Bad left knee! *pipiak*

SYMPTOMS
A pop, followed by intense pain, swelling, and a feeling of instability. Your knee may also buckle and give way. Chances are, you won’t be able to continue whatever it was that you were doing.

DIAGNOSIS
Sprained or torn ligament
There are four ligaments in the knee — two run alongside the knee joint, while the other two crisscross inside the joint holding it in place. (Ligaments are the ropelike tissues that connect the femur, or thighbone, to the tibia, or lower-leg bone.) The two most commonly injured are the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).

TREATMENT
Assuming you haven’t injured your ACL, you’ll probably do fine with a little rehab, which usually involves icing the knee and doing exercises to regain strength and stability in the muscles surrounding the joint. Many people can start walking and jogging within a month.

If you’ve torn your ACL, however, more aggressive treatment might be in order. “Once it’s torn, the ACL doesn’t tighten and heal the way the other ligaments do,” says Edward Laskowski, M.D., codirector of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center. “There will be a risk of knee instability, especially with high-demand sports that really challenge that ligament, such as basketball, volleyball, and soccer.” If you want to continue playing high-impact sports, you’ll likely benefit from arthroscopic ligament reconstruction, says Laskowski. Afterward, it will take about 6 to 9 months to get back to aggressive activities.

If you do opt for surgery, don’t rush into it. “We like to have people coming in for the surgery looking like they don’t need it,” says Laskowski. “Studies have shown that if you do the surgery too early, when the joint doesn’t have much motion and there’s a lot of swelling, there is an increased risk of joint stiffness, and the rehab afterward is tougher.”

Reference: http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cda/article/printer_friendly/0,5508,s1-2-0-0-1939,00.html

6-9 months to recover. *GROANS* I want to play during the interhall matches next year. T.T I don’t want to wait till my final year damn it. Of all the times I could have hurt my knee (as in all those vigorous training during high school), WHY NOW? Argh! !@$!%@!#!#%#$@%!@#

I dread going to the doctor’s in August when I’m back in KL. I’ll really cry if I need surgery. Seriously.

My Whole Body System

…is fucking screwed.

I looked at the clock 2a.m. this morning and thought naturally to myself ‘Oh… It’s still early.’

Only did I realize after a while how screwed my sleep really is, to the extent that it’s even affecting my brain.

Apparently, It Can.

After they finished their labs, I contacted Iris. And found out where the mysterious HW LG-3 was. I had to take the lift down and walk down the stairs further. !@$!@#!@#

FINE.

I went back to my hall as you know from the previous post that I had a book due today. I wanted to have a little snack of honey flavoured cereal with milk which I bought fro Wellcome. I thought to myself ‘yay! I finally get to open that carton of milk!’ And when I peeled of the protective thingy and was about to pour it into my bowl of cereal, I noticed the expiry date tag – 17-12-2007. ARGH! SERIOUSLY! I was practically yelling in my room and luckily my roommate was not in.

Oh and that’s not all. I had no choice but to use my Vitasoy as a substitute. As I was squirting it into the bowl, I don’t know what happened and some of it kena my boots. Soyabean-milk-soiled boots. Does have a ring to it, NOT!

If any more crappy stuff happens to me, I’ll really start believing that someone has used some voodoo witch craft, laying a bloody evil curse on me.

There’s a limit to how much ‘positive’ thinking I can generate. I am only starting to get the hang of this ‘look at the cup half-full’ mindset or whatever.

Damn it.

The Worst Week EVER aka. Can It Get Any Worse?

Let’s see. How should I even begin? Maybe I’ll list them down like a f*cking schedule+summary.

Tuesday:
My parents left to fly back to KL. I went with Maryanne for grocery shopping at Wellcome in the evening. Since I was going to be gone out for long, I shut down my notebook. When I came back, pressed the Power On button, 3 f*cking beeps sounded (1 long 2 short) and the whole display screen was dead blank. I tried turning it off and on so many freaking times but still that same horrible sound and nothingness.

Catch: I had a freaking Autocad assignment due the next day, and a Logbook due today. They were in my HD. And I didn’t back up all my files because there was no symptoms of my notebook crashing. F*CK. However, no excuse for me not backing up.

The amount of panic and desperation, you can hardly imagine. I called up my brother in Melbourne to ask him how I should proceed. He suggested I take out the hard disk and connect it to an external hard disk casing which I so happen to have! I thought I was saved. But oh no, when a hallmate helped me take it out and was ready to put it in the external hard disk casing, turns out they aren’t compatible. My notebook’s hard drive is SATA and the external hard disk parallel ATA. F*CK!

There was nothing I could do but to do the assignment all over again. I ran over to another friend’s place to get the Autocad installation CD from him and then rush over to Maryanne’s hall (who was so kind to put up with me and lend me her laptop to install and do my work, coz the ME computer lab was only opened until 10.30pm or something like that), paid HKD31.30 to stay over in her room. However, that version of Autocad could only work on Windows 2000 or XP and Maryanne was using Vista. I decided to try a solution suggested on the internet – preheat (turn it on, leave it running for >30 minutes) my notebook and try restarting it. Miraculously, it worked! I backed up all my files into my external hard disk, but did not do so for my songs (15.5gb) because I had not enough space. *sob*

Wednesday:
Worked until 5.30a.m. before getting a little sleep. Woke up late for maths which was supposed to start at 9.30a.m. I thought that it was useless since I’d be sleeping in class anyways and decided to go back to my hall to print out my work.

When I reached my room, only did I realize it was Thursday and my roommate had classes and I forgot to bring take my key when I was rushing to Maryanne’s place. I had to pay another HKD5 to borrow the key from the lobby. F*CK. And when I was finally in my room ready to print out my work, my freaking notebook wouldn’t boot again. This time, preheating it did not work anymore. F*CK. So, I had to go back to the campus to see whether anyone had printing quota for me to borrow. But like me, everyone had used up theirs. Luckily, I called up my jongmate and she had some. Thank god.

Thursday:
Had classes. There was a guest speaker from ICAC during one of my lectures and followed by a quiz. Luckily, the quiz given by the guestspeaker was quite simple. Felt like ‘Dao De Jiao Yu’ all over again. Ethics. Anyways, finished class at 4p.m. rushed to Tsim Sha Tsui to look for the HP Service Centre with the invoice of the notebook which arrived in the morning (mum DHL-ed it over and it cost RM70.00. F*CK!). Finally found the place after 30 minutes of roaming around, trying to find Star House on Salisbury Road. The servicing had to take 3-5 working days. I’ve heard people saying in online forums that HP has very poor service. They usually drag on for weeks and stuff like that. But I hope that’s not the case here in Hong Kong, and that the people here are really what everyone thinks – efficient. *prays hard*

Went for dinner with Maryanne and Daphