials of my blood to test, and four tries to find my vein… Since I ran a high fever and struggled to move, they gave me a bed in the busiest section of the ward under the most glaring lights and told me to rest. Wonderful. For hours and hours we waited for the results of this test and that. My white blood cell count had more than doubled since my last visit to 45, which the doctor in attendance, a Dr Yamaguchi, warned gravely was similar to levels observed in leukaemia patients. My wife freaked out more than a little at the mention of the C word, and I admit I did too just a little. I had always believed that my strong ‘yang’ energy would protect me against evil spirits and insidious diseases such as the dreaded C. According to the eastern zodiac, I was born in the year of the dragon under the element of fire; the western zodiac placed me in the month of Leo — all were strong fire signs and the combination boasted incredible positive energy. Now I was not so sure. “What else do you need to do to find out what’s wrong with me?” I asked. “The thing is, since it is a public holiday the laboratory we usually send our blood samples to is closed. However we have called in a favour and asked one of the lab technicians to come back to do your blood culture analysis,” Dr Yamaguchi explained. We had spent more than half the day waiting and not resting much, having arrived just after 1 p.m. It was already after 6 p.m. and I really did not want to stay longer. However since they had specially called someone to come in on a public holiday just for me, I decided that I would wait for the outcome of that analysis. My wife hopped out to grab a bite and returned shortly after. “You should be hospitalised and kept under close observation,” Dr Yamaguchi advised. “I hate hospitals,” I retorted. “I will get well faster in my own home where I’m comfortable. Besides you don’t even know what’s wrong with me, and can’t offer any treatment. All you’re going to do is stick me in a bed, and have a nurse come by every two hours or so to check that I’m not dead or dying.” “Looking at the results we have so far, I’m fairly certain that your blood has been infected by a strain of bacteria in the streptococcus family.” “Good, now we’re getting somewhere. So what’s the treatment for that?” “Well, we’ll have to administer antibiotics, of course. However we can’t do that until we determine exactly which strain it is.” “And how long will that take?” “It depends on the lab,” Dr Yamaguchi admitted. It was almost ten at night. I did not want to be warded when there would be no treatment done, and Dr Yamaguchi did not want to release me. Eventually he proposed a compromise: he would approve the administration of an antibiotic drip that would do no harm, but stood a very good chance of being the correct one against what I had in my bloodstream. I could go home for the night, and return to the hospital the following morning at nine to continue the treatment, at which point the doctors would almost certainly have more information upon which to act. The arrangement pleased me and I agreed, even though I didn’t like the doctor only being 70% sure that it was the correct treatment. At least it wouldn’t harm me, right? The drip took about an hour, and by the time we got home it was almost midnight. I would have only a few hours of real rest in my own bed before returning to the place spelled with a H — hell, for me. And my questions for today's blog are: What kind of weird, lurid dreams or hallucinations have you had before? How many times have you had a nurse miss your vein while trying to take blood? To be continued in Part 4... omigod will it never end? |
| Two nights ago as we were all settling down to sleep, Lynx told his first lie. It started when my sensitive nose detected the odour of rotten onions. "Lynx, you farted in the bed, didn't you?" I growled. The Wife doesn't usually do silent killers, but lets go with loud, exuberant glee. Lynx didn't answer, but remained silent, pretending to be already asleep. "Was it you, you little devil? Come, let's sniff your butt and find out. EWW! It was you!" the Wife teased, laughing. "No, not me!" Lynx insisted, and buried his giggles into his pillow. At that moment, I realised that it was the first time I had ever heard him tell a lie knowingly. Every time we had teased him about farting before, he would simply laugh and say, "Onara kusaii!" (Farts are smelly!) He had never denied it. It got me wondering -- when do children first start telling lies, even white ones? Last year, when I was teaching 2nd graders, I made a rule that if you needed to fart, quickly excuse yourself and do it outside the classroom. Everyone farts, I told them, but that's no reason to introduce all your classmates to what you ate earlier. From then on, the boys would always put up a hand and skip outside for a minute, before returning when it was safe. Sometimes I would still get a stink bomb inside, and when I asked about it, one of the boys would bashfully admit that they were too late to get out before letting go. None of the girls ever asked to go out. And the times when nobody owned up to stinking up the class, I knew it had to be a girl. What I didn't understand was why boys had no problems fessing up, while girls would rather lie through their teeth than admit that they're human, just like the rest of us. I once asked my Wife who she thought farted more often -- men or women, after listening to her attempt to compose a symphony through her non-singing end. She promptly replied that girls definitely do it more, but that was because they had more stuff going on inside their bodies. I don't know how true that is; I thought she farted more simply because she ate a lot more than I did. And my questions for today's blog are: When do you think children start telling lies? How do the people you know own their farts? |
