Puggy's Injury

Headed over to TJV at 11.30 am. By the time I reached there, it was 11.50 am. I was surprised that I could remember how to get there. I was the 1st person there. I was joined by a malay guy with his cat shortly. He asked me if his cat could be seen 1st as her neutering wound had burst open. After that, a middle aged couple came with their rabbit who stopped eating after recovering from diarrhea. The wife chatted with me & kept saying that Puggy's very cute. Lastly, it was a lady with her ST look alike. Maybe ST crossed with a bigger breed. Coz it looks like a ST but it was too huge to be 1. It weighed 9+ kg!

Anyway, Puggy is now 7.8 kg. He put on 1 kg since the last time he was there which I think is during neutering about 1.5 yrs ago. Dr Heng wasn't around so I had to choose between Dr Ng & Dr Siah. I chose Dr Siah as she's the most junior (from the website). Although she has the least experience, I feel that such newbies are more empathetic as they are not burnt out. (Speaking from experience.) She was quite friendly.

She agreed that there're no injuries to the eyeball itself. Like me, she was unable to locate the wound. She told me that cat inflicted wound is usually very small & becoz of that, these wounds close up very quickly but may harbour bacteria as it's deep. She suggested a course of oral antibiotics for 5 days & to observe the eye for any signs of infection. She asked me what Puggy did when the cat attacked. I said he didn't do anything. She asked if he barked. I said no. Then, she said he's very silly. Hahaha!

I think he's very silly too. He dared to stand up against a grown man to protect me but dare not fight back against a cat that's half his weight. Why are my dogs all so silly? They make me laugh with their silly antics. Love them.

Wonders Never Cease by Morcheeba

What do you feel when you let go of the wheel?
Can you take a leap of faith?
Will you face the change of pace?
There are worlds out there beyond compare...

Going on a journey
Somewhere far out east
We'll find the time to show you
Wonders never cease

All that we've been through,
Brings my soul so close to you.
Why not cast your fears aside?
We can laugh until we cry.
There are worlds out there beyond compare...

Going on a journey
Somewhere far out east
We'll find the time to show you
Wonders never cease

Votes From Concensus

We're back! I'll be posting photos shortly. You know lah, need to upload to photobucket, then need to slowly load the photos 1 by 1. Catch the facebook version, it's sure to be faster. It's a lot of photos to do. But 1st, I'll like to announce the winners for this year's award for dogs.

The Silliest Dog Award goes to... Mr Ton! He knocks his head on the bed everyday without fail either while going under the bed or trying to get out from under the bed. Then, he'll knock his head on the dinning table when trying to stand on 2s to get a whiff of what we're eating. He gets scared silly over the smallest things & tends to run faster than his legs can cope. This results in slipping & falling down on his side. It's no wonder he's so silly. He knocks his head way too much! Let's give a round of applause for Mr Ton who won the Silliest Dog Award! He walks away with a bone shaped doggy biscuit & 2 meat balls with vege stuffing!

Next, we move on to the Most Loathsome Dog Award. This award goes to... Mr Pug! Maybe it's his face. Or maybe it's his smell. But 1 thing we're sure of is his ability to elicit the most extreme response from animals & humans alike. Dogs hate him. He gets snapped when the dog is usually good with other dogs. Humans detest him. Hmm... probably becoz he likes to blow his nose in their faces. Well, anyway, he once cleared an entire living room full of people into the kitchen just by crapping. Cats attack him for no reason. More on this after the award. So, can you contest the decision to award him with the title, Most Loathsome Dog? He walks away with a vet visit & possibly a jab. We can't help but pity him so he gets 2 bone shaped biscuits & 2 meat balls with vege stuffing!

Last but not least, we have 1 final award to give away. There's only 1 last dog left so he gets the Most Streetsmart Dog Award without a fight. Having lived in the wild before, Mr Wang knows the ins & outs of the outside world. He knows when he can push his limits & when he should retreat. He fights well & can overcome a dog twice his weight & turn him belly up. Yet he gives in when people are around so he gets the attention while the other dogs get scolding. If this isn't streetsmart, I don't know what is. For knowing how to manipulate people, he gets 1 bone shaped biscuit & 2 meat balls with vege stuffing.

Let's give the winners a huge round of applause yet again! On this happy note, we close the ceremony!

Wanting to bring Puggy down for a walk, I woke up early today so we can walk Jeff to the LRT station on his way to lecture. We were barely away from home when it happened. We just walked over to the next block & without warning, a stray cat with its (I don't know if it's a male or female) back arched, tail straight up dashed into our path, hissing at Puggy. We tried to walk away but the cat gave chase & pounced on Puggy. We (the humans) dragged Puggy away, stomped our feet & hissed back at the cat. It still wanted to attack but Jeff was in the way & I think the cat was scared of Jeff. By then, I was a few metres away while Jeff continued to confront the cat.

Immediately, I check on Puggy & found his right eye all bloody. I was freaked out! I quickly checked his eye to see if his cornea had been lacerated. It would have made him blind or at the very least, damaged his eyesight. I couldn't see any injury to his eyeball itself so I concluded that it must have been the skin surrounding his eyes that got cut. When we were far away, I told Jeff to go on ahead without us. I brought Puggy home (by detour) & washed his eye with Saline. Then I gave him a shower. After that, I couldn't even spot where exactly he had been injured. Now I'm just waiting for TJV to open at 12 noon so I can bring him in for a check. I feel so bad. I imagined it to be a nice walk for us at the cool hour of 7 am. But it turned out badly & he didn't even get to walk much. Instead, he now has to go to the vet & face the possibility of getting an antibiotic jab. I must be the jinx. All my dogs suffer injuries becoz I decided to bring them out. Sigh...

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

I finally survived the week! I was on call on Fri & Sat so I could only breathe a sigh of relief after 8 am today. We're leaving for HK tomorrow! I'll write again from the airport tomorrow as per tradition. :P Our flight's departing at 8.30 am, T3.

This trip is my birthday gift to Jeff. Hehe. He likes SIA & I've never been on it before so that's why I chose to fly SQ. Hopefully after this trip, we can go Australia. I know. I've been saying I wanna go but cost is a factor. Besides, we've never been there before & I won't dare to do the self drive trips E&L does. Following tour group is bleh... Need I say more?

I think I should make a checklist for going away. I find myself struggling to think of things to pack each time. Essential things are easy to remember but I prefer not to forget to bring things that could be troublesome to get (like cotton bud or umbrella). My camera's fully charged, memory emptied into the com. The clothes are packed, except the towels (we'll use the hotel's). I brought along my bubble bath but can't seem to find my travelling toothbrush anywhere. I packed in extra bags just in case we buy too many things.

Ton Ton seems to know that we're going away. Somehow, he always seems to know even before we start pulling out the luggage & start packing. He'll be extra sticky, always wanting to play. On normal days, he'll just watch as we leave the house. Now, he keeps wanting to follow us when we go out. Right now, he's guarding my luggage by lying down next to it. He did that for our Taipei/HK trip last April & he did it again for our BKK trip in Oct. He's doing it yet again now. So the silly dog isn't that stupid afterall.

Ok, gtg do some more last min checking. Catch up again when I'm back on Wed!

Plans Unveiled

I finally found another place to go. It will & in reality had burnt a hole in my bank account. It will becoz my credit card bill has yet to arrive but in reality, it's already charged to my card. I spent a few hours that night after my ranting post about the plan to go Malaysia cancelled surfing the net, trying to search for an interesting place to go.

Like I said, Jeff was no help at all. He gave suggestions like BKK or Taiwan. We just went to Taipei last April & unless we follow a tour group, how are we going to make our way to the other parts of Taiwan? Idea is out. BKK is even worse. We just went in late Oct & barely 4 mths had passed. No way. I don't really wish to go HK coz I didn't really like it & we were there as it was packaged with our Taipei trip.

In the end... HK got my vote. It'll probably be the last time I'll go there so I booked the best flight (SIA) & the best hotel I can afford. So where are we headed? Disneyland! I booked a room for HK Disneyland Hotel over Disneyland Hollywood Hotel for the victorian rooms & proximity to Disneyland even though the price difference is S$100 per night. I chose a room with sea view (& paid more for it). I'm already looking at S$2k worth of damage already. Flight tickets are $1+k for 2. Hotel room about $850 & the Disneyland tickets are about $140 for 2. I haven't even include the spending money!

It'll be a 1st for me. I've never taken SQ before & I'm finally fulfilling a childhood dream of going Disneyland (though I daydreamed of the Disneyland in US when I was a child). It's a lot of money for an asian country & just for 1 location. But I wanted it to be the best experience since we won't be going to HK again. I'll aim for Aust or NZ next. Haha. Maybe next year. I'm totally wiped out for now.

Tagged

10 things should be easy. Haha. Afterall, I did 1 for Facebook already. To keep it interesting & so you don't have to read a repeat, I'll just write up another 10 things about my life. Since it's this close to V Day, I'll write about Jeff & me.

1. The 1st time I met Jeff was in NYP Year 3, between Blk J & K. We basically did that "cha jian er guo" thing like on TV. I only noticed him becoz he was surrounded by a bunch of girls which is very common coz guys are really rare in nursing. (It's those I've seen you around in school but I don't know you thing. Of course, neither did I know that this guy whom I didn't even give a 2nd look is to be my future husband.)

2. I 1st noticed Jeff on 2nd June 2003 during orientation at our 1st real job. At that point, I didn't associate him with that guy I've seen once in school.

3. I was attracted to him (don't ask me why) but I didn't have any reason or excuse to talk to him coz even though we were in the orientation together, we were in different groups.

4. My chance came when we were posted to the same ward. I guess you can call this fate coz I was supposed to go to an O&G ward which is a discipline that I like. But there were last min shufflings becoz the general medical ward was lacking staff & I got posted there. So, when life takes something away from you, it has to give something back. In my case, it took my favourite O&G away in place of Jeff.

5. Our preceptor was to guide the 4 of us new staff in 2 cubicles of 8 patients each. To be fair, we had to draw lots to see which 2 would share 1 cubicle. As fate would have it, Jeff & I picked the lot for the same cubicle. Outside, I was cool. Inside, I was shouting "YES!!!". LoL!

6. Citing "easier to contact about work" as an excuse, I asked Jeff for his number the next day after work.

7. We arranged to meet at the bus stop where we alight to walk in together from day 3 of starting work at the ward.

8. We went on our 1st date on 10th July 2003 when he asked me to be his girlfriend.

9. After patoh-ing for 3.5 years, we got married on 9th Dec 2006.

10. We just celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary & coming 10th July this year, we would have been together for 6 years. I still can't believe how far we've come & I look forward to the path where both of us will continue travelling on.

Sucks Sucks Sucks!

Shit lah! All along, I had this idea in mind to plan a surprise trip to 1 of the beach resorts for Jeff's birthday. I was already researching on places to go since last year. But he said he doesn't like beach resorts & our leave wasn't confirmed so nothing was set in motion yet. Then, we finally confirmed both our leave for the same week. Jeff said his mom is interested in going Malaysia & wanted to use that week of leave to go with his parents. So I said fine & I suggested going on a longer trip (like 5 days) covering several states.

His parents didn't like the idea of going with a tour group so I compromised again. F&E in Malaysia means going only 1 place for shorter period of time. In the end, we decided on Malacca for 3 days 2 nights. We even went to make enquires at various tour agencies. I went online to check places of interests & everything. Then, his dad said he changed his mind & he doesn't want to go anymore. They wanted to go to China instead & asked us to go alone.

In the 1st place, I don't wanna go Malaysia! I only agreed becoz of them. Now with 1 & a half week from the start of our leave, they changed their mind. How am I going to come up with where to go? How am I going to make arrangements in such a short period of time? I don't want all these months of planning to end up leaving me staying in SG!

Jeff is like so bochup. He asked me to decide. He said, "Stay in SG also can, or we go ahead with Malacca." Do you know how difficult it was for me to get my leave? I begged people to give it up to me so I won't have to ballot for it. Now you're telling me stay in SG? It's so late into Feb already. What am I going to do? This sucks!

Feeling Physically Lousy

I put on like 3 kg over CNY & managed to ditch it in 3 days at the expense of my own discomfort. I think at least 1 kg of that weight was from water retention. I hadn't been on my herbalife diet for maybe about 2 weeks. No meal replacements, no supplements, minimal drinking of water. On the 1st day of restarting my diet, I peed a lot after taking the supplements, 1 of which is to help reduce water retention. :P At that point, I still hadn't drank much yet I kept going to pee. I literally fasted myself. I didn't take the meal replacement at all. Just took the supplements & drank the herbal tea with aloe.

This went on for 2 days & I coupled exercising with it. I just pushed my body to the limits. 1 of the 1st things to go when dieting is muscle mass loss. Muscles require more energy to maintain than fats. So when the body is in starvation mode, it'll rather get rid of something that burns more energy. If I don't exercise, I'm just gonna lose muscles which will lower my metabolic rate even more. I felt really lousy. I felt weak, devoid of any energy or strength. All I wanna do is lie in bed motionless. But I had to work.

I suspect that my body was choked full of toxins from all that gorging during CNY. I had headaches almost daily & I was badly constipated. (I hadn't gone in 1 week.) My toxins "spot" on both arms were worse than before. It actually got better when I stuck to the diet but it came back when I went off rail. (According to my herbalife consultant, the reddish spots on the upper arms are due to toxins from constipation. So for someone like me who has been chronically constipated for years, it's all over both my upper arms & lightly peppered over my shoulder blades on my back.) This was before restarting my diet. But going back on the diet didn't help me with my constipation problem. Yesterday at JB, I saw this product that is also on sale in SG. Kinohimitsu 6 day detox program. Looking at the ingredients, it contained all the concentrated juice & decided to give it a try. It's my 2nd day & it works. Like it promised, I didn't LS. So at least I'm rid of that nasty bloated & constipated feeling in my stomach.

Yesterday I had real food at JB so I didn't take my meal replacements. Just took the supplements. Today at day 4, I restarted my meal replacements. I'm done with my fasting mode, having shitted & shrunk my stomach. I felt giddy & cold all the time even though the fan wasn't switched on. My hypocount (blood sugar level) is constantly normal, around 5.2 mmol average. I don't have a BP machine at home so I don't know if my giddiness was due to low blood pressure.

Does my dieting regime sound extreme? Ya, probably the 2 days fasting part. It's over & done with now. I just gotta exercise, take 2 meal replacements & eat 1 healthy meal. SH lost from 62 kg to her current 56 kg. Cool right? She has 1 more kg to go to reach her target weight & she may go for a bit more. For me, I have 13 kg more to go at 63 kg. Why is my target weight 5 kg less than hers even though we're of the same height? Becoz she's big boned & I'm not. So she's not exactly carrying the weight in fats like I do.

Over the 2 mths, I did lose fats but I lost muscle mass as well. I can't wait for the weigh in & measurements taking on Thurs. I wanna see if the weight I lost is fats or muscles so I know if the exercise is working. Take 1 small step at a time. My focus is to get to 60 kg now.

I tried to get Jeff to join me. But the thought of eating only 1 normal meal puts him off. He needs to lose about 9 kg to be of normal weight. I want him to lose weight not becoz I "sian" him fat. Afterall, I married him when he was at his fattest at 89 kg & he married me when I was the fattest at 74 kg. I just want him to be healthier & reduce his chances of getting various diseases. Why do we get married? Becoz we want to spend the rest of our lives together & I don't want that "rest of our lives" to be 30 yrs. I want it to be 60 yrs & beyond.

