10,000

There is a famous Chinese saying - 千里之行，始於足下。  Perhaps the translated version is more familiar to most of you, as it says ‘A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step’.  After repeated contemplation and vacillation, I finally mustered the courage to do something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time now.

This ‘Regain Health’ program of mine requires me to walk 10,000 steps a day, every day.  This is by no means an easy feat, but oh well, I have to start somewhere, one step at a time.  And I’ll get there.

I’ve also finally done a bioresonance allergy test, and it confirmed a few things I’d always suspected – that I am lactose intolerant, and I suffer from irritable bowels.  And horror of all horrors, I was also diagnosed to be wheat intolerant.  What?  Wheat???  What about my favourite breads, pastries, biscuits and pastas?  I cannot live without wheat!

Like I tweeted earlier – I don’t know which is worse: not being able to drink milk, or not being able to eat cakes.

Allergy

I am allergic and sensitive to many things.  Of the humongous list which I won’t even bother to mention here, the most inconvenient must be how I can only wear gold or gold-plated earrings.  Even silver sometimes doesn’t work.

Having gotten my ears pierced rather late in life at 17 years old, I looked forward to wearing pretty and interesting earrings.  Outside of school, that was.  The school rules were simple – only plain ear studs were allowed.

I started noticing that something wasn’t quite right when wearing cheap earrings bought at flea markets and the likes started giving my ear holes a strangely itchy tinge.  In no time, the ear lobes would swell and itch terribly.  And then sometimes I scratched too hard in my sleep, resulting in pus formation.  Suffice to say it ended up a mess, and I would have to stop wearing earrings for weeks on ends till everything cleared up.

Mum couldn’t believe that I was allergic to everything else except gold, she attributed the inflammation to dirty earrings.  So she bought me alcoholic swabs to sanitise the earrings before wearing.  It didn’t work.

I was resigned to fate.  Pretty and fanciful earrings are now only reserved for wedding dinners and special occasions when I only needed to wear them for a maximum of 4 hours.  And even then I would come home with that familiar tinge in the ear holes.  Just a couple of hours is what it takes to give me months of hell.

I’m not particularly bothered now because I’ve long passed the age where I would wear fanciful earrings.  Diamond ear studs are my staples, with a couple of pearl earrings thrown into the base collection as occasional dress-up earrings.  All in all, I survive on no more than 5 pairs of earrings the past decade.  I’m a jewelry minimalist in this way.

Recently I’ve restarted wearing a necklace – a simple white gold chain from Tiffany’s and a silver crucifix.  And I noticed that my skin was having an allergic reaction to the silver crucifix.  So as a last resort, I only wear the necklace occasionally.  I’m in the midst of looking for a white gold crucifix that I like.  I know Tiffany’s has a collection but the designs don’t appeal to me.

How pathetic can I get.  It’s bad enough that I’m about the only person I know who can wear only gold earrings.  Now I can’t even wear silver chains and pendants…

Health

Health,
is a state of
complete physical,
mental and social well-being,
and not merely
the absence of
disease or infirmity.

This post is inspired after spending some time talking with a friend from RCIA.  I told the hubby I really learned something very, very serious today – that health, once lost, is exceedingly difficult to regain.  It takes a person of iron will and tenacity to overcome all odds, and I don’t even half fit into the mould.

I am in trouble.

Back Home II

Still not in the best of health and have been sleeping it off almost the whole day.  It will take a while, considering that I had been having the runs for 2 days and having very fitful sleeps.

Leaving you with a picture of our resort taken from the private jetty within the resort.  Beautiful place it is.

Back Home

Back home one day ahead of schedule
Nursing a bad tummy and a high fever
Need to sleep it off so posts’ timing will be erractic
Please bear with me in the meantime

Gosh. Don’t think I’d ever missed home this much.

Closure of a Chapter

Today will be my last day at work.  And I’m not quite sure how to go through the day; I’m just bad with valedictions in general.

I may have trivialised the decision in the last post when I mentioned about my impending departure.  Truth is, it still haunts me – what I’m about to give up after working so hard the past 3 years in the organisation.  And the financial freedom which I will be losing.  It was a painful, but necessary decision.  The words sound so logical.  I just wish I could convince myself that it was the right thing to do.

I don’t believe who I am at work defines the person that I am.  I am not ambitious in that way.  But still, no matter how unambitious one is, nobody wants to be too stark in contrast with your friends and peers where career achievements are concerned.  And I, have committed the mother of all career suicides, by becoming a generalist and not clocking enough years-in-service.

Perhaps the trick is to say it to myself a hundred times.  Or to have faith that God has something else in store for me.

I will regain my health.  I owe myself, and my loved ones, this much.

These are the farewell cupcakes I have specially ordered for my colleagues.  50 of them, to be exact.  How on earth I am going to lug them to work without damaging the detailings is anybody’s guess.  I could only keep my fingers crossed.