| Every parent worries about their kids (If they don't, they probably need a DNA check, or some other kind of check up). Asian parents often worry about their kids falling behind. The Wife is a case-in-point. "I don't understand anything Lynx says. Why can't he speak properly instead of Minion-ese all the time?" she constantly complains. "He should be able to have a proper conversation with us by now. You should talk to him more." I explain that he tells me all about school on the car ride home, albeit in fragments instead of complete sentences usually. "Today Lynx change pyjamas, sleep" makes perfect sense to me, despite the glaring grammatical deficiencies. I would repeat how the sentence should be phrased, as if that was what he had said, "Oh, you changed into pyjamas and you slept after lunch?" "Yes." (No problem with understanding me there, or accepting that I subtly corrected him) "Nice. I wish I could take a nap after lunch too. Now try saying, 'I changed into pyjamas and slept'." "I changed pyjamas and slept." (close enough for me, and it's the willingness to change and improve that makes me glad) Sometimes I would make him say that a few more times, or he would simply repeat it himself, but often he gets so caught up in trying to express his feelings of enthusiasm that he stumbles over the words anyway. I never stop to correct him on these occasions. It's wonderful to hear the excitement and emotion bubbling in his broken sentences. He learns most of his English from Pixar and Disney movies, with Japanese a constant diet from the Wife, his grandparents and his school. As such, he has greater competency in Japanese in that he uses a wider range of sentence structures and common vocabulary, whereas in English most of it comes off as gibberish. It frustrates the Wife to no end that other kids his age are having meaningful conversations on a range of topics, while Lynx zooms around the room going 'Oh!' in a John Travolta a la Grease pose (I think it's from a Minion movie), or spouts off strings of gibberish as he enacts his own storylines with his toy cars, Paw Patrol dogs, or favourite cuddly animals. It's not like I'm not aware that he is behind other kids his age, even if he is grappling with two languages instead of one. Talia was a three-year old French-Singaporean Chinese girl who lived at my condominium back in Singapore, and I know she definitely spoke more fluently in both French and English than Lynx does now. But I'm more keenly aware that Lynx is not Talia. Whether he is behind now or not may seem like the most important and crucial thing in the world, but I'm looking at the end point. So maybe he'll be four before he starts speaking like a three-year old, or maybe he won't turn out to be the sporting genius he hope he'll become when we put him in this special school for gymnastics and swimming; it doesn't really matter all that much to me. I still love him with all my heart. I know he will become fluent in English, Japanese, and possibly Mandarin (if we decide to go back to Singapore and put him through public school there). He may not do it by six or twelve, or at a pace worthy of being lauded as a child genius on Youtube, but he will acquire those languages eventually. I know this not because he is my son, but because he never stops trying. He doesn't shy away from challenges, and he obviously isn't worried about making a fool of himself by mangling his words. When he dramatically shouts out gibberish at us, I know he is actually repeating something he heard from one of his cartoon movies. He may not understand every word, nor be able to pronounce all of them, but he is doing all he can from what he remembers (he usually follows the cadence closely, mumbles and then pops up with the few words he really knows). "Look, I have a mushroom! And cheese! Not just any cheese, congy dala ageaet!" (I really have to rewatch Ratatouille to get the proper name of that French cheese) Such behaviour seems spurious and maybe a little unhinged, but I know it's not always the actual words he's trying to convey but the emotion behind it. So why put him down for what he's not trying to do anyway? When he does get things wrong, I make it a point to correct him. For the longest time, he kept pronouncing 'room' as 'rune/roon'. So he would say, "I want to watch a movie in the rune." Despite elaborate miming efforts involving exaggerated movements with my lips, he kept saying 'rune'. So I made the mistake of hastiness. Instead of patiently repeating it until he got it or the word sunk in, I Japanized the pronunciation by breaking up the one syllable into two. Instead of 'r-o-o-m', I asked him to say 'r-o-o-m-u', since I noticed that he had no problems pronouncing 'm' when a syllable started instead of ended with it. Ever since then, he makes it a point to pronounce 'r-o-o-m-u' in the exact, exaggerated way that I modelled for him. "That's right," I'd say every time in response, as he smiles up at me for my approval of his effort. "Let's go watch a movie in the room." He'll catch on some day. I know it. And my questions for today's blog are: What kind of difficulties have you faced with learning or teaching a word or phrase? What mistake have you made before because you were too hasty? |