I Hate...

I hate the stupid surgeons! I hate hate hate hate hate!!! It in turn, make me hate my job. Please hurry, Jeff. I don't know how much longer I can continue this way.

Let me blog this down so I'll remember this forever & it'll serve as a reminder not to step into this line again! I was just too tired to do so yesterday.

We had 10 cases in the afternoon. The turnover rate is fast, about 15 mins for the simpler case & 30 mins for the 2 procedures in 1. Usually sister will assign 3 nurses so we can be in time to scrub & prepare our trolley. But we're working 8 to 5 pm. If there're 3 nurses, 1 can go home while the other 2 stay to finish the list. 2 can go home if the on call nurse can come over but there were a few other theatres still running by 5 pm & the on call nurse couldn't come over. So me & a senior stayed back. Imagine having 3 nurses, so I'll take case no. 1, 4, 7 & 10. If there're 2 only, I'll take 1, 3, 5, 7 & 9 so it means a lot a lot of rushing about.

I just finished a 15 mins case, my partner scrubbed for the next 15 mins case & I have to scrub for the 30 mins case next. So I had 15 mins to do all the following. I pushed my used trolley & practically ran to the decontamination area, dumped my instruments there, ran back to theatre with my trolley, help to circulate for my partner, then ran into the preparation room to open my sterile things & ran to the induction room to check the patient is the correct 1 & prepare the paper work. The case was just finishing inside the theatre & I ran to scrub. Becoz it was the 30 mins case, I had a huge mountain of instruments to prepare & I'll get sacarstic remarks or even worse, yelled at if I'm not outside, cleaning the operation area & had the patient drapped by the time the surgeon is scrubbed up. I did manage to prepare everything in time which I didn't know how I did it.

Then, after that, it was the same thing again. I cleared my trolley, rushed back to theatre to circulate for my partner. YOU (the assistant who wasn't scrubbed up) sit there like a block of wood while we were so damn busy. YOU, wanted me put drops for the next patient. Then, the least YOU can do is call out & ask me to do it. YOU don't even have to say please. What pissed me off was, YOU, decided it was ok for YOU to TAP ME ON THE SHOULDER SEVERAL TIMES WITH A PEN while I was busy doing my things & said, "Put drops for the patient."

I tell you, IT IS NOT OK!!! IT WAS SO DAMN RUDE!!! It wasn't becoz I was busy. I could still squeeze in that few seconds to put the drops. BUT IT IS NOT OK TO TAP MY SHOULDER SEVERAL TIMES WITH YOUR STUPID PEN!!!

Surprised that this is happening? I assure you I'm telling no lies. This is exactly what happened to me. What's more surprising? Spoiled rotten surgeons screaming at you becoz you were 1 second too slow in passing the instrument coz it got stuck in the casing? Or you got screamed at becoz the instrument they insist on using is being used by another surgeon which in the 1st place belongs to that other surgeon?

So what if you've got higher qualifications? So what if your position is much higher than mine? You may be learned but what do your actions tell about you? If anybody wants to join nursing, my advise is, DON'T. Unless you're sure this is what you want to put up with. Believe me, what I said here is just the tip of the iceberg.

Busy Week

I'm super shagged. Haha. Seems like I've been saying this quite frequently. Yesterday, I stayed back till almost 6 pm. Today, I stayed back till 7.30 pm & I'm not even on call! Work is just too hectic. I've been running about the entire day today since 1 pm. I didn't have time to go toilet or get a drink. By the time we finally finished the entire list, I had 8 unread smses that started from 2 pm.

Doing OT means I've missed Air Crash Investigation on Nat Geo 2 days in a row coz it starts at 7 pm. I just can't wait to get tomorrow done & over with. Maybe I can even claim time off in the afternoon. Then I can come home early to bathe Puggy since I'll be out the entire Sat.

Gosh... I just feel like dying now. Logging off...