Category Archives: Personal

Well, word came that mom was sent to the hospital for shortness of breath.  Then as I was getting ready, word came again that she is in the ICU.  I got the earliest flight back and went directly to the hospital.  She recognized me and was communicative with everyone there.  But that was the best day since I got here.  She never took food so they put in the feednig tube.  She was breathing hard and constipated.  And she has been sleeping during the day when I am here.  The mask they put on her to inflate the lung keeps her up so she couldn’t get good sleep at night.  Even during the day, there are constant interruptions with vital sign checking, weighing, anima, asthma like breathing medicine… on and on and on.

The only thing she is saying to me now is that she wants to go home.  go home.  go home.  Sometimes, she would call for her mom, too.  It’s a hard process to be born, and it’s also a hard one in the end.  The body is shutting down slowly and all the advanced medicine can only try to help whatever minimal function there is left to keep alive.  And all these measures just increase the discomfort of the elderly.  There is no easy way and the onlookers feel helpless.

Dying is a very hard process for everyone involved.

The dreaded news came from an evening overseas call.  Cousin said they found lumps on the left armpit and between the leg and stomach.  He said mom is not complaining about any pain but the lumps are tender to the touch.  The doctor wanted to do a biopsy and have her stay in the hospital for four days to determine if it’s her breast cancer spreading or something else.  He wanted me to make the decision of what to do next.

Talked to E and she gave me more information on breast cancer, its diagnosis and how to treat it and what the prognosis.  At 96, nothing sounds promising or appropriate.  She’s exhausted just from an outing to the doctor’s office, can’t put her through biopsy, cuts, and or chemo.  So that means do nothing and just wait.

I know it’s coming some day.  But I’m still not ready to deal with it.  Knowing it’s getting close to the end is hard.  It just depletes all the energy and motivatino to deal anything in my own life.  The brain wants to wander instead of focusing on what I should do next.   Forcing it to function only works for a short time and tires me out soon.  I am between the determination to do what I can do and let go of what I can’t control and the total pessimistic giving up trying.

Serena is great for being a friend of new acquaintence from last year.  She is already finding prospective places to stay for less within a day’s notice.  And she sent hilarious pictures told me to laugh no matter what happens in life.  There are angels in the world.

The financial matters, the travel arrangements, the emotional ups and downs, too much to do and no motivation to get any of them done. 

Amazing how things in life affect your mood and energy.  It’s all in the brain and yet we have little power to control our behaviors and thoughts.

This week has been a whirl wind of getting back in touch with old friends from a long time ago.   A friend from middle school called out of the blue saying that she got my number from a class reunion for our middle school in Taiwan.  It took a couple of phone tags for us to finally talk on the phone.  It was strange listening to a mature voice and trying to match that to the image I had in my head when she was 15 or 16.  But it didn’t take long for us to fall back  to the time when we were both innocent and remembering the special things we did together.  Wow!

I always think I am a loner.  I don’t like to be part of a big club or a member of a famous group.  I’d rather hang out with one or two friends knowing that I don’t have to put on a different face or say things I don’t mean.  And I’m ok with that.  This phone call though has suddenly changed everything.  I am a member of a group, a group that I belong to not by choice but by chance.  And we went through 3 years of intensive studying and learning together.   We were all so innocent and ready for life.

She went through some hardships as she grew up.  I can hear the sadness that was brought out by this class reunion.    She didn’t have time to feel when she was young as she was striving to make a living for her and her family, but this reunion suddenly threw her back to the beginning of her struggling years.  She said she was crying the next morning when she got up.  It also made me sad.  I told her she was mourning for that innocent girl.  I am too.  The time between that girl and the woman I am now is too much to absorb all at once.

Life has treated us well at this stage of our lives.  But we went through some hard times either by our own fault or by circumstances.  Sitting at 50s and looking back at 15 is a mind boggling thing to do.