| The asshole lane that runs east-to-west outside Camp Foster is well known among locals. It begins as a two-lane road on both sides on the west, but immediately after the military camp entrance it narrows into one on each side, with only a short merging lane that stretches for about ten meters. Starting from the traffic junction thirty meters before said entrance, cars start filtering over to the right lane since the left soon disappears. Nobody except military personnel using that entrance uses that thirty-meter stretch of road, and in almost three years on Okinawa island driving past daily I have never seen anyone come in or go out from there. Unless you are an asshole. Let me explain. Okinawa suffers from a traffic problem. Granted that it is nowhere as severe as Jakarta or Bangkok where the traffic snarls stretch from one end of the city to the other, when you cram 1.5 million people together on an island with no train or subway service, and infrequent buses that come about every hour, you are asking for trouble. Pretty much everyone drives here. Most households have at least two cars (like us); the donut shop owner next door has five (don't ask me why she needs so many). So now you can imagine the happy scenes on the road during rush hour. I avoid the morning rush by leaving the house at around 630 a.m. Arriving in school one-and-a-half hours before classes begin gives me time to get some writing done, or attempt the impossible task of clearing the spam from my personal email inbox. If I set off after seven, travel time balloons from 30 minutes to about one hour. Coming home is a different matter. We can only clock out after 5 p.m., and after that it's a tight race to make it to the childcare center before it closes at 6 p.m. to pick up Lynx. This is why I really hate the users of the asshole lane. The jam along that east-west road outside Camp Foster stretches up to, or even past, that traffic junction thirty meters away about half the time. It is on these days that the assholes reveal themselves for who they are. Instead of queueing up patiently on the right lane like all the other cars, these drivers filter out onto the left, zoom down that empty stretch of road and then force themselves back in between ten to fifteen cars ahead. Sometimes so many of them adopt this dastardly tactic that traffic on the right comes to a complete standstill to allow all these assholes to cut the queue. Now this isn't the only place I've seen such behaviour before, of course. Singapore is well-known for reckless, impatient, and uncivilised drivers who would wreck your car and crash your family just to get an unfair inch ahead. However, I have always thought of the Japanese as a more cultured and civil society. Seeing the same thing happen here was hugely disappointing, to say the least. Now such behaviour mostly happens on the road, I theorised once to my wife, because drivers feel safe to indulge in assholery behind the protection and semi-anonymity of their vehicle walls. If someone were to cut a queue in person, one would get berated, shamed, or even forcefully ejected from the queue. So why is it that we tolerate the very same behaviour on the road? And why do we have people who would knowingly become assholes just to shave five minutes off their commute? If you know the answer, I would love for you to share your take on this! I often feel frustrated whenever I see another car zoom by on my left and squeeze itself way in front of the queue, and would wish that all the cars on the right would just tailgate and refuse it entry. Sometimes I want to conjure up a rocket launcher and blow up that car into smithereens. However I never do anything, except let it be... sigh. To satisfy my need to see justice done, I have drafted a horror/urban realism story centred around this particular phenomenon and stretch of road. Hehehe, I can't wait to get that story down. And my questions for today's blog are: What kind of assholes do you often come across? What would you do, or have done before, when you come across an asshole like this? |
| Continued from Part 1. Onset Day 8 — Epiphany (Tuesday, May 8th) I usually spent all my planning periods marking student work, but I found myself unable to do anything except sit down quietly and breathe. Chika-sensei noticed how pale and unwell I looked, and suggested that I may be possessed by an evil spirit. She talked about how her brother had also visited Janeh Cave and became terribly ill. Her suggestion was for me to throw salt over my shoulder to ward off evil, and even better yet, rub salt all over my body and give myself a salt bath. Having had several encounters with other dimensions and spiritual forces, I was ready to give her suggestion a try. In fact, I was keen to find an exorcist to do the deed properly, as the salt treatment seemed rather dubious to me. I settled for scrubbing myself all over with a bag of table salt and then soaking up as much salt