Sellout Tastebuds

So, after doing a great deal of dressing changes at the ward today (and they kept "forgetting" about random patients so i had to walk back and forth to get them done) , i decided i was going to get myself Something Good for dinner. As it was a Hot day i toyed with a couple of possibilities.. a)subway b)costco's chicken caesar with mango sundae (separately, of course) c)green thai curry with shaved ice (also, separately) if you know me well you'd have heard me whining about wanting to have shaved ice at many separate occasions, but never eventually getting to it (read: lazy). eventually i decided on shaved ice, i mean, green thai curry (but only because it was near the shaved ice store) because i'm a neurotic person plagued by bad luck whenever i try to sneak out of the hospital during my call day, no MATTER what slack call im doing. so, not wanting to risk a ward CPR or something like that i decided to forgo a trip to costco. i got my shaved ice (yes!) and.. unfortunately, i got distracted by a fried chicken store with all its oily fumes and i got myself a bag of atherosclerosis-inducing goodness - pig's blood cake, tofu, cauliflower, chicken cubes. its the first time i bought one of those things since coming back from singapore in january, and THAT"S the longest damn time i've gone without eating any of these stuffsssss! and i thought, man, what a great dinner imma have - fatty and sinful! -evil laughter- then i started eating. i mean, the ice was great, black sugar and all. but the fried stuff.. i think my tastebuds have forgotten what it is like to enjoy oily crap. it just tasted really... stale and nauseating. i was SO disappointed. it still smelt great, but taste-wise, ugh! i managed to finish the cauliflower but the rest of it... i tried! i really did! it didn't help that the bowl of ice was as big as my face though, so i'm pretty much stuffed anyhow. bah. my sneaky weekend pigging-out failed Big Time. -burp= Anyhowwwww... halfway through dinner, i was treated to an impromptu show of PDA. heh heh. it was entertaining to say the least! gonna go tennis later ~ wanna work on me serve (what else is new right)

Packing (no, not Nasal)

It seems ironic that the only dressing i DONT need to do during my ENT call involves Nasal packing. But, determined to get a headstart on my Big Move Number IV, I started to pack my booksaganza into pretty boxes. Just for the sake of things, let's have a recap of the Big Moves i've had... Big Move 1: well, technically, big move anatomically, but small move in terms of Stuff. I had ONE suitcase full of whatits when i first came over to Taiwan 7 years ago. Big Move 2: Fast forward, 5 years later.. when i finally moved out of That Stinky Place with Squat Toilets to begin my oh-so-exciting clinical life of being an Intern at VGHTPE. Et, voila! 27 boxes of STUFF!! yessirree, i think i gained more objects than knowledge in that time period. To be honest, there was somewhat of a Big Move 2a because i had to shift my things into My Apartment, with help of a Strong Person and my cousin. Big Move 3: (and before that Big Move 2b) when I had to move down south to Kaohsiung for the second year of Internship. Heh. SLIGHTLY less stuff (at least sans the Guzheng), but still a good 25 boxes? Major lugging, phew. Big Move 4: this is when i move BACK to the Stinky Place with Squat Toilets where I get to reminisce the Good Ole Days with fellow army folks for a month, and MUG MY ASS OFF until i graduate for Real on June 16, and then graduate for Symbolic Purposes on June 29th. Big Move 5: So, evicted from school, i gotta move down to Changhwa for another month, cuz my hospital dorms wouldn't be ready until July 31st or something, which is vaguely annoying... like hello I've all my trash up here with me, how about giving me more grace before having me slog for your hospital come August? Big Move 6: HELLO NEW DORM!!! Big Move 7: in limbo~~ i expect, when I end work at CCH and gotta wait to find a place where imma work at for very many years. Big Move 8: !!! Another dorm? A rental house? My house? Well, we'll see, but this will be when I move to a place for Residency, so i DO HOPE i won't have to move around for abit after THAT! and can just focus on slowly accumulating Stuff again. -sweats- _________________________________ I HAVE been trying to minimize my luggage this time, because it IS rather embarrassing to be the One with the Most Luggage every single damn time! And I cant keep saying that it's because im an international student and have all my barang barang with me from the start of time, because some of the other international students have close to NO Luggage. Boo! -fiddles thumb- I've taken proactive steps towards this, including donating any item of clothing i've not worn in say a year, trashing shoes, recycling paper, giving away bags... frankly, it's rather liberating, and you seriously realize that there're many items you just don't REMEMBER having... until you see it one day again. But for sure, the little hoarder in me is screaming bloody murder. Oh well! Less is More, I guess! ___________________________________ Time for nappy-byes before the second round of dressings at 4pm! Toodles!

It's Friday Night!

The 3rd last Friday before it All Comes to an End. I think, the problem with leaving peripheral courses for the last... is incredible inertia. It doesn't help that ORL has surgeries with the smallest operating field (like looking through nostrils, much?), and today is just a way packed day at the surgery. We had a case of vocal cord polyp in a tour guide, another one of chronic tonsillitis in a poor kid who somehow managed to survive an entire year on steroids for his persistent inflammation (way to go ORL clinics!!). Then there was a relatively uncomplicated chronic rhinosinusitis involving only the right maxillary sinus and OMC. My consultant, Z, was such a sweetheart and let me play with the endoscope (helloooo eustachian tube and rosenmuller fossa!). I must say Z is the best ORL surgeon i've seen.. not that i've seen many. But i can personally attest to his incredible skill because the horrendous nasal obstruction that troubled me for the longest time was totally cured under his magic fingers (whoohoo!). Bilateral patent nostrils!! And despite being done under local anesthesia, it didn't hurt ONE BIT. So, after the jiffy Functional Endoscopic Sinus Surgery (FESS), there was a poor old lady with double primary cancer. She had absolutely no risk factors... but had oral cancer nonetheless. Brave as she was, she managed to complete her entire radiotherapy sessions despite the formation of a few really nasty submental fistulas and abscesses. And because of this persistent infection, she developed bilateral ear effusions which affected her hearing. So this time, she was here for bilateral grommet insertion and drainage of her abscess. THEN (tired yet?), we had one lady with parotid gland tumor which ... perhaps was malignant. We don't know, so we're waiting for the pathology. But the risk of removing such a tumor was facial palsy, cuz the facial nerve courses through the parotid... which could result in disastrous lawsuits despite all that preoperative preparation. Finally, there's the guy with thyroglossal duct cyst.. which required a Sistrunk procedure. Cool stuff! It's a congenital deformity of the tract that the thyroid gland leaves behind when it descends from the tongue base to its eventual location.... zzz soooo many cases in a day! So.. by the time I went off, I was out like a light. Talk about case overload!! But perhaps i'm getting soft...