Tuesday, February 26, 2008

My Toenail Tombstone

Over the weekend, the Saturday to be exact was Jam's birthday, 5th b'day to be technically correct, though that's this Friday to be specifically correct. If you can work out why it's her 5th b'day you're paying attention, which I like. Anyway, being a 5th brithday one must come in kiddy clothes, or PJ's. I was planning to wear shorts and a shirt type thing, but on the Saturday Mr. Griffin called and told me to wear my Gi. Which I supposed saved me the trouble of showing my hairy legs.

The party itself was fun of course, delicious food, great movies (we watched Shaolin Soccer an
d Ratatouille) and of course good company in friends and the b'day girl herself.

One thing I recently started doing is Brazillian Jiu Jitsu (of which I'll blog in detail at a later date), which is a fighting style involving grappling and wrestling, so it's mainly done on the ground. So since I was told to wear my Gi, I knew I would be wrestling with Andrew Ha, and subsequently his brother David. Which I was kind of looking forward to, since they're much stronger than me, so being able to submit them would be quite an accomplishment indeed. So I wrestled Andrew first, and ended up losing by way of a leg lock, something that white belts (I'm a white belt) are not allowed to learn or use as it is too dangerous, and as such I do not know how to defend against them properly, which is why when Andrew locked it on I just tapped out to avoid further potential damage.

After tapping out, I got up, walked to the side and looked down at my feet, my left foot to be exact as there was something quite wrong with it, the toe to be exact. I suppose in hindsight I should've taken a picture, but I don't want to scare readers from my blog with a potentially gruesome picture of my foot so instead I'll just give a very detailed account of what it looked like so you can use your imagination to conjure up what my foot did indeed look like.

Sometime during my wrestle with Andrew the toe nail of my big toe on my left foot got bent back, as in half of the toe nail got pushed back, exposing the toe flesh underneath. I guess to best way to imagine it is a piece of paper if your toe nail, it's flat, then, you fold the paper so that half of it is sitting up like a tombstone, thats what my toe nail looked like. So I looked at my toe thinking what should I do about it? I decided I didn't want half a toe nail so I pushed it back down so that it would look normal again, except there was a crease and a bit of blood coming out. But that didn't stop me from wrestling David Ha. During the wrestle however I got really tired, so I just stopped, so I must work on my cardio more. Afterwards I decided to do something about my toe, I told Jam and she helped me patch it up, which made walking around tough, but I survived, because I'm tough! (hah)

So now my toe seems alright, it seems like it fused itself back onto my toe, I tried tugging on it a bit to see if it would come back up but it didn't so thats good. Mind you I didn't tug very hard. There's still a line crease on my nail but otherwise it looks slightly alright, I've just been putting some liquid thing on it to help it heal so soon enough it should be fine. It now looks like a hybrid toe nail, where the bottom half is fine and healthy and the top half is bruised and battered, how fitting of the Hybrid Hunter. There was no pain when I hurt it on Saturday and there was no pain when I wrestled again on Monday, and hopefully there will be no pain when I wrestle tomorrow night. But it was a lesson learned, cut your toe nails before wrestling!
Also, I've noticed my toe nails are bigger than say caucasian toe nails, so they won't ever have my problem of a toenail tombstone!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

My Hospital Visit

A few weeks ago I had to make a number of trips to the hospital, driving my grandfather as he has a tumor in his liver to get stuff done. He's doing fine now, and should be fine in the end, its just a matter of waiting things out to see how things go. But this entry is not to talk about my grandfather but I may write a little on him near the end. Actually I'll do it now, this is just something I remember once when I took him to the doctors for a checkup, to see how his cancer recovery has been going, which was good, he had no signs of the cancer returning as he spoke to the doctor through a translator. Then he talked about how he doesn't worry about it, because he has faith is God, which made me look up to him all the more. Faced with a life threatening disease and he doesn't worry about it at all, putting his faith in Jesus, so that's something I shan't be forgetting anytime soon, and should be how I live my life. But this entry is more my observations of being in a hospital, its been a while since I've been to one...

The hospital is Westmead, near Parramatta for those geographically impaired, the first time I went with my grandfather we had to get there at 9am for what I thought was an appointment (no one told me what is was for, they just said "Drive grandpa to hospital"), and just like any appointment at a hospital we had to wait, and wait, and wait until sometime over an hour later, 11am, they were ready for us. Well, we were ready for them a long time ago and were at the point of non readiness but what can you do, except nap. They put grandpa into a bed, and I sat next to him, and we continued waiting, being in a bed my grandfather nodded off, with nothing to do I too nodded off. We were soon woken up by the nurses and they wheeled grandpa off to some procedure, an Angiogram I think, but the nurses and doctors told me nothing, not that I asked. There we had to wait some more before going for the actual procedure, by this time it was around 1 or 2pm, and I was hungry to the max. Grandpa went in, and I went to get lunch, a salmon sandwich that was too cold for me and some juice, because juice is awesome. Grandpa then came out and he had to stay at the hospital for another 4 or so hours to be monitored for precautionary reasons which I didn't mind because it was for precautionary reasons, my grandfather however, wanted to go home and probably felt annoyed. We had hours to wait, I had brought nothing with me to entertain myself with. So as you can see, what I thought was just a quick appointment turned out to be hours and hours of waiting around and doing nothing. All I had was my phone, which I can't be bothered playing games on (Sudoku and imitation Snowboarding? No thanks), my ring, which I played around with a lot and coins to do random magic training. But hours of rings and coins gets tiring, fortunately there was a Bible around, which allowed me to catch up on my Bible reading big time. We got out at sometime past 5, not happy at the suprise wait of foreverness.