as I could from the bath. Unfortunately it did not work. My temperature stayed between 38 and 40 degrees celsius, and I continued to feel weak and listless. My appetite was also poor; I had barely eaten more than a couple of bites for an entire week. I began to suspect the aspirin. I had never taken it before, as it was a prescription drug and could not be obtained over the counter back in Singapore. It had worked well the first few times I took it, but it seemed to have no effect at all lately. A quick check online confirmed my suspicions — I was allergic to aspirin. For more than a week, I had been taking a drug that was slowly killing my red blood cells and causing my liver to fail (hemolysis). I stopped taking it immediately, of course, but I knew the damage was already done. I only hoped that it was not too late for my body to start healing and repairing itself. Onset Day 9 — Exploding Syringes & A Medical Enigma (Wednesday, May 9th) I hate going to the clinic or hospital. You spend most of the time waiting, in a place filled with other sick people who are basically carriers for diseases screaming "Geronimo!" at the sight of new hosts. I knew I had to do it though. My wife and I spent almost eleven hours, from eight-thirty in the morning until seven in the evening, letting doctors run a whole gamut of tests on me. They took a nasal swab to check for influenza, blood tests, urine and stool tests. I went through an ECG, took an x-ray, and then there was the CT scan. Something went horribly wrong during the procedure. I was already on an IV drip, but they needed to inject a special liquid into me for the CT scan. The doctor warned me that some people had allergic reactions to the liquid. Some experienced a rash or itchiness, and there could be other minor side effects as well. I seriously doubt that those side effects include a spectacular explosion. This was what happened while they were injecting the liquid into my arm. It felt like fire, fiery hot and excruciatingly painful. I did not struggle but I informed the doctor in attendance exactly how it felt. “It’s just a side effect. Some patients feel warm all over their bodies,” he assured me. “I don’t feel warm all over. I feel pain and crazy hot right where you’re poking that syringe into my arm!” I kept my eyes closed, and tried to focus on breathing and staying calm. Suddenly, there was a hot splash across my arm and face. “It’s over!” someone shouted. “Do we have to do that again?” I asked. I knew they failed to finish injecting all the liquid into me. “No, it’s okay. We’re done.” I breathed a huge sigh of relief. The machine whirred me out and I was unstrapped. As I sat up, I saw that the pillow and half the sheets were soaked in a yellow liquid and my blood. I decided to look away at something less vomit-inducing. I had not had anything to eat the whole day, but that was okay. Ever since I started gorging myself on watermelon the night before, I had been having diarrhoea every hour or so. My wife stepped out to grab herself some lunch, while I lay on an examination gurney and tried to sleep. That day, at least twelve different doctors who seemed to belong to three or four different specialist teams came in to see me. Each time they did the same checks on me — listening to my breathing, checking the inside of my throat, and pressing all over my abdomen, as if they did not trust the findings of the other doctors or that they had done the exact same tests properly. They went through all the results of the tests I had taken that day, and the conclusion was — there was something very wrong with me, but they did not know what it was. My white blood cell count was at 20.1, way above the upper normal limit of 8.6. This suggested my body was fighting some infection, but the doctors could not determine what it was. “Perhaps this is simply my body reacting to the wrong medication that I took,” I suggested. “Perhaps, or it could be something else,” the doctors said. “What could it be?” “We don’t know. All your scans look normal, except for your white blood cell counts.” They wanted to hospitalise me for further observation, but I knew they were simply taking precautions against an outbreak. This was the same hospital where the measles outbreak in Okinawa began, when two patients were not contained properly and a minor epidemic occured. “Look, if you don’t know what’s wrong with me, and you’re not going to treat me, then I don’t want to be here. You know it’s not viral, or my family would have been infected already, and they’re perfectly fine. So it’s either bacterial or just an allergic reaction. Will you just prescribe me some paracetamol for my fever, and maybe something for my diarrhoea as well, and we’ll come back if you have some new findings.” “We don’t know if you’re allergic to paracetamol.” That really was the last straw for me. 10 to 15 percent of the southern hemisphere population had the same G6PD deficiency condition as me, and any clinic or hospital in Singapore I stepped into would know exactly what sort of medication I could and could not take. Over the years, I had simply familiarised myself with the foods that were dangerous to me. I had always trusted doctors to know the long and difficult-sounding list of drugs I had to avoid, and they had never failed me before. Even the army medics knew what not to administer. And now the doctors were afraid of prescribing me paracetamol. I could understand their unfamiliarity with the condition, since it was extremely rare in the northern hemisphere. However a quick check online could easily ascertain whether it was safe for them to give the prescription. “No, I am not. I have been taking it all my life.” They made me sign release documents, of course, making me claim responsibility for the risks I was taking by not submitting myself to their care. But judging by their unfamiliarity with my condition, I felt far safer in my own care. (To be continued in Part 3) So my questions for today's blog are: Have you ever had a doctor mess up a treatment or diagnosis? How do you feel about being hospitalised? |
