a drop of liquidblackout

2006-09-22: Traction

2011-12-29T13:39:00.000-08:00

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to describe the picture yesterday. I'm forgetful these days.
This is the conservative method for such situations and helped me avoid such an operation, which is quite risky.

I fractured my hip, so one leg could have been longer than the other. They used traction to pull it into the proper position. This involved hammering a long stainless steel post through my thigh, near the knee, and attaching a 6kg weight to it for 6 weeks. I wasn't allowed to sit up or able to roll over. It was pulling on my flesh, so the orthopedic surgeon made an incision and enlarged the hole so that it wouldn't. It didn't hurt too badly for the most part, until it got infected. Then he had to squeeze out the pus without any sort of anaesthetic and that was quite painful. After the 6 weeks were up, they gave me an X-ray and decided that it was mostly aligned, so they took it out. They used a pair of rusty old pliers at first, which didn't work, so they tried to hammer it back out. I'm glad I got a tetanus shot. Of course, they hammered it halfway, but couldn't get it to come out of my leg no matter how hard they tried. They searched all through the hospital to try to find a better pair, which they did. All during this procedure, I was laughing like a maniac, cracking inappropriate jokes and couldn't seem to control myself. My dad wouldn't let me keep the pin as a souvenir.

That was my actual leg. I couldn't reach to pull off the gauzes, or else I would have for you, dear readers. Just as well, serves as censorship for the bloody wounds and stitches.
Do you see the HDTV in the background? It didn't do me any good anyways, China's cable television sucks, because it's government-controlled and heavily restricted. My thigh isn't actually that wide, for your information, it was just my angle. Please believe me.

2008-02-12T17:09:00.000-08:00

Hi! As you may have noticed, I've taken down most of my posts for now because I haven't been and won't be updating for a while. The school and weather have me exhausted all the time and I'll probably be back for another term during the Summer and in the Fall, so that's 16 straight months of school. Fun.
Best wishes to everyone!

More about my ear...

2007-10-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

I actually found the photo of my ear that I took a couple years ago...

Ear-Clit Attempt #2

2007-09-29T08:13:00.001-07:00

The first time I tried piercing my left tragus it tore out when I was changing clothes after a few days. I was working on catching up on Financial Accounting when I had an overwhelming urge to mutilate or harm something this morning. I tried a number of things to distract myself; some made it better, others worse. I debated and discussed it and decided that I wanted to pierce something, so I chose the tragus again since it has now healed. I feel so much better now.

I have another picture from a year or two ago and I had more piercings then. A lot of them have filled up since then, except for the seven loyal ones (5 on along left, 2 on right lobe).

I'm in too much pain and I have too much work to go on that road trip today which is a shame, so Sherri, my don, is going all by herself because everyone canceled on her. I think I might do my laundry today and maybe go to the lab to do my CS assignment. Maybe meet up with Gregory. I should also start working on the Algebra assignment.

I got a chance to chat with a number of my friends, some of them whom I haven't contacted in a little while, like Grant and ES, which was very pleasant.

I hope this Ear-Clit piercing is secure enough not to tear out again. Not fun. My tragus really isn't very big, so there's not a lot of space for it. I also left my proper earrings at home, so I'm just going to settle for these studs.
Maybe I should try the mall around here and see if they have Ardene's or somewhere that sells earrings for cheap. An industrial bar would be nice. I'd do new piercings for that. I also want a tattoo, but one thing at a time...

Name Change : 曾琬玲

2007-04-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Shanghai and China, I got the writing of my name changed a couple days ago. The numerology of its strokes and the meanings were supposed to be much better suited to my personality and my fortune. Apparently, the previous one indicated that I would have a lot of falls, a lot of accidents. Another coincidence? It has been happening very frequently ever since I've been able to walk; I'd always slip and fall on the bathroom floor, in the fields, at school, across the street, down the stairs, up the stairs, on sidewalks, in shopping centres, off beds - everything I could possibly fall from. There were also other things that were very accurate, but I won't go into details, partly because I can't remember. I think there was also some mention about being difficult and/or OCD. True.

Another important factor that made my mom start all of this searching was the fact that the second character of my name isn't found on computers. None all over the world. It was pretty much the same one I have now, except with a 'water prefix' instead of the 'jade' one. It wasn't a common word, because it was the name of what turned out to be a very small river and my mom hadn't known that it was so small, which is probably why I can't type it for you. It's the left side of 滴, the three strokes, with 宛 on the right side. The word 滴 is pronounced dī and means a drop of or to drip water, that's why it has water as its prefix. The other character can be a surname or mean similar or winding in some contexts and is pronounced wǎn, the same as the characters of both my previous and current name. Yes, with a 'stone prefix' , like so 碗, it would mean a bowl.

My Chinese name hasn't been used in any formal documents, so there's nothing that I would have to change, which is very convenient. Most people write it incorrectly or don't know that the second character exists at all. They usually assume that it's the one with the 'girl prefix' 婉 which, according to this online dictionary, means graceful or tactful and, of course, like almost all of the Chinese characters can be used in a variety of contexts. The last character has also been changed, but I'm too tired to explain it, as it's fairly complicated. And now I can type it, so here it is:

曾 :: zheng - a surname and can be used in a number of contexts
琬 :: wǎn - ensign of royalty
玲 :: líng - tinkling of gem-pendants, (used in compounds)

Together they add up to 35 strokes, which is supposed to be much better than the 37 strokes it had been previously. For the last character, it can also be used in conjunction with another character in the following example:

玲瓏 :: líng lóng - (adj) exquisite; detailed; (adj) clever; quick (of a woman)

Interesting, isn't it? :]

Pelvic X-Rays

2007-04-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

In the event that you happen to feel so inclined as to see what one of my x-rays look like, I happen to have some to share with you:

(click for a larger image)

These were taken on September 19th, 2006 and November 8th, 2006, respectively.

