Leah’s Cafe

My parents’ house is  an hour drive to downtown. We took an early lunch and left the house after lunch to go to this Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist. There was a long line and mom waited for two hours to see the “doctor”.

This Chinese herbalist doesn’t use the traditional herbs that need to cook for long hours, the doctor actually gave her some herbal medications in pill forms! He recommended her to see the acupuncturist at the same building to expedite the recovery.

Mom thinks the acupuncture helps and she feels less pain after the half an hour session. So, we are going back tomorrow for another session.

Mom’s leg pain hasn’t improved but worsen after the tour of hospital. At first she refused to go back to see the orthopedic. I have to bluff her that taking an X-ray wouldn’t cost much though she was going for MRI that cost 1k!

The MRI showed the disc between two of the bones on the spine (L5 and S1) has extruded and pressed against the nerves. The nerves happened to be the ones that control the leg movement. That’s why mom has been having leg pain. The extrusion is actually quite bad and the only way to repair such condition is going for a surgery according to the orthopedic.

The orthopedic said there is no medication to cure this kind of problem, he can only give pain killer for pain relief. Since mom is not keen to go for surgery and it may be a while for the pharmaceutical companies to come out with the right drugs for this kind of health problem, we will bring her to try some alternative medicine in the next few weeks i.e. acupuncture, Chinese herbals and chiropractic .

My niece and nephew are going to be here at my parents’ place starting next Tuesday after their trip to one of the hill resorts. Their mother was able to accumulate enough points with one of the credit cards with hotel rewards for a free one night stay at the hill resort. She is definitely one smart woman who constantly browse the credit articles for good bargains. :-)

The children are going to stay with us for 6 days. We are looking forward to see them and enjoy the time with them. They are good children, they can play together pretty well, of course the cat and dog fights are inevitable.

They are also very independent children, they do not need much attention from the adults. In fact, they can be little helpers around the house. Their mother has trained them to wash dishes, sweep the floor and pretty much can take care of themselves, we just have to feed them regularly. :-)

A few people asked where I am right now. Yes, I am still here, not yet move to Illinois. There are so many obstacles and delays. Seven weeks ago, it was the surgery to remove ovarian cysts, then spent 2-3 weeks going through all sort of tests due to the cancer scare and at the same time dealing with the pain after the surgery. Though doctor said it should be alright to travel after 4-6 weeks, still suffer from pain in the abdomen area. It takes much longer to recuperate than the doctor said it would!!

However, that also means I am not in a hurry to move and have all the time in the world to wait upon the big procrastinator to act. Can you imagine if air ticket has been purchased and he is taking his own sweet time to find a place for us to live? The delays actually save me from stress and put more lines that cannot be erased with the best wrinkle cream. It’s a blessing in disguise, indeed.

The big boy had delayed the plan to move out from his present place a couple of times. Since the landlord’s daughter is coming back, he has to move by the end of the May. After looking at more than a dozen places, he finally mailed me some pictures of places that he had looked at.

This is a house that he likes. At first glance it looks like it’s facing the T-junction (see the traffic lights), it’s the kind of bad Feng Shui that Chinese people don’t like, isn’t it? No picture of the inside, just a picture taken outside the house, does he expect me to decide to live here base on this picture?

I can’t live with that kind of un-assuring decision making process. So I looked up the street views on Google map, from the 360 degree view, can see the house is actually not directly facing the T-junction (though bad Feng Shui or not does not really matters very much to us as Christians). The traffic lights there are for the crossing. I was also able to cruise the neighborhood and check out the houses around the neighborhood on Google map. It looks like a nice neighborhood! As a visual person, no amount of descriptions on the phone can replace the thousands words that a picture speaks! When is he going to learn this?

He also mailed a picture of the garage. That’s the most important feature we look for in a house?! Who is going to live in the garage? Not me.

Will this end the house hunting? I don’t know, he hasn’t put down a deposit for this place. As usual, taking his sweet time to take photographs of the inside so he can show me, he says tomorrow. Tomorrow, if it ever comes…. :-)

It has been a crazy week, haven’t have much time in front of the computer. We have been visiting the doctors like they are our best friends since my mother complained about pain on her left leg two weeks ago.

She is her usual impatient patient who will not wait for the medications to work. Every time someone mentioned her sister’s husband’s mother’s sister ..you got the idea… was healed after seeing this and that doctor, she wants to go see the same doctor. The end results: she has seen 8 doctors, got back 8 packs of medications, and she is still in pain.

It took a while to persuade her to see our friend who is an orthopedic. He thinks she may have some problem with her spine or nerves, he gives a 10-day medication to relieve the symptoms and if the pain persists by the time we see him again on Friday 30th May, he recommends going for MRI (magnetic resonant imaging) to diagnose the problem.

One interesting observation, we all know the doctors are very busy people, but none of the doctors we have seen in the last few weeks own a PDA! Looks like no tech geek among doctors in this small town. I bet they probably have not heard of PDA loaded with medical software that allow them to have access to online medical reference and drug guide.

This kind of PDAs apaprently are very popular among healthcare professionals who are more tech savvy. One of the PDA software companies - Epocrates has sold over 500,000 copies of its medical reference software to healthcare professionals.

This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.

It’s SOLD.

After my sister in law helped me to forward the “Car for sale” ads to her colleagues, a few people rang and viewed the car. One of them took up the offer, I gladly got rid of it.

The buyer is an expatriate from India and he is not familiar with the name transfer procedures. I accompanied him to the government departments to deal with it yesterday. The transaction completed in about one and half hours, faster than I expected, the wait for Puspakom checking was about 30 minutes and the name transfer was quick too. Maybe this government servants really bucked up a little bit after 8th March, eh?

Our National Carrier has been advertising about their discounted fares heavily on all kind of media. Today I checked the website for their KL-LA routes to see any chance of picking up a bargain. No luck.

One thing I really don’t understand. The airfare for flights originate from KL  are much more expensive than the ones originate from LA for the same route !

For example, to fly from KL to LA and return costs RM5566 (6 months ticket). At the prevailing exchange rate, it’s about USD1700+.

 Whereas to fly from LA to KL and return cost USD1186.20 or at RM3855.

The difference is about USD514 or RM1700!!

Why is our National carrier charging us more to fly out of KL ?

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!”. :-)