| This is the account of how I nearly died last month. I have broken it into parts for easier reading. Ground Zero (Saturday, April 28th) On the sound basis of guesswork and scant evidence, it all began at Janeh Cave on Yabuchi Island, just off Kaichu Doro (Ocean Highway) in Uruma. No paved road ran through the island — only a dirt track more pothole than path. That had never stopped me before, and it did not stop me this time. The cave itself was surprisingly un-Japanese in its setup. There were no signs or ticket booth, no fence, no rails, and no designated walkway. Ravenous mosquitoes lurked in the forest between the cave and where the path ended, and sang us songs of praise at our arrival. The front face of the cave was scarred by ancient moss and wild vegetation disappearing into a rather impressive gaping maw. A side tunnel led off into impenetrable darkness. Three-year old Lynx was usually deathly afraid of caves and imagined monsters. However he was not about to let his Papa go off alone to face them, and so he bravely followed. The tunnel narrowed and shrank, forcing me to squat and duckwalk my way through. My wife lit the way with her iPhone flashlight over my shoulder, but I still had to feel the way with my hands. We came to a dead end about ten meters in, which felt like fifty inching in the dark, celebrated our little exploration achievement with high-fives all around, and made our way out. Little did I know that I brought something back, that would end up very nearly killing me over the next few weeks. Onset Day 1 (Monday, April 30th) A fever burned behind my eyes, although my forehead felt cool to the touch. I knew I was coming down with something. When Ms Komine offered me fennel tea, I gladly accepted. I hated bitter teas with medicinal properties, but I knew that whatever was inside my body trying to wreak havoc would hate it even more. It was a half-day for the students, and the afternoon meetings did not require much exertion, thankfully. The full force of the fever did not hit me until I got home. Onset Day 2 — First Fatal Mistake (Tuesday, May 1st) Never doubt the restorative powers of a good night’s rest. I felt fine and fever-free in the morning, but as the day edged towards noon, I began to feel unusually fatigued. I could feel the fever returning, this time with a migraine drumming inside my temple to announce its intention to stay. At lunch, I could barely make myself swallow more than a couple of bites before I threw the rest of my food away. Somehow I managed to last the day, pick up Lynx from daycare and make it to bed before collapsing. I did not clean the house and prepare dinner as I usually did. When my wife got home, I asked her to get some medication for me. Her mother recommended Bufferin, an over-the-counter aspirin easily obtainable at any drugstore. She had tried it before, and it had made her sweat uncomfortably. But it had also cured her fever and headache quickly — exactly what I wanted. I popped two and went to sleep without dinner, not knowing that I had just done something that would start killing myself in a different way. Onset Day 3 (Wednesday, May 2nd) The day began the same way with me feeling somewhat functional at about fifty percent effectiveness. Everyone could tell I looked off-colour, and I was not walking properly. Somehow I managed to survive my classes, although basketball during P.E. drained me completely. I had neither cough nor cold, and no respiratory problems of the sort that usually accompanied sudden bouts of illness, but I did feel short of breath. My back and abdomen ached, and even walking was painful. After I got home with Lynx, I once again crashed on the bed after popping two aspirins. I had eaten nothing at all that day. Onset Days 4 to 6 (Golden Week, Thursday to Sunday, May 3rd to 6th) I fell into the routine of popping two aspirins thrice a day — in the morning, late afternoon, and before I went to bed. My wife had to work throughout Golden Week (three public holidays within that same first week of May), and Lynx’s daycare was on break, so I had the responsibility of keeping him occupied for four days. Somehow I managed to survive taking him to the zoo on the first day. I had left the stroller in the car, which meant that I had to carry his lazy Highness half the time instead of wheeling him around. On Friday and Sunday, we played at the beach and swam. Saturday saw me shivering under thick blankets all day trying to sleep. Lynx seemed to understand that I was not well, and instead of whining for my attention, he kept himself occupied watching cartoons and brought his toys over to play