I also got an email from another old friend back in Taiwan since then.  All of a sudden, I have two new old friends in my life.  It kind of makes me feel good cause I do have friends near and far.  Now that our parents are old and feeble, our kids are grown, is it the reason we appreciate getting connected again with our childhood friends?  Is it a way for us to finally connect all the dots together and make it complete?  I don’t know.  But it sure feels weirdly good.

The day after Christmas I started feeling sick.  After E left to go back to Cinci, I went home to take a nap.  And there started my 2 week long holiday flu.  The first week, I was running a fever with a very sore throat.   Nyquil was my constant companion.  I got a couple of hours or sleep then woke up with cold sweat feeling chilly at the same time.   It’s a weird feeling to be sweating and cold like the body couldn’t decide what it wants to do or feel.  I kept the nyquil vigil up for the week.  But I still managed to get up and walk Benny when it’s time.  Em came over and made turkey noodle soup and walked Benny a few times in the afternoon.  I was able to get up in the morning and bundled up to get out in the cold (never fails that was the time it got really cold and snowy) with Benny.  This gave me serious doubt that I should keep a dog as I get older.  Although they are such great companions ready to give you love and attention whenever you want it, it’s the sick time and the cold weather that makes it so difficult to keep a dog.  And since Ey is so allergic to cats, I should not have cats either.  Benefits and disadvantages of having pets.

By the second week, I was tired of the cold and ready to feel better.  But I wasn’t feeling better, the cold dragged on.  I still had a bit of fever and now sore throat turned into scratchy throat and I started coughing too.  I ran through a whole box of puffs in a few days with the constant nose blowing.  Oh, it was awful.  Then I remembered the nose irrigation thing I got for Ey to clean out his sinuses.  So I went out and got a neti pot and started rinsing my nose out.  I think that really did help speeding up the recovery.  At least I was able to clear the junk out instead of letting it drain down my thraot and settle in my lung like it always did in the past when I have a cold.  I would be couging for weeks afterwards.  Sometimes it turned into like an asthma attack where I couldn’t stop coughing.  This time I believe with the help of the neti pot, I don’t have as much drainage down the throat and I didn’t cough that much and it didn’t last as long.  Although it’s the 12th and I’m still coughing occasionally and blowing my nose occasionally, it didn’t turned into an all out war of coughing uncontrollably.

I think it was 1/1 that was the turning point for my cold.  New Year’s Eve was the worst.  I did not have any energy left and I was feeling desparate and exhausted.  I even called for help and asked Jake to come and walk Benny that afternoon.  I spent half an hour desparately trying to figure out who I can call for help.  Couldn’t reach Em, can’t call anybody else that I think isn’t a big bother on New Year’s Eve to come and walk the dog.  Finally, I called Jake.  And he is such a sweet and kind man, he came right over and walked Benny and that was it.  Didn’t hesitate for a second.  Such a nice young man.

Even after I went through the cold, I’m still not a believer in the vaccine.  Now after I watched the Taiwan news about a 10 year old kid who died after the vaccine in a month, i deepend my mistrust in the shots.  I know it does help a lot of people, I still can’t bring myself to go and get one.

Yesterday, I watched Dr. Oz and he was advocating multivitamin, Fish Oil and D.  It reminded me of taking my vitamin pills and my calcium pills every day.  I really, really need to establish the habit of taking them now.  Especially my bone density test showed the symptoms of pre osteo.  I’m so bad at taking care of the body.  It’s time really to take it seriously.  So I can enjoy life to the fullest without hinderance from the cold or flu…

Bennyand Manfred woke me up this morning.  Climbed out of bed and saw the rain through the windows.  I fed them and made coffee.  But Benny wanted to go so I put his raincoat on and we went.  He walked like an old dog and stood by the steps for a few moments contemplating if it’s a good idea to go out.  We did go for a short walk and all the time he walked like it’s hard to even think about taking another step.  It’s funny.  He’s such a dainty dog.

