On Road To Recovery

... or so I hope. Had been pretty wrong when I thought all was left was the cough in my past blog entry. :S

Went to see another doctor in UHWC on Monday. The previous doctor whom I saw on Friday asked me to do a blood test first before anything else so I did. I don't know why but I have this incomprehensible fear towards blood tests. I know it doesn't hurt that much and all, but somehow I hate the idea of people taking blood out of my body. The blood test done on Friday left me with a bruise on my left hand, so the nurse decided to do this one on my right. She was very kind, and explained that the bruise was because I haven't been pressing on the wound hard enough after the blood test was done.

I didn't really expect to have the test done on my right hand so I had to brace myself for it. And the nurse saw how nervous I was, so she used the typical tactic of asking 101 questions on how I was feeling and which doctor I was seeing, etc. She had my blood out quick enough, and I gingerly took it to the lab.

The doctor thought my problem was only bacteria infection in my throat at first, and told me that the blood test needn't be done at all, and it was an 'uneccessary puncture'. But when she caught sight of my high white blood cells percentage (20 over percent, I think usually it's around 1 percent or something), she asked me to do another blood test! I almost fainted. When the nurse in charge saw it was me again, she went over to the lab to check if the test was really necessary. Sadly it was. So now I have three bruise prints on both my arms. I suppose I still haven't gotten the art of pressing my wounds well enough.

Doctor concluded that my problem was viral infection. Or something like mononucleotide glandular infection. I was very, very tired all day. And kept coughing non-stop. Sweated a lot at night. Couldn't sleep in the day. I couldn't eat more than a quarter of my dinner, found climbing stairs hard, and couldn't concentrate in the classes that I didn't skip. It was terrible. Viral infection does take time to heal. The worst was at night when I tried to fall asleep, and I hallucinated (thinking I'm supposed to cough my phelgm into test tubes, aliens, pillow turning into cucumber!), coughed, tossed, turned, and sweated until it was almost morning, before I could finally fall asleep.

Thank God for protecting Tirza from ALL my germs throughout this period. These two weeks are light for me but not for her. She tapao-ed my dinner, slept through (I dunno how but somehow she did) my thunderous coughing, and did not catch any of my sicknesses. And she lent me Catherine Marshall to read too, which I finished yesterday. Was a very nice and encouraging book, especially when you're ill.

Today my energy level is finally higher than before, so hopefully my condition had turned for the better. I managed to have my first proper meal yesterday, which was pretty good (though I vomited a bit of my porridge out in the end). Finished lunch and attempting dinner today :) It's such a blessing to be able to eat normal food! I missed what popo used to cook when I was young and had fever. The mee in soup with ikan bilis inside, or the porridge with fish. Super nice la! Now my number one diet when I don't feel like eating anything is milk, Koko Krunch and Ah Gong's prunes haha!

I started printing my FYP readings which proved to be more horrendous than I expected. Hopefully I'll get started and finish them up good and early before my supervisor asks me about them. I'm lucky to work under a nice professor this year. The project is about bacteria genome reconstruction - and it's a calculation based project. Guess I shouldn't go too deep into what it's about here in a public blog, in case it's supposed to be secret or anything. But it does look interesting! :)

I want to get well soon and live a normal life! Jerome has been covering all IHG articles everyone can't take now, and I feel bad not helping haha. And I'm so out of hall dinners and hall activities (though it is a nice change lazing in the room instead of going down for activities). And my module readings which I haven't even printed. :S Argh. I have been numbed from the life of a Chem Engineering student for over a week, and now everything is coming back to haunt me. Thank God this semester I'm not doing Industrial Attachment after all. How in the world am I going to survive living like a zombie and resting for over a week, if two days MC is all I could get!