quietly beside me. Onset Day 7 (Monday, May 7th) The exertions of the Golden Week break took its toll on me. I was listless and felt weaker than before. I was behind in grading presentations for two of my classes, but I could barely crawl from the staffroom to class. There was no way I could focus enough to grade any work. It was the first day of the Eiken after-school class, and I wanted to skip it. Instead I forced myself through, even though just the act of raising my voice felt like I was doing fingertip pull-ups at the edge of a hundred-foot cliff. I just need to rest and pop a couple more pills, I thought, still ignorant that was the worst thing I could possibly do. (To be continued in Part 2) So my questions for today's blog are: Have you ever tried to make it through the day despite practically needing to be on life support? What have you unknowingly done to yourself before that turned out to be a terrible thing to do? |
| Lynx's fever lasted till Friday when the influenza decided to morph into pneumonia. The x-ray showed that a quarter of his lungs were infected, and he needed to take antibiotics. To date, he has never ever taken oral medicine willingly, and we have never tried forcing it down his throat. What we have done instead is mix it with sweet juices that hide the taste. He is extremely sensitive, and sniffs everything he eats or drinks; perhaps he was a royal food-taster in a past life? So on Friday night, I went the usual route. There were two types of antibiotics he needed to take. Both were sweetened, but Lynx is so particular about flavour that he only drinks a particular brand of milk and apple juice. There was no way he would drink those powdered meds, orange-flavoured or not. Besides he doesn't drink orange juice. To affect the taste as little as possible, I mixed the first sachet of antibiotics with about 400ml of milk, and separated it into two cups. The doctor's instructions were to take it after food, so my plan was for him to take it at his own pace even if it took a couple of hours, and hopefully without him noticing any difference. Unfortunately he did. "Kusaii*," he stated and firmly pushed the milk away. The Wife shot me the now-see-what-you've-done look, and complained that we should have done it her way, which was to mix with a little bit of water and just force it down. "Drink the sweet milk, or you won't get better," she warned, but in a reasonable tone. "No." "Come on, just do it. You need to do it. Okay, go!" The father-in-law urged, completely oblivious of the inner workings of three-year-old minds and hearts. "If you won't do it to get better, will you do it for Papa, please?" I wheedled. He stayed mum with a resolute look on his face, lips tightly pursed. "Well, if you won't do it, then I guess Papa will have to go to work now, and can't watch a movie with you after dinner," I added sadly. He frowned at this and started to throw a mini-tantrum, but I knew I had him. There was little he loved more than cuddling up with me while we watched one of his cartoon movies for the hundredth time, except perhaps treating me like his personal koala tree on feet while we toured the zoo. "Just a little. You don't have to drink it all at once," I assured him. Glumly, he nodded. Gripping the dreaded vessel with both hands, he started chugging down its contents to vociferous support from everyone. When he emptied the cup, we high-fived and happily went to his playroom to watch Ratatouille. After about ten minutes, the Wife entered with the other cup of 'sweetened' milk, the other sachet of antibiotics, a small cup of water, and a spoon. "You did so well just now, Lynx. Come, can you do it again?" "It's too soon," I whispered, but I knew the Wife wanted to get it over and done with. Lynx was on a high from all the praise at his remarkable accomplishment earlier (it was his first time willingly taking something he recognised as unpleasant and medicinal). And to my surprise, he agreed. First came the other antibiotic dissolved in about 50ml of water. Lynx downed that easily, and exclaimed, "It's nice!" The Wife beamed at him, then turned to me with a smug look. I simply shrugged. "Okay, now just to finish this other cup of milk," she coaxed. She was on a roll, and I wasn't about to get in her way. Lynx bravely took up the cup and began chugging again, more slowly this time with frequent breaks. The Wife stepped outside for some reason, I assume to deposit the other empty cup into the sink. And suddenly, Lynx started gagging. He tried to continue downing the milk but with a heave he threw up instead. I grabbed the milk from him and said, "It's okay, it's okay" as he continued hurling until all the contents of his stomach were splattered on the play-mats. "I'm sorry." He bowed his head sadly. No, I'm sorry, I wanted to say. I shouldn't have made you drink so much in such a short time. It's my fault, not yours. But instead I carried him to the bathroom, took off his soiled clothes and washed him, making sure that he rinsed his mouth clean first. Later as he returned to a 'safe' part of the room to continue watching Ratatouille with the Wife, I washed all the stained play-mats and portable sofa. I sniffed around the room like a bloodhound, cleaning everything that had a whiff of puke on it. Like Lynx, I'm sensitive to smell too. What makes me cry when I recall this incident is how he forced himself to do something extremely unpleasant to the point of throwing up, just to please us -- his parents. And apologising afterwards because he couldn't do what we made him do. Yes, we only had his best interests at heart, but nonetheless I don't ever want to be that kind of parent. We switched to the Wife's way after that, and Lynx is now able to take medicine that he dislikes, but just a little dose at a time (still a milestone). He's still coughing, and wobbly on his feet for some reason, but quite firmly on the mend. So my questions for today's blog are: How do you make your toddlers or children take medicine? What was the most difficult situation you've been in that involves medicine or a medical treatment of some sort? |
