Games of Old

Kids nowadays are armed with IPads and smartphones where they play solitary games which left no room for the imagination.  There is hardly any interaction unless you considered LAN games or Facebook.  I wouldn't call that social interaction if I were me and I am, so I'll go on to say that social networking is not social interaction.

Its a sorry state of affairs but this is the price we pay for advancement.  Back in the old days, the games we played were far more creative.

We drew and cut out our own paper Barbie dolls. Designed and coloured our own Barbie clothes and compared them with our friends, learning a thing or two about designs and fashion as we progressed. Today, its just a matter of buying the latest from the shelves.

We drew lines in the sand and played something called Hopscotch, sweating and cursing and enjoying every minute of it. If we get bored with Hopscotch, we flipped five stones on our palms.  The stones were hard on our palms so some of us started sewing little bags and filling them up with rice.  Its been so long I no longer remember the rules of the game.

Then there's that thing we did with rubber bands. We stood behind a line and cast out a rubber band as far as we could. If its your turn and your rubber band overlaps another, then that rubber band is yours.

"My Mother went to market to buy some ribbons. What colour do you want?" We tapped on a finger each time a word is recited from this quote and where it ends, the owner of the finger gets to choose a colour. If she chooses "Brown", you spell out the letters  (which is 5 lettered) as we tapped the following fingers and where it ends (5 fingers down the road), that finger gets eliminated from the pool.  When all your fingers are eliminated from this pool, you win the game.

In retrospect, I might add that we were a happier creative lot. Our generation of Baby Boomers went on to create a better world.

1969

It sounded like a good idea at the time. My cousins and me were sent off to bed on a hot inky night sometime in May 1969.  There weren't enough beds so we were herded off to sleep on the floor.  We shared a common blanket.  It wasn't fun having to sleep when you're not sleepy so we played all sorts of games as quietly as we could. Then one of us started sneaking cream crackers under the blanket to the rest of us. Boy, it was fun munching silently on those crackers under the blanket and fooling the adults into believing that we were asleep. Anyone who made a discernible noise while munching on the crackers were given a stab in the ribs. That doubled the fun factor.

The May 13 Racial Riot was in progress and many families were taking refuge upstairs at the shophouse where we lived.  A curfew was declared so the streets outside were deserted. While the children were having fun playing all sorts of games, the adults shared hushed whispers about the state of affairs.

Suddenly, we heard a loud commotion caused by the banging of pots and pans from the vicinity. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

About two hundred meters behind our shophouse was a river bank occupied by a row of wooden houses. The occupants from here laid zinc sheets along the river bank trusting in them to raise the alarm in the event of a night surprise attack.  Someone heard the zinc sheets creak that night.  The banging of the pots and pans began.

Able bodied men armed with machetes gathered for the action. Women and children peered cautiously from windows and open areas.  We watched and waited, waited and watched.  Nothing happened that night.

Then, one of the adults saw the cream cracker crumbs under our blanket. We were given an earful and sent back to a contrite sleep.

Forty years later, I discovered what happened that night.  The zinc sheets did creak and someone did walk upon it.  It was a stray canine.

4 more days!

Oh-de-de-dear-dear!

If wormholes exist, I would like to crawl into one right about now and get sucked into the future to circumvent what I must face next week.

5 More Days

Its 5 more days to the next treatment and I'm having sleepless nights. The news from other survivors aren't good. They spoke of much suffering.  I'm worried about my fingers and toes because they still hurts.

Someone told me that barley won't work for me.  It might trigger another bout of diarrhoea.  I'll have to try organic honey to cool down my system instead.  This is making me jittery.

Will I survive this round of treatment?

Forbidden Food

I know I'm not allowed to touch one of these but that made it looked all the more appealing.

It is depressing to think that I can never eat one of these again.  Or can I?  I don't know.

Fingers and toes

This time, it's different.

The first three treatment was a breeze compared to this.  I've said that before, haven't I?  Right!  I won't tell you what you don't already know.  This time, I'll write about my fingers and toes.

See?  My finger tips and the flat of my foot still hurts.  This explains the tons of spelling errors I have had to correct lately.  Someone asked me to explain what I meant by the "hurt" so I had to think up a storm before I could finally describe it.

Let's imagine that your outer skin is peeling off by the layers.  The inner cells of your skin are now exposed. What do they do when they're exposed?  They send out pain signals and you feel the tenderness and it hurts when you touched anything.

Now let's talk about the nails. I won't take any pictures. I don't wish to be reminded of anything graphic years from now if I happened to survive this nonsense and reread all my previous posts, just for the heck of it.