Afternote:  I know I have been harping on and on about my sabbatical.  My posts are also a little disorganised these 2 weeks because I have not been spending quality time writing during the weekends.  Sorry about that.  Promise I’ll work on it.

Chronic

Today is one of the days where I feel utterly incapacitated by an asthma attack – and these days are happening more often than usual in recent months.  I hate these days… because apart from living inwardly, I am rendered incapable of functioning properly as part of the society.

Something as simple as breathing which I used to take for granted has become such a laborious effort on my part recently.  Isn’t breathing supposed to be instinctive, effortless?  Not so anymore, evidently.  Many a times, I wake up in the wee hours of the morning desperately gasping for air.  Sometimes I wake up the entire household i.e. the hubby and the 3 furkids, and sometimes I don’t, if I manage to keep the wheezing down.

How on earth did my health degenerate to this pathetic state?

It has happened frequently enough for my GP to be concerned.  He concluded that my asthma may be a chronic rather than recurrent condition.  In simple terms, it meant that my airways are constantly in an inflammed state and that I am asthmatic 24/7, but sometimes the condition isn’t severe enough for me to notice it.  By and by, I get used to it and accept it as normal.

Many are quick to point at my 3 golden retrievers, attributing my insanely frequent asthma attacks to them and cajoling that I should give them up.  It probably isn’t the wisest of decisions to keep golden retrievers, given my inborn hyper-sensitive airways.  That much I’d care to admit.  Yet I am adamant about keeping the 3 of them with me, till they are ready to cross the rainbow bridge.

To many, dogs are just pets; dispensable and disposable when their needs override the pets’.  My dogs are a little more than that – they are family.  And I don’t forsake my family for my own convenience; things just don’t work like this.

So this is a challenge I need to overcome.  And I will.  Just leave the girls alone.

Do Not Disturb

The Tans are indisposed.  And the happiest beings in the whole house are the 3 furkids because it meant that we were home 24/7 the past few days.

HT: (glanced over) What antibiotics did he give you? Oh, he gave us the same one.

Me: (looking through the meds) Did he give you this yellow one?

HT: (searched through his own pile) Ya, here.

Me: Oh, he didn’t give you the orange one?

HT: No… I don’t have a sore throat anymore.

We had a very interesting conversation following dinner last night.  Sitting side by side, we sieved through our own meds and compared what our common GP gave us before proceeding to pop them into our mouths.  If I weren’t so sick, I would have found the whole scene extremely hilarious.

Seems like I lost my sense of humour along with my voice.

I finally succumbed to the bug.  And it’s been almost a week since the hubby fell ill.  According to the local newspapers, unusually large numbers of people are falling ill with sore throats, the common cold, fever and diarrhoea – numbers large enough to classify the infections as an epidemic.

So in any case, I took a bath following that and came out of the bathroom feeling like I was burning up.  Instinctively, I went looking for a thermometer.

39.18ºC.  I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

Tried a second time.

39.24ºC.

‘Darling!!!  I’m having a temperature of 39.2ºC!  Why so high!’  I screamed while I went searching for a second thermometer.  Just in case the first was faulty.

39.2ºC, the second thermometer registered.  Alright, both thermometers are working fine.  Glad we established that.

To cut the long story short, I found myself at a nearby 24-hour clinic one hour later.  The elderly doctor on the graveyard shift did not impress me at all.  And later when we were out of the clinic, the hubby told me he was on MSN Messenger and he wore adult diapers.  Don’t be mistaken, I am not prejudiced against the elderly.  It’s just that the doctor gave me very bad vibes.

We had a shock when we collected my meds.  I thought he was just going to give me pills for my high fever.  Instead he changed all the meds my GP prescribed to me, including my antibiotics.  Made me wonder if he knew what he was doing.

As we were returning home, I told myself I should listen to my instincts the next time round.  Go to the 24-hour clinic slightly further away, because they seem to have more competent doctors manning the graveyard shift.

I must have verbalised my thoughts aloud, because the next I heard from my dad was a stern ‘No more next time!’

Oops…

5 Days into Year 2011

It has been relatively good for me.  You would not believe it, but for the very first time in eons, I actually started the year on the right foot.  And am looking forward to the 360 days ahead.  That tiny ounce of what resembles enthusiasm coming from me is utterly amazing, isn’t it?

Unfortunately it hasn’t been as smooth sailing for some around me.

On the home front, I have Belle baby who is, through no real fault of hers, frustratingly taking her own sweet time to recover from her bout of diarrhea and the hubby who has had to make some difficult choices and personal sacrifices, all for the puppy’s sake.  Then there is my boss who was and still is hospitalised due to abdominal pains; a friend who has to make a rather difficult choice concerning life and death of another; another friend just lost her furkid to old age; and a colleague who is nursing a broken heart.

Being the reticent person that I am, I oft do not permit myself to reveal too much of how I really feel about things.  The exception is reserved for the very few close confidantes of mine and the hubby.  My heart goes out to the lot of them, but I have tremendous difficulty articulating it aloud to the subjects in question.

Get well soon… and cheer up!