Unfortunately, I don't have a 'Before' shot to show you, but do you notice the right side and how it's different? It's not that I'm just lying crooked, which is what the technicians thought at first. See if you can pick out all the fractures... :(

However, I do have a bunch of 'Immediately After' and several 'Recovering' shots, but they're the actual x-ray films themselves, larger than my torso and we had to carry them back from Shanghai. In fact, this wouldn't be a bad time to write about the journey home...

I believe I left on September 16th. My dad's company's insurance company was paying for it and all of my medical expenses which ended up coming to a total of approximately $100,000 USD. Shocking, isn't it? Not so much, considering I stayed in two hospitals; the first one for a few days in the ICU and the second one for approximately 8 weeks. In the latter, part of it in was spent in the ICU and the majority of it in a bedroom with two adjustable hospital beds, a flat-screen television, air-conditioning, a bathroom with shower, some furniture, a convertible sofa bed, meals included, and a small refrigerator. And a 24/7 maid.

On the return trip, they sent a nurse from Washington DC and a physiotherapist from somewhere else in the US (Atlanta? I can't remember) to pick me up and bring me back. My brother and dad left earlier not much for school and work, and my mom had to leave a couple days before, because those were the only tickets we could get. By then, I no longer had to be pushed on a gurney (they're awful), but I was in a wheelchair and I could even take a step or two if I was holding on to something. I took the ambulance with them to the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. Not only was it a strange coincidence that I happened to get the same ambulance with the same doctor on board, but I even remembered him and he vaguely remembered me, so we chatted a bit just before I had to be lifted off on a stretcher and seated in a wheelchair.

This was around the time when they weren't allowing any liquids in carry-ons. I had some lotion and Polysporin in my backpack, which they made me throw out. It just so happened that the elevators were broken, so I had to be tilted backwards with a female attendant supporting me and the physiotherapist holding me from the step above on the escalator. How long have the elevators been broken? A very long time. And will they ever be fixed? Uncertain. At least the escalator wasn't broken or else I would have had an exciting time getting down the stairs. I wonder what they would have done.

I got to take a break in the lounge, but there wasn't anything good there to eat or read, because the United Airlines lounge was being renovated or something, so there was one that was being shared with the Japan Airlines. The physiotherapist was a vegetarian of an Indian background and the Korean nurse was working for the insurance company, Sunlife, I believe. I had to walk up one step and down the aisle to get to my seat right at the first row in First Class on the United Airlines plane. The two had managed to buy a few faux brand name purses and I was worried about them getting through customs, but the flight attendant said not to worry. First Class wasn't as spectacular as it had been made out to be. The seats were wide and allowed the passengers to lie down, almost to 180 degrees. The meals were okay, better than most vegetarian meals, but nothing amazing. Individual screens and cassette tapes to choose from to watch at any given time. I watched Thank You for Smoking, which was great, and Failure to Launch as well as a few others that really...weren't. I was given a percocet and the nurse kept taking my temperature and blood pressure every hour or so and keeping a journal of everything. My story spread very quickly between the flight attendants and they were all very friendly. Almost at the end of the flight, I was having trouble breathing so I got to use the oxygen tank.

When we landed in Chicago about thirteen hours later, I had to walk back off the plane, then directly back into a wheelchair, where another attendant, male this time, pushed me to the destination I was supposed to be at. I think a lot of them were Polish and they weren't speaking English to each other. The physiotherapist was very nice, but she had to stay in Chicago for the night before she returned to her home. She had never done one of these trips before, while the nurse had to do them all the time, all over the world.

The only items I was carrying were my backpack and the enormously heavy and bulky x-rays, which are why I finally decided to write this story. The nurse had a huge bag of equipment and medications. From there, we took an air ambulance with two pilots and a nurse back to Buttonville Airport, just a few blocks from my home, but that wasn't where I was headed. The ride was not pleasant at all. It was freezing cold, I had to use the washroom and there was a lot of turbulence. There was no way I was going to be lying on that cold metal stretcher, so I sat in one of the tiny seats. There was popcorn just before the exit to this mini-plane and we took some onto with us for the flight. There were better snacks, such as granola bars, potato chips, bottled water and drinks, in the back, but I didn't take any of them. I'm not sure that I could reach either, because I couldn't get to my backpack that contained the hoodie Angie had bought me just before I left. She was having lunch with a client that day and was running late, but she showed up near the end and brought me fried rice and the Paul Frank hoodie. Very kind of her. The fried rice was delicious, too.

It took just over two hours to arrive at Buttonville Airport, where I was picked up by another ambulance via a convertible stretcher/gurney (I really hate them) and driven to Markham-Stouffville hospital at about 1 AM. I got my own room and then was quarantined, because I was coming from Asia, which obviously meant that it was highly likely that I was carrying SARS. Being crippled and having to take the commode wasn't nearly as bad, but that must have been the worst part about staying there. My parents came, brought me some food and my mail, which was rather depressing as a good part of it were letters from the university I was supposed to be attending, packages describing the orientation weeks and events and the residence I was supposed to be sleeping in, not the hospital. There were also a few letters from my high school to inform me that I should go to Commencement to pick up my awards. That just rubbed it in even more; the awards and diploma I had earned before. The few days after that just got worse, so I think I'll end with the best part: While I got wiped down every day in Shanghai by the maid, I was finally able to take a shower the next morning - the first one I'd had in over 8 weeks. Exhilarating.