I mentioned before that my toe and thumb nails were turning black.  No?  Hmm ... I don't remember writing about it anyway.  Perhaps I hadn't. My toe and thumb nails started turning black after the second chemotherapy. It started darkening ever so slightly at the base of the nail.  About two weeks after the latest treatment, the dark band measured about 0.5 cm.  By the beginning of this week (i.e. the third week), I started seeing a little pink again right below the black demarcating line which marked the end of the previous culling.  Culling may not sound appropriate.  Massacre!  Oh yes! My nail cells are recovering from the previous massacre.  But wait!  This is a good sign, isn't it?  This means that my cells are recovering, doesn't it?

The Black Inflatable Camera

Four elderly men in Canon T-shirts rested on the raised embankment with their arsenal. Man in Black appeared, blew into a black plastic bag, grasped one end to hold the air in and exchanged a few words with the men.  Taking six steps backwards, Man In Black raised the inflated bag to eye level, stooped over it and cried "Ready? One - Two - Three!"  He pressed an important button on his *inflatable camera, peered at it for several seconds, then beamed when he saw that the picture was good.  Eager to show the four men his picture, he walked towards them just in time to see them scoot out of sight.

* In case you're wondering, the black inflatable camera is an inflated black plastic bag. At the Water Front was a group of photographers wearing Canon T-Shirts.  Man in Black was trying to "blend" into the scene.

I witnessed the above while I was at the Kota Kinabalu Water Front some time late last year.  There were mixed reaction to Man In Black.  Ladies recoiled from him while their men looked brave but alert.  As for me, I was alone so I stayed at a safe distance.

How do we know, at a moment's glance that a man is mad?  How do we arrive at that conclusion?  I don't know.  Someone (I can't remember who) once wrote:

If a mad man were to enter a room, we should first hit him with a stick, then pity him later.

The world can be cruel when they encounter what they don't understand.

Water Front, Kota Kinabalu

The four elderly men were not captured in this shot but they were seated somewhere to the right of this picture.

Getting ready for the next biggie.

I am on my third week after the fourth chemo treatment.  This is, in my opinion, a time for recovery so I am almost always hungry.  I was thinking about food when I remembered this.

mini lobster

Yup! Mini lobsters grilled with cheese. I think that KK's mini lobsters taste better than the ones we have over here. Far sweeter and tender.

And by the by, Kuching's crayfish omelette is absolutely heavenly but I did not have any pictures of those, and more's the pity.  Pictures are good.  If you can't have the real thing, you can always drool over the picture, not that it did much good for those hunger pangs.

It had been a hungry week and my food thoughts could not be derailed.  It started with Kuching's oyster crisps. (Or-Chian)  and moved on to KK's mini lobsters which was what we had the last time we were at the water-front seafood restaurant.  And the Water Front reminded me of the mad man which I shall write about in the next post.

Funny, how one hungry moment inspired so much memory.

A Matter of Opinion.

Here's a comment I receive recently in response to one of my earlier blog posts.

...  one of the doctor have advised my mum not to take any Soybean product for this period & drink more barley water which help to cold down the body. Not sure why ><" But I will ask my mum to try. Be Strong & Win the Cancer !

Conflicting viewpoints have been going around in circles  Sometimes you don't know who to listen to.  Even doctors are divided on these matters.

Let's take soy bean products for instance.  Soy bean are rich in uric acid and you don't want your body to get into an acidic state because that's what the cancer cells love. That was one opinion I gathered from a cancer support forum.

But we need protein, another support group protest. Soy bean products are better than meat, which is laden with harmful hormones.

So, who are we going to listen to?

In my opinion, we need protein to build up our body for the chemotherapy. (This is a treatment which destroys both our good cells as well as the bad cells.)  If we were to abstain from soy bean and meat products during this period, we will end up losing the battle.  Moderation is the key.  Eat enough of both and avoid excesses. That's where I stand on this matter.

Hunger Pangs

Now that the two weeks quarantine is over, there is only one thought on my mind. FOOD!  I am hungry, all the time, but right about now, this is what I want most.

Oyster Crisps

Kuching's Or-Chian.  (Oyster Crisps?)  Those black globs you see are oysters fried in a thin crisp batter. Incredibly mouth-watering.  I can't wait to recover from this nonsense to catch the next plane to Kuching for a humongous serving.

The meal wouldn't be complete without midin, a  local wild fern sautéed in chillies and belachan.

Midin

Mother of all Purges.