Entries in June are for
I got discharged from hospital last Monday, after a life-threatening condition required me to be gored by needles every few hours and serenaded constantly by the sounds of geriartrics* wheezing, coughing, moaning, farting (the wet, raspberry kind), snoring, and whatever other musical clangor they can muster up. The tale of that terrifying and traumatic experience will undoubtedly make its way here at some point in the near future. This entry is about the aftermath. As I'm not out of the man-eating woods yet, and require another three months of daily treatments at the hospital or an emergency surgery that might well cost me my life instead, my parents-in-law flew down from Tokyo on Thursday to help me with all the household tasks my doctor gave specific orders for me to take it easy with. Without help, I would have to take an hour or two off work every day just to make it for my treatment before the hospital closed for the day, pick up Lynx from kindergarten by six, clean up whatever mess my wife decided to decorate the house with, cook dinner and make sure Lynx is fed, showered, and changed, before I get a chance to even sit down for a breather. With my mum-in-law around, I would definitely have a much easier time of it. Plus she always cooks superbly healthy meals laden with vegetables and variety, quite unlike my strictly scheduled Youtube recipes. Things went wonderfully for the first day. On Saturday we spent the day at the resort where my wife works. The in-laws relaxed while I chased Lynx and his best friend A-kun all over the place, then spent the better part of two hours keeping Lynx alive while he practiced trying to drink half the swimming pool in one gulp. That night my wife, mum-in-law, and Lynx were all mysteriously taken ill, stricken by some kind of flu-like virus. All ran high temperatures, and were pretty much out of it, except for Lynx who will happily play through a river of snot pouring out his nose. My father-in-law is good for reading on the couch, and being chauffeured around for his meals. So ironically, the person who was supposed to be looked after suddenly ended up taking care of everyone... Thankfully I'm not quite as out of it as I'm supposed to be. Other than having to endure nurses who probably suck at Whack-A-Mole, judging by how they keep missing my vein, hours on a hospital bed trying to type with one hand because the other has a needle I don't want to move around in it, and an inability to do anything more than a slow walk thanks to the flesh-eating bacteria that has decided to make my abdominal muscles their new retirement home, I feel pretty hale. At least until last night. Lynx ran a high fever of 39.8, which meant he was at high risk of having a seizure. We stuck a fever reduction pill up his you-know-what right after dinner, and he seemed to sleep well. Then he woke up at midnight with terrible chills, teeth chattering uncontrollably, curled up tight like a wounded kitten and complaining of the dreadful cold. This, despite being bundled up in two down blankets, with me rubbing his hands and feet, whispering reassurances, trying to massage some warmth into him. It took us a while to realise that the pill had worn off and his fever was starting to spike again. We pushed in another, and considered adding the anti-seizure pill as well. "He'll be off-color the whole day tomorrow. The pill always does that to him," I mentioned. While the pill would stop the seizures from physically manifesting, the doctors warned that they could still be occurring, just that there would be no visible effects. We decided to trust in the fever reduction pill to keep his condition stable, like it had for the first part of the night. About ten minutes later, he had his first seizure. As usual, there was nothing we could do except breathe our way through it, and make sure that Lynx could do the same. The second followed soon after, and then we thought that the worst was over. He woke up at two a.m., lucid and whiny, insisting on watching TV in the playroom. It took a half hour and a glass of milk to finally lull him back to bed. At four, he had a third seizure. "We should have given him the anti-seizure pill," my wife lamented in a resentful tone which made it absolutely clear whose fault it was. An hour later he threw up all over the bed. I knew then there would be no sleep for me that night. After cleaning him up and dressing him in clothes that didn't have smell instructions to throw up more, I set about getting rid of those instructions from everything soiled -- his shirt, four towels, and the