Leah’s Cafe

It’s a hard lesson learned: driving a car with the stick gear without power steering uses your abdominal muscles a lot. How do I know? I could feel the pull and the tension every time when force is exerted to change gears or turning the steering!

Could even feel it right there, the wounds are hurting. Not to mention the after effect - I have been suffering from pelvic pain and back ache ever since I drove around town to run errands the other day! Well, the wounds outside may seem to be completely healed, but the inside is still healing, any heroic acts can still cause pain that keeps me awake at night. My mother would say: “See, I told you so!”.

If there is anything good can come out from the recent cancer scare, it scared the big boy into action!

I have nagged and nagged about including me in his employer provided health care plan, and since I am not there in IL yet and it never seems urgent, he just kept procrastinating it. Actually all he had to do just tell the human resource personnel about his intention and provide some basic data about his wife.

When the first pathologist’s report came back recommended further investigation of possibility of cancer, he sprang into action and got me on his health insurance plan within three days!

If we were gold coins collectors, we might be able to sell them to pay for the medical bills, but too bad we aren’t. Even a simple surgery and the subsequent diagnostic tests to identify malignancy has cost us more than 10k out of pocket. At least he knows cancer treatment without insurance coverage can wreck us financially and reason for many of the bankruptcy cases filed in America!!

Since I have taken every scopes and tests under the sun to identify malignancy and found none. Dr Eugene, the O & G suggested taking a second look at the pathologist’s report. He got me the slides and our oncologist friend wrote us a referral letter. The slides were sent to another pathologist at another hospital for second opinion.

The second pathologist’s report came back today, it didn’t mention anything worth further investigation! That means the first pathologist might have read too much and/or over analyzed the elements he saw on the slides!

Thank god it’s just a cancer scare!

It’s unlikely a common practice, but thank god for Dr Eugene who cares about the best interest of his patient, for voluntarily suggested getting me the slides to go get a second opinion. I believe it’s through divine intervention and the power of many prayers that changed and turned the outcome of this, thus keep me from going for another surgery to remove the left ovary as diagnostic and preventive measure, which is unnecessary in due of the second pathologist’s report.

I am very thankful that it’s not the real thing, just a scare that burnt a hole in my pocket and kept me busy running around for three weeks!

My parents have lived in two different houses in their 40 years of marriage, they cannot imagine how on earth people like me moves around like a nomad. I just realized that this is the fifth time I am moving in the last ten years. That gives an average of one move every two years, it’s quite a nomadic lifestyle, isn’t it?

In fact, many of the boxes haven’t been unpacked since the last two moves. They are so many things we need to sort out or throw away, but we get so overwhelmed and paralyzed by the sheer thought of going through this junks, we just don’t do anything with them!

Many of the things are not useful nor valuable, but they hold certain sentimental values i.e the two boxes of cards and letters from a dear friend who was studying in a different university. It’s amazing that we were able to write to each other faithfully for 4-5 years, these letters are good chronicles of our student lives. Nevertheless, it’s time to throw away the bouquet of silk flowers and the small trinkets as they have accumulated to much dust. Time to give away all the soft toys and small little gifts from ex boy friends to niece and nephew and whoever wants them.

Got up 6.30 a.m and start meddling on this computer, thought better get some work out of the way as this is going to be a busy morning running errands. I need to drop by the oncologist, Dr Nonis’s office to pick up the pathologist’s report. I am a bit nervous about the outcome.

Then, I am going to our house to sort and pack up some boxes that the part time cleaners already helped to move to one of the bedrooms that we are going to use to store our stuffs. We plan to rent out the house for as long as we are away in IL. May be we will return to live here one day when we are older, right now our plan is to keep the house and not selling it yet.

I am also going to help dad pick up his computer that sent for repair on the way home. His desktop was fried during a thunder storm, the mother board, sound card and video card have to be replaced. Good thing they are still under warranty! The last thing is to pick up my second sister who is at the car workshop. She is sending her car for painting work and leave it there until tomorrow.

With a few blogs running on several hosting plans, the cost of maintaining this blogs can add up to be quite a bit. However, it has not been costing me anything more than the domain registration in the last one year. I am able to host the blogs for free or almost free by taking advantage of the promotional offers of many of the hosting companies.

I just signed up for a first year free or almost free package. When the one year is up, I just move to another host. Since I have done the migrating a couple of times now, I have even learned to do it in a few simple steps, without involving the MySQL or any scripting whatsoever.

But, there are two lessons learned along the process. First, never take the “free” domain offered by this hosting companies if you plan to move out after a year. The “free” domain doesn’t register under your name and you need the permission of the hosting company that provides the “free” domain (the current registrar) to transfer the domain. Generally, they would lock the transfer of your domain one month before it expires and that would cause much delay when you try to transfer the domain and move your blog to another hosting company. It took seven days for me to be able to successfully transfer a “free” domain out.