Came back, climbed back into bed.  Checked email.  L isn’t on.  I turned on the Xbox and found Holiday.  Enjoyed the movie totally.  So befitting of the season.   Never watched so many movies.  Ever since the EPS adapters came and the xbox and appleTV are hooked up to it.  I started watching movie from Netflix and Xbox.  Riding the emotional tides of the plots, losing track of time.  The luxury of not working and being alone.  Not quite all alone, there is Benny, Manfred and Tido always around me.   Never have I had this luxury of time and freedom. 

However, a mindless day is fun but mindless days are not.  Finding a goal, something to learn, some thing to achieve, a finished project well done.  That makes your life energetic and purposeful.  So now I go and search for the meaningful day I am going to have.

It’s my Tuesday work day agian.  Had my lesson with M last night, it’s been couple of months since my last one with him.  I was semi-waiting for his call to cancel again.  But fortunately, he didn’t and we had our lesson.  I still love to take lesosn with him, I learn a lot of techniques with him.  We worked on Samba yesterday since that is one dance I never really learned from T.  And we probably will do a samba solo at the showcase next time.  The argintine Tango group lesson was interesting.  I’m still not quite used to the close hold and body contacts.  But I am determined to stay in and learn this dance for the showcase.  I wouldn’t want to learn it any other way with any partner anyway. 

My boss called and we setup his smtp server so that he can send email from anywhere.  He’s pretty happy about that.  And I am too.  Yeepiiiii.

I arrived at S around 5pm.  She was still downstairs making the last dish.  We talked and got the dish ready.  KJ arrived shortly after Chen got home and we started munching on bread and dips and my spinach artichoke pastry and drinking Jasmine tea martini.  S’s steaks are as good as always and she had 3 or 4 side dishes, too.  I loved them all and especially the hot pepper sauce.  I am paying for it today, but man it was good.

When we were widning up and I was actually thinking about going home, s told me that she’s calling 911 for chen.  I said, what?!  He was laying on the couch and said he was not feeling good.  His hands were cold to the touch but he was sweating over a cold head.  He said his blood sugar was very low.  After a few minutes, we were trying to decide to go to the emergency room or not, he got up and took the blood sugar test again.  It was up and he was feeling better.  He went and laid back down on the couch and he was not feeling good again.  So we all got up and S took him to Akron General.  I and KJ followed in our respective cars.   When we go in, the desk said they are doing a triage on him and 15 minutes later, S walked out and said they are admitting him and he is already in his room.  She asked us to go home and said she’ll call if she needs anything.  So we left.  I wanted to stay but doesn’t want to be a hassle either.

This morning I called before 9.  S is already coloring her hair at a beauty salon.  She said they came home around 5am in the morning.  They ran a lot of tests, and his blood sugar came back up.  They thought it may have something to do with the medicine he’s taking.  And he’ll see his regular doctor next week.  He was sleeping and she is doing her hair.  Everything is back to normal.

She said she is used to this by now with so many scares and emergency situations.  Man, that must be hard on both of them.  One with physical problem the other with mental stress.  Health at our age is so important.  And it also confirmed my belief of living for today and do what you want to do now within reason.  And again I’m thankful for my health and for the ability to enjoy life the way I want to.

Be thankful for your health and enjoy NOW.

I bought the puff pastry meaning to make something months ago.  S invited me over for dinner tonight, so I took it out of the freezer trying to come up with something to make.

I have frozen spinach, I have can artichoke, some cheese,  can crab meat.  So I put them all together with some bluecheese salad dressing, radish mayo and some cheese.  we’ll see how it turns out.  ya never know!

Love the convenience of this netbook.  The only thing I wish I can change is…

my eyesight

The screen is only 10″ so the letters are small and the resolution isn’t the best out there either.  So I find myself constanly trying to adjust the contrast and hoping to adjust the color or zooming in in order to read.  I guess there is a trade off with the size.