May 2009
Cancer Circus Pt III
Why do I keep writing about the past when the daily chronicles are dramatic and demanding enough?
Because it's only when we fully understand history can we appreciate what is happening in the present. Because I want to verbalise, to contextualise it all before I forget. Because shit piles up. Because I had a series of boring, motionless dates with the literally radiating Wall E, and it will be another two months before the next round of MRI to see whether he has delivered his promises and/or other catastrophes.
So, where was I? Refresh your minds with Part I and Part II, in case you mistake this entry as what is happening currently. I'm going through recurrence right now, but I'm recounting what transpired back from September 2007, after the initial surgery.
I was on my feet pretty soon after the operation, my hair just isn't right when I lie down for days on end. I was told that during surgery, updates were leaking out by the minute to a handful of friends via SMS and IM, much like news flashes during presidential elections. Day 3 after, I thought it time to announce the situation and requested Ann to send out an email to a small network. She wrote with such rationality and precision that I ended up forwarding her message to my entire address book — sedated or not, I couldn't possibly have done any better.
... It was really touch and go for a while. She’s coming through now though and it’s all looking positive. She’s mentally very alert (been bossing me around since the op) but the body is obviously going to take some time to heal. It was a really major surgery. She’s basically got an artificial artery inside her for the rest of her life. She’s still on morphine...
The response to Ann's email made me feel especially loved: my inbox was inundated with concerned and well-wishing messages, and the hospital flooded with floral deliveries. I even received a pink Nintendo SC to wile away the hours. If you think a hospital stay is boring, think again. I couldn't get through one single DVD from a selection that was so kindly brought to me from my Shanghai home. Doctors did their rounds before my breakfast. Nurses were at me round the clock. Visitors came to see me, but had to be hosted in unoccupied rooms since mine was packed. It was a full-time job, and I missed my freelance schedule.
Even with the low energy level, sleep was not always easy while in hospital, with a drainage unit attached to me like an untrained ayi, clumsy and awkward. She was loud as well: the continuous suction noise had me thinking it was raining the entire night at ICU, and provoked me to shut her up in layers of toweling even during the days after. Sleeping on my side is now elevated from mundane habit to luxury behaviour, one that I am thankful for every night. Lounging on an incline, my back and bottom grew sore, but lying completely flat would probably have caused more complications when a pulmonary embolism hit me five days post-operation.
I remember not being able to breathe that early morning. I sat up, composed myself and tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep again. The oxymeter moved between 84 to 89, well below the required 100% blood oxygen content. I woke Mom, who then immediately called the nurse, who then reached my surgeon urgently. It was not yet 6 AM. The emergency CT scan indicated a shower of blood clots blocking my major airways that was apparently foreseeable and even expected while recovering from such major physical trauma. Once the clots are formed, then sprinkled into the bloodstream, they are hoped to be absorbed back into the system. The doctors then increased dosage on the blood thinner I was already taking as a precaution.
Returning to my room in a wheelchair from the imaging department that morning, I crashed. The morphine euphoria had long evaporated, reality was slow, hard and heavy. I was staring at life head on, and I felt weak, defeated, broken. I cried.
The rest of my sojourn at the 'hotel' was relatively non-eventful. I savoured a transfusion of 3 full bags of blood — it coursed through my veins like V from True Blood, the sweet, invigorating life source it is — while Ann scored a photo with Josh Hartnett for her sister's entertainment in the name of cancer. To Josh, who was wrapping up filming in Hong Kong, the 'sister in hospital' probably resembled a bald twelve year-old with leukemia in flannel pajamas, frail, pale and emaciated in a room full of balloons and teddy bears. Whatever works.
PT had rerouted a company trip from Thailand to Hong Kong the day before my discharge from hospital. Seeing him, my best friend, was tremendously comforting; but seeing him, a familiar face from Shanghai reaffirmed the reality of the circumstances: this was not a parallel universe I accidentally slid into, not a surreal nightmare — this is it, there really is no escape.
The ride home from hospital was the first time I had left the building in ten days. I was tearful, overwhelmed. By the time we arrived, I wanted to unload the anxiety, but was overshadowed by my mother's own personal brand of fury. She unleashed her stress over a minor miscommunication with the medical supplier of home-use oxygen. Her yelling and frantic energy made me aware that even if I myself hadn't been on edge for the last two weeks, people who cared about me certainly were, and desperately needed relief.
Be careful what you wish for, really, because the Universe does hear you. I recall clearly that night at YY — one of our late night haunts in Shanghai where the badly mixed drinks and the smoky, bohemian atmosphere always have me drinking hot Lipton tea with a shot of vodka — when PT, Alfred and I sat around spinning yarn on piercings and tattoos. A tattoo is something serious, it's really desecrating the body... I think scarring or branding is hot, it adds texture and touch... You've always decorated your cleavage. Yes, why don't I just get a zipper on my chest?!