The second lesson is: make sure the hosting company allows shell access. You cannot do a direct import of the posts, comments and categories from your old host if you do not have access to the root directory. This hosting company doesn’t allow access to their root directory for security reason. What lame excuse, don’t they heard of unix security software ? Luckily it is free for the first year, so I am still thinking should I get a new domain and start a new blog there, or just abandon it totally?

No matter how much we want a trouble free life, the things that seem so difficult today are the things that, in the future, we may be thankful that we experienced them. Don’t you agree, difficult times are often best times in our lives that taught us important lessons of faith, patience, and wisdom?

It’s probably never easy, but these will be the things that the spiritually stronger I of the future will praise and thank Him for bringing me through. It’s true that God never promise an easy life, but He did promise to never leave me nor forsaken me, what a relief and comfort!

The surgery and the subsequent cancer scare had kept me away from blogging and making money online for the last few weeks. The lack of writing paid posts in the last four weeks means the lack of income this month.

When I finally have time to sit down in front of the computer, two of the blogs that still have pageranks were down for one whole week because of the pending transfer of domains. Quite mad with the previous registrar who didn’t want to approve the transfer despite me sending them several emails. But it did get transferred automatically after seven days! But, so many opps expired and grabbed because of that! #$%^&

Then, granny G came smacking again. It’s like leaking roofs on a raining day, life is tough, boy!

With this medical bills that burnt a big hole in my pocket, good thing I have multiple blogs and multiple streams of income. The other day, I overheard my sister’s friend asking her whether I am unemployed at home now as the business is sold and I am still stuck here not moving to IL yet. When she saw me sitting in front of the computer and claimed to be working, she thought I was doing stocks trading or futures trading online. No way, if you know any futures broker, you will know how stressful it’s when the market goes up and down. I just got out of a frying pan, do you think I am jumping into the fire?

With pains of the wounds after surgery and the uncertainty of this cancer scare, my blogging mojo have been misplaced in the last week or so. Hope to be back in the swing, with deadlines approaching and pocket emptied by medical bills, sooner …:-)

Have been resting and taking it easy in the last few days, after the heroic act of driving around town to run some errands. Hey, even a simple movement like shifting the gears actually used a lot of the muscles around the abdomen, where the wounds are. Have to take care of the diet too, no Kim Chi and kava kava for now, as they both can potentially cause obstruction in me. The pelvic pain is killing me right now.

Today I went for the scheduled colonoscopy and gastroscopy.

I have to start the preparation yesterday. The gastro specialist gave me some phosphate soda, it caused me going toilet 6-7 times after an hour of taking the solutions. I had to take it once last night and another time this morning.

My dad drove me to the doctor’s office since I would be put on sedative and not suitable to drive after the procedure. The colonoscopy and gastroscopy procedures only took about 10-15 minutes, but had to wait for one and half hours for the doctor, even with an appointment!

We can see the inner lining of the digestive tract  on a CCTV when a fiber optic camera passed through it. Nothing unusual was  found, except for a small ulcer in the stomach, this probably in a great extend rule out the possibility of colon cancer!!

Right after the scope, before the doctor typed out a report, I rushed down to the cafe at the hospital, had a bowl of beehoon soup. Really exhausted and hungry after all the purging!!

If you are online a lot, you do need to have a reliable and robust anti-virus and anti spyware program that protects your computer from all the malicious attacks. However, not all security software are created the same, some just slow down the computer so much, it’s a pain in the butt.

Our current security software has expired and we haven’t not decided to renew or to get a new software. I don’t like the fact that the current software is so intrusive and slow down the computer considerably. Anyone has experience using NOD32? Will you proceed with NOD32 renewals without hesitant when it expires?

Went to meet up our oncologist friend at his office. He looked at the pathology reports and CT scan results. He gave me a few advice, one of them is to check out the colon and if possible the whole digestive tract. Since both the gynecologists suggested that I check out the colon, I am going ahead for a colonoscopy and gatroscopy this coming Tuesday on the 22nd.

The second gynecologist and our oncologist friend thinks removing the left ovary (like the first gynecologist Dr Eugene suggested) is a bit too drastic when there is no evidence of malignancy. He thinks further screening to rule out other possibilities and close monitoring of the hard cells on the left ovary plus tumor marker tests every other month would be more appropriate.

This is going like a roller coaster ride, one minute I am convinced that going for another surgery to remove the left ovary is the best thing to do, the next minute, it seems there is really nothing to worry about. Of course, I pray that all these are just false alarms, a cancer scare, instead of the real stuff!!