The second time we came, I was more prepared, I had a bag, and in that bag was my DS, I now had something to do with all the hours of waiting. We had to get to the hospital at 8:30am this time, which to me is early, but who am I to complain, some people have to get to hospitals at times like 6:30am! Things felt a bit quicker this time, with less people waiting around we were tended to sooner. My grandpa went in for his procedure, and I went to have breakfast, I got a bacon and poached egg sandwich which was pretty good! Then I headed back to wait for my grandfather, I played a bit of DS, but got stuck then I gave up. Then I decided to catch up on my sleep, which was when things got really weird for me. It was 10am when I started to try sleep sitting in a chair, and eventually I fell asleep and started to dream, except that I wasn't sure that I was dreaming because well, I dunno, I'll just tell you what happened as I remember it...

I was sitting in my chair, just waiting for my grandpa, random relatives appeared outta nowhere sitting around waiting as well, I then went back to sleep, arms folded, head faced down. Then, out the corner of my eye I see grandpas doctor walk by saying the procedures done, I also see the clock, it read 10:50am. So hearing that grandpa was done my mind said "It's time to wake up!", and I tried, but couldn't wake up...it was like I was stuck. So then my mind said "Let's start small, check your watch for the time", so I turn my wrist over to look at the time, and then try to wake up, but realise my turning of the wrist was only a dream. All this time my eyes are a quarter open, so all I can see are my folded arms. My mind tries to unfold my arms, and I do, but that turned out to be a dream. My mind says to lift my head, and I do, but that too was something I dreamt doing. I couldn't move and each time I thought I moved it only turned out to be something I dreamt I did. I think I was breathing hard too, trying to break out of the dream, so the people sitting next to me might've been freaked by me, not that I could see them as I was asleep. It was a weird yet cool experience. Eventually I somehow tricked my body into moving, and once I did move just that little bit (with my finger I think), I broke out of my dream sequence and was awake again. I looked at the clock and it was 11am, my grandfather still wasn't out, so I dreamt that the doctor came out saying he was done, I could've slept a little longer, panicked for nothing.

Not wanting to go back to sleep for fear of being stuck again, I busted out the DS and played a different game. And ended up playing the DS for the whole day, waiting with grandpa until we could finally go home, which was about 6pm. A whole day at the hospital, oh so much fun! So that was the basic gist of what happened at the hospital, now for the random pieces of observations I had.

- When I went to get my breakfast the cafeteria lady that served me seemed to be the type that lets people have their way. Since some guy was originally serving me, but he had to do something and made the lady finish my sandwich to which another lady said to her "You've got to stop letting them walk all over you", to which she replied "..I know" followed by a sigh. I just found it interesting for some reason so I'm sharing it with you, whether you like it or not!

- The nurses had chocolate, I know because they talked about it during the day. I didn't get any.

- While sleeping and dreaming, a Dr Malvin Wong had a telephone call, to which he never responded to because they made the announcement throughout the whole hour I was asleep and then some more after I was awake. Someone should've looked for Dr Wong.

- While waiting for my grandpa as he was getting his procedure done another man was in line to get an x-ray, I saw him go into the room, to quickly come wheeling out (he was in a wheelchair) frantically saying "Toilet! Toilet!" to his wife, who slowly walked infront of him to the toilet. A few minutes later he came back out, with a noticeable stain on my gown. I don't think he made it to the toilet in time...

- While waiting for my grandpa to rest up the needed hours some old man was making a racket, claiming his tea was too hot, spilling it onto the ground, then complaining to the nurse about how she was trying to hurt him. Another male nurse/doctor (I don't know) stepped in to help, but apparently he wasn't the old man's type. "Nooo! You're not my type!", the old man said over and over to which the guy answered, "Okay! It's good to know I'm not your type". Eventually he calmed down and was quiet again, either that or they wheeled him away so we couldn't hear him anymore. I'm not too sure, I was playing my DS.

- Clocks...everywhere I walked there were clocks around, and when there are clocks you look, look at the time. So that is what I did each time I looked at a clock, I checked the time, and soon enough I realised something. These times were WRONG! They weren't wrong by a few minutes or anything, they were wrong by a mile and a dead battery! That's right, some of these clocks had dead batteries and were at a stand still in time. But to tell you is not enough, because the sheer amount of dead clocks littered around Westmead needs to be exposed to you my readers even if you don't care at all! I've taken the liberty of proving this time ticking travesty through video, from my phone.
I had to wait for the halls to clear up before taking the video so no one could hear me say the times for added effect. That and I don't want anyone looking at me video recording a clock.

The first clock video was in the hall on the way to radiology. So it was one of the first clocks I noticed. Being cautious I recorded it and spoke very softly, so if you can't hear anything, you now know why. So enjoy the visual instead.


So early...

I got more confident afterwards and spoke more louder so you can hear me say the real time, followed by the stopped time.


Lunch time...


If only it were really 4pm...

There were other clocks as well, but I couldn't get around to all of them because it'd just be overkill for both you and me, once you've seen three clocks you've seen them all I say.

I suppose one day I'll do a hospital blog from the perspective of a patient and not visitor, but until I somehow hurt myself or contract some horrible disease you'll just have to be content with this hospital based blog. Apologies in advance :)

Saturday, February 9, 2008

My Foolish Teeth

Now just so you know there's nothing wrong with my wisdom teeth....yet, so if anything these are just my observations and ramblings so lets march onwards.

Why are wisdom teeth called wisdom teeth? I checked wikipedia and they said that the reason could be "b
ecause they appear so late—much later than the other teeth, at an age where people are wiser than as a child, when the other teeth erupt.". I just thought they were called that because they were wise in taking their time to come out, somehow giving them a longer life compared to the other teeth.
But as we all know, or not, but now you will as of reading this next sentence which joins onto this sentence we sometimes take our wisdom teeth out! So going on my theory for the name, they aren't so wise now are they?
Which brings me to the crux of this entry! Which is a big crux! Calling wisdom teeth wisdom teeth is stupid! Clearly the person who came up with the name wasn't all that wise themselves because if they had waited to see the things a 'wisdom' tooth could do they wouldn't call it wise at all!
First of all they come out late, only to be taken out first!
They come out late, and decide to tell the whole world about it! Causing insane pain that you can't do much about, not allowing you to eat great tasting foods like KFC or pasta, relegating you to soupy foods or congee so you don't aggravate the pain, and the whole telling the world part comes when you tell your friends or anyone that your tooth is hurting!

Secondly, if they are so wise why is it that when they decide to finally come out (if ever) sometimes they don't know whether they're going up or down and either come out just a little bit for some breathing space or come out at a completely wrong angle! When they come out just a little bit you wonder to yourself "was all that pain worth it for a half a tooth?" and the answer is NO! I spent days during my first year of university rolling my head in pain as my gums threatened to burst open only to find out days later that I had half a wisdom tooth, with the rest resting under my gums, which can only mean that my wisdom teeth are indeed old and slow, which can only mean that more pain can happen in the future when my wise teeth wake up and decide they need more air! So now I've got two of these half-wise teeth on my lower case teeth, my upper case teeth have nothing so far and it should stay that way, though wikipedia says they come out during the ages of 16-24 so there's still hope yet!

But of course, the other way they come out is at a different angle, which is a pain thats probably more worse than the one I get. These wise teeth come out at crazy angles, and can end up pushing into your other teeth. What kind of wise tooth tries to take out your other teeth!? Unless it's a jealous tooth and feels it should be the only tooth in your mouth and tries to start the slow and painful campaign of pushing all your teeth out one by one!

I guess the best way to prove my point is through picture form. A scrubby little friend of mine was nice enough to allow me to post his teeth for this entry. If we were playing spot the difference hopefully you'll notice that besides the numerous amount of teach and interesting skeletal structure, two of them aren't quite right, they're being wise guys, ganging up to take on the other teeth sideways style!


Say Cheese!

So I propose we don't call these teeth wisdom teeth anymore, I say we call them foolish teeth! Why foolish? I guess because it's a nice opposite to wise (Like the wise and foolish builders parable) and also because they are indeed foolish! These teeth think they're so smart and wise coming out late, coming out half way, coming out all the way, coming out in the way, coming out everyway, coming out the painful way only to end up being ripped out and thrown away. How foolish of them!
I think I've made a good point, and a point you should all follow! No more "Oww, my wisdom tooth hurts" or "I'm taking my wisdom tooth out", and more "Oww, my foolish tooth hurts!" and "I'm taking my foolish tooth out". I know that's what I'll be saying, if I ever need to do that to my foolish teeth (see I've already begun) and so should you!
This should be sent to the dental people because I think I've made a very good case here, which makes me wonder, why hasn't anyone else think of this? Genius!

[Hybrid Extras]
Other replacement names for wisdom teeth
- Useless teeth
- Stupid teeth
- Idiotic teeth
- Moronic teeth
- Lost teeth
- Non-teeth
- Half teeth
- Not teeth
- Slow teeth
- Sloth teeth

- Hybrid teeth (applies only to me, and those who have half teeth/half gum mix, but mainly to me)

- Freaking teeth (cuts out the need to say which teeth when you're complaining about teeth because we all know its the foolish teeth you're complaining about anyway)