The purging eased off for another day but returned again late last night.  So yes, I was happily purging away and looking the part.

It reminded me of the time when I visited Suzhou a couple of years ago.  My cousin was an expatriate in Suzhou where I prolonged my visit after one of those tours.

Noodles Over The Bridge was a local Suzhou favourite at the time.  The story goes that some ancient Suzhou scholar was studying so hard for his examination that he did not have the time to return home for his meals. (Or perhaps he wasn't allowed to return home for his meal?) It was a brutal winter but his wife prepared and delivered to him piping hot noodles. (I am assuming that the wife must have walked over a bridge?) That's how the noodles got its name.

The noodles were served in a huge bowl of soup topped with a thick layer of oil. (The layer of oil insulates the soup against the cold.) Several small plates came with the noodles. They contained eggs, meatballs, thin slices of meat, vegetables etc. You were supposed to drop these into the piping hot soup and wait a while for the ingredient to cook itself.  I'm not sure if the layer of oil is supposed to be taken in with the soup but I did not have the presence of mind to remove mine.  It wasn't an agreeable arrangement.  I had the Mother of all Purges followed by piles.

My cousin's driver helped me acquire a local medical treatment for my condition. I was expecting some sort of brown beads to be taken orally or rectal cream. What he gave me instead was a plaster with brown paste spread over it.  The plaster was placed over my belly button.  I started feeling some heavy traffic moving from my navel and my piles started to shrink quite literally, in real time.  I swear I could feel it and I've never felt it before or since.

Recently I heard about a man who suffered from motion sickness. He treats himself by plastering a Salonpas over his navel.

Talk about strange cures.

Fresh Coconut

One man's meat is another man's poison.

I still don't get it.  Fresh coconuts were supposed to help cool down the effects of chemotherapy.  That's what everyone said.  It didn't work for me and everyone's been trying to explain it ever since.

On the first day after treatment, I took one fresh coconut.  There weren't any waterfall sensation but hey, if it's swinging things down a little for my innards, I'm not complaining. I don't need any notification.  Then again, I was on steroids and probably feeling as high as the Twin Tower. Four days after the treatment, when the steroids wore off, I could feel the decline.  My finger tips started to hurt. I spent the next two days with body and muscle aches, ribcage aches, and I swear my recent wound started hurting again. I wasn't terribly fond of Panadol but I took one to ease the pain.

Once again, my tongue acquired that old familiar metallic taste. My throat was tightening up so more fresh coconuts were recommended.  What ensued was diarrhoea.

There's something to be said about fresh coconuts. Apparently, they are not to be taken after 4 pm. Something about the dying day having a diabolical effect on the coconuts. They acquire a fatal cooling grip on your bodily yin yang thingy and throw your system out of sync.

In my case, I do not have enough fire in the pit of my stomach.  Hence the diarrhoea. Don't get me wrong. There's fire in my throat but they're kinda different in a topsy-turvy-holy-chapati-only-God-knows kind of way.

So I had diarrhoea for five days after the body aches.  Isn't that fun? Yesterday, seeing that the diarrhoea had dissipated, I drank about 100 ml 100+, the isotonic drink at room temperature.  The diarrhoea returned. Looks like it's going to be my current best friend for a while.

Have I mentioned mouth ulcers?  They're back too, in the multitude. I discovered Bonjela.  Also, the flat of my foot started to hurt for the past two days so I kept myself in bed most of the time.

Taxotere is one mean machine, I can tell you that!

An odious nightmare

how does one describe

a nightmarish agony

in simple haiku?

a futile sojourn?

an odious experience?

a loathsome passage? 

my pleas for mercy

echoed in the void as they

fell on empty ears ...

The past couple of days had been difficult.  I was told the difficulties will increase exponentially as the treatment progresses.

The body aches came when the steroids wore off.  My whole back hurts, the bones, muscles, even the ribcage. It took two days to go away. The gastric took longer despite medication.

Just when I was getting a little better, the diarrhoea came with its chilling cramps. It's been 3 days since. The burning sensation in my finger-tips continue to cause me much distraught. Dipping them in iced water helped some. I noticed a slippery sensation in my finger tips akin to how it feels to touch alkali in the laboratory.

Also, the skin beneath the sole of my feet is peeling off.  I am metamorphosing into something else! 

Chemotherapy 4

I'll be lying if I told you I was cool as a cucumber. Instead, I was a bundle of nerves.  I couldn't sleep last night as I envisioned the trouble I will be facing today. I believed in the power of prayer, yet I worry that God may have overlooked my troubles, hence the anxiety.

