Somebody Has Been Busy

Week 1

Two days after my arrival, I felt sick. I had severe fever and diarrhea. I was feeling so weak that I spent most of my time under a huddle of blankets helplessly. I lost my appetite. It was a plain torture. I took paracetamol, but it did not help much.

On the next day, my mum took me to a physician. The doctor cited the weather and food as culprits. The weather culprit is understandable, but food? He offered further explanation – my stomach was “not used to the local food.”

I have an American stomach, someone quipped.

Week 2

For the past year, I have been having nose bleeding. And the worse thing is, it occurs more and more frequently. So I decided to pay an ENT (ear nose throat) specialist to have a regular check up.

Unexpectedly, the doctor (Dr Chua in Penang) told me that a surgery is needed. Apparently, the soft bone in my nose was crooked and there was a lump behind my nasal airway (that is not supposed to be there). So, the bone had to be corrected and the lump had to be removed. Furthermore, the lump had to be tested via biopsy (as it could be benign or cancerous). Everything went well – the biopsy result was benign, and I was discharged from the specialist center two days later. But I have to confess, the hospitalization was not fun at all. I hate the antibiotic injections – they hurt so much. I felt like having needles and army ants injected into my blood vessels.

Week 3

For most of the time, I stayed at home to recover from the surgery. The first 10 days after the surgery was rather miserable. I had plastic support flaps in my nose. There was no way I could breath normally; I breathed through my throat. Moreover, I had no control over the mucous in my nose. Every morning, I discovered dried mucous tainted with blood around my nose openings.