sheets. Lynx refused to go back to bed, and insisted on curling up on the floor right outside the bathroom where I busied myself cleaning everything that smelled off. I found him snoring in the same spot when I was finally done, and carried him back to bed. I could have curled up right next to him and got another thirty minutes of rest, but I decided to dust off this old blog instead. So here I am now at work with barely two hours of sleep in me. Whoopee for Monday. That hospital bed this afternoon is starting to look pretty good to me. So my questions for today's blog are: How has a situation completely turned itself around for you? What was the most difficult situation you had to struggle through when you were unwell? * My description of the old people I was hospitalised with may sound somewhat unkind, but is not intended in that spirit. Having been afflicted with many similar ailments and near death myself, I totally understand why they make those noises; I did too myself, copiously when all I cared about was making myself feel better. Understanding and empathy do not make them sound any nicer, unfortunately. |
| Hundreds of people thronged the park with its spanking new playground, replete with seven slides, two bouncing trampolines, and a giant climbing disc. Lynx was beside me waiting for his six-year old cousin to rejoin us. After more than an hour of mad bouncing and chasing him around, I was more than ready to go home for dinner. Something tugged at my hand, and when I looked down I was surprise to find a small, white string right in the middle of my palm. I gazed forward to where it trailed on the well-trodden grass, but could not see where it led. I turned around to check out the other end, and to my surprise it rose sharply into the sky where about twenty meters above a yellow Winnie The Pooh kite smiled down cheerily at me. It had somehow flown right into my hand. Someone must have lost it, I thought. Only two other kites dotted the sky, so whoever had let go of this string would surely spot it and come running to reclaim it. I'd just hold on to it until then. "Lynx, you wanna fly a kite? Here, hold on to this and don't let go! Look up. See -- that's what you're flying." I put the string into Lynx's tiny hand and surreptitiously hold on further down like a secret belayer. Delight lit up his face as he held on tightly and watched his kite dip, swerve, and perform aerial dances one after another. I almost regretted it immediately. When the kite-owner comes to reclaim it, Lynx would be devastated and I'd have to deal with a screaming, inconsolable kid. "I wanna do it too!" whined his cousin Rito, as he raced over. Uh oh, I thought. Not this again. Ever since he got here, the two kids have been fighting over everything we don't have two of, so that each could have his own. Who gets the watermelon ball, never mind that we have five other bouncy balls and a playpen full of like a hundred of tiny ones as well. Who gets the Lightning McQueen toy car, never mind that literally dozens of other toy cars litter the floor of his playroom. Who gets to sit up front in the car? When Rito is asked to give way and set a sharing example as the older kid, he pouts and spouts off a whole list of what he wants later to make up for his enormous sacrifice. Lynx simply will not suffer to let Rito have something that he also wants. He screams and floods the place with hot tears until he either gets his way, or Rito gives it up as well. All throughout this supposed break, I've been dealing with a continuous stream of such face-offs. So it came thoroughly as a surprise when Lynx allowed Rito to hold on to the string as well, and together they happily flew the kite. For about five minutes they ran around laughing and screaming as they chased the kite, and only once when it strayed too near a floodlight post did I have to intervene to veer it to a clearer patch of sky. No one came for the kite. It was in fine condition, with two perfect tails streaming out. Surely no one would abandon it? And yet despite the kite being in plain sight from anywhere in the park, no grateful kid or parent had come running up to me yet. "Do you guys want to bring the kite home?" I asked, still glancing around in case I had to retract my offer. "Yes!!" We picked up a small stick off the ground and winding the string around it took considerably longer than I expected. When I returned the kite to them, Lynx grabbed the tail while Rito held on firmly to the stick and frame. Together they raced back towards the car, Rito slowing a little and Lynx hurrying to catch up so they wouldn't tear the kite. It was one of the rare times I'd seen them cooperating with each other. Back home, everyone was surprised to see them not fighting over one thing as well, and lavished praise. "Did you steal some other kid's kite?" the wife asked me, eyes narrowed with incredulity. "No, it just dropped down from the sky right into my hand," I replied with a shrug. Perhaps, just perhaps, other little bits of serendipitous fortune will do the same this year? So my questions for today's blog are: What kind of unexpected fortune or event have you encountered recently? What difficult situation have you been in that was somehow resolved on its own? |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
It's actually quite humorous if I think about it. 