It went well.  I was flushed with steroid.  16 capsules (each 5 mg) orally taken at 6 pm yesterday, another 16 capsules taken at 8 am today, another capsule of a stronger dosage at 9 am and on top of this, they injected another capsule intravenously.  All this to prevent the inevitable side effects.

Wary about infection, I wore a face mask for the first time.  The nurse instructed me to remove the mask because they needed to monitor my face for the first sign of trouble.  I sat there at the edge of the couch waiting for the breathing difficulties and the fever which never came. (Praise the Lord!)

It was a three hour infusion because the diluted medication was dripped at a slow pace.

Remember Ms Chatterbox from the previous chemo treatment?  If not, READ HERE and HERE because horrors of horror I was seated next to her this time. This isn't going to go anywhere without a fair description. She's 52 years old, scrawny and short, weighing at the most 120 pounds if not less. The first thing you'll observe is her hard face. This is a woman who have struggled, knew what it was to have struggled and persevered from it all. A tough nut to crack. Don't get me wrong though. She may have a small frame but she had enough energy in her to melt the iceberg which hit The Titanic. I believe she packed all those energy in her tongue.

Before my interrogation began, she was telling her audience how beastly her unsavoury neighbour was. "I have never seen such an anti-social woman.  Why, the other day when there was a power outage, she came out of her house to ask me if I too have the power outage.  After that, she went right back into her dark house without uttering another word.  Have you ever seen such an unfriendly woman?  Anyone in her right mind would have stayed a little longer to chat some."

She had a mastectomy on her left which cost her $2000 which she is trying to claim from the Social Welfare.I found out all this by inserting between her rapid fire line of questioning just these three word,. "What about you?" 

Thankfully, her treatment was over shortly after and she took her leave.  Peace returned to the room.

There were a total of 25 names listed on the Chemo Board today.  15 of them were Breast Cancer cases.

Will I get by, October?

So I went for the blood test this morning.  The nurse was efficient and it was over in a squeeze of a lime.

Over at Ultrasound, the scan on my liver wasn't conclusive.  Based on the images they saw, it did not look like a cluster of blood vessels.  It looked more like a cyst but they couldn't be sure.  A 3-phase CT Scan was recommended.

Next was the education session with the Staff Nurse at Oncology.  Here's where it gets worse.  The drug they will be infusing this time is called "Taxotere". This drug is known to have some devious side effects which may require me to be warded should the situation get out of hand.

But that's not all.

For two weeks after the infusion my immunity will be at its lowest.  I've been advised not to receive any visitors during this time.  What I had to look out for is an infection which may be the death of me.  The nausea and vomiting will come, as will the muscle and joint aches.  It is going to be a hellish ride.  I will also need to look out for mouth ulcers and dislodging finger nails.  Dislodging finger nails?  Yes.  That's the scary part.

My previous optimism is misplaced.  My new question is,"Will I get by, October?"

I'll get by, October.

When I was a kid growing up, the general consensus among my elders were clear.  If you send your daughter to a school where the medium of instruction is English, your daughter will turn "wild". They'll emulate the ways of the West. (Western girls were the embodiment of immorality.They did everything bad that'll make a jaded woman like my Ma blush.)   I was the only girl in the family tree (that includes cousins at my level ) who was sent to such a school.  I never did find out why there was a break with precedent. My Ma watched me to see if I was going to turn bad.. Heck, I watched myself to see when I was about to turn bad.

Chinese medium schools at the time (I don't know if it still is) were governed by Confucian principles. Students were taught about filial piety, respecting your elders, stuffs like that. Does the medium of instruction influence morality?  I call that a whole load of crap; ideas conceived by racial zealots to ensure that we keep within the perimeter of our origins.  I've never understood all that ruckus with the Dong Zong protests anyway.  What irks me more are Chinese idealist pointing fingers at some of us who can't speak decent Mandarin.  They accused some of us of belittling our mother tongues, our ancestral language like it was the mother of all sins.

My elders used to look at me, shake their heads mournfully and say "If you send your children to an English medium school they'll turn out like her.  Look at her, straight as a lace with not a shred of guile. How will she survive in this world?"

That was a tall order but survive this world I did, by calling a spade, a spade.  I never did pick up the art of not saying what you meant, and not meaning what you said, which was from their angle, paramount in the grander scheme of things.

Okay, end of rant.

Big day tomorrow. Blood test followed by fourth chemo on the following day.  I have reasons to bitch about anything, so sue me!