My favourite accessory for a decolletage since I-don't-remember-when: Swarovski crystal tattoos in black, straight down my front. I have a visual of the post-op, pre-scar staples too. Not for the squeamish, though.
Because it's only when we fully understand history can we appreciate what is happening in the present. Because I want to verbalise, to contextualise it all before I forget. Because shit piles up. Because I had a series of boring, motionless dates with the literally radiating Wall E, and it will be another two months before the next round of MRI to see whether he has delivered his promises and/or other catastrophes.
So, where was I? Refresh your minds with Part I and Part II, in case you mistake this entry as what is happening currently. I'm going through recurrence right now, but I'm recounting what transpired back from September 2007, after the initial surgery.
I was on my feet pretty soon after the operation, my hair just isn't right when I lie down for days on end. I was told that during surgery, updates were leaking out by the minute to a handful of friends via SMS and IM, much like news flashes during presidential elections. Day 3 after, I thought it time to announce the situation and requested Ann to send out an email to a small network. She wrote with such rationality and precision that I ended up forwarding her message to my entire address book — sedated or not, I couldn't possibly have done any better.
... It was really touch and go for a while. She’s coming through now though and it’s all looking positive. She’s mentally very alert (been bossing me around since the op) but the body is obviously going to take some time to heal. It was a really major surgery. She’s basically got an artificial artery inside her for the rest of her life. She’s still on morphine...
The response to Ann's email made me feel especially loved: my inbox was inundated with concerned and well-wishing messages, and the hospital flooded with floral deliveries. I even received a pink Nintendo SC to wile away the hours. If you think a hospital stay is boring, think again. I couldn't get through one single DVD from a selection that was so kindly brought to me from my Shanghai home. Doctors did their rounds before my breakfast. Nurses were at me round the clock. Visitors came to see me, but had to be hosted in unoccupied rooms since mine was packed. It was a full-time job, and I missed my freelance schedule.
Even with the low energy level, sleep was not always easy while in hospital, with a drainage unit attached to me like an untrained ayi, clumsy and awkward. She was loud as well: the continuous suction noise had me thinking it was raining the entire night at ICU, and provoked me to shut her up in layers of toweling even during the days after. Sleeping on my side is now elevated from mundane habit to luxury behaviour, one that I am thankful for every night. Lounging on an incline, my back and bottom grew sore, but lying completely flat would probably have caused more complications when a pulmonary embolism hit me five days post-operation.
I remember not being able to breathe that early morning. I sat up, composed myself and tried unsuccessfully to fall asleep again. The oxymeter moved between 84 to 89, well below the required 100% blood oxygen content. I woke Mom, who then immediately called the nurse, who then reached my surgeon urgently. It was not yet 6 AM. The emergency CT scan indicated a shower of blood clots blocking my major airways that was apparently foreseeable and even expected while recovering from such major physical trauma. Once the clots are formed, then sprinkled into the bloodstream, they are hoped to be absorbed back into the system. The doctors then increased dosage on the blood thinner I was already taking as a precaution.
The rest of my sojourn at the 'hotel' was relatively non-eventful. I savoured a transfusion of 3 full bags of blood — it coursed through my veins like V from True Blood, the sweet, invigorating life source it is — while Ann scored a photo with Josh Hartnett for her sister's entertainment in the name of cancer. To Josh, who was wrapping up filming in Hong Kong, the 'sister in hospital' probably resembled a bald twelve year-old with leukemia in flannel pajamas, frail, pale and emaciated in a room full of balloons and teddy bears. Whatever works.
PT had rerouted a company trip from Thailand to Hong Kong the day before my discharge from hospital. Seeing him, my best friend, was tremendously comforting; but seeing him, a familiar face from Shanghai reaffirmed the reality of the circumstances: this was not a parallel universe I accidentally slid into, not a surreal nightmare — this is it, there really is no escape.
The ride home from hospital was the first time I had left the building in ten days. I was tearful, overwhelmed. By the time we arrived, I wanted to unload the anxiety, but was overshadowed by my mother's own personal brand of fury. She unleashed her stress over a minor miscommunication with the medical supplier of home-use oxygen. Her yelling and frantic energy made me aware that even if I myself hadn't been on edge for the last two weeks, people who cared about me certainly were, and desperately needed relief.
My favourite accessory for a decolletage since I-don't-remember-when: Swarovski crystal tattoos in black, straight down my front. I have a visual of the post-op, pre-scar staples too. Not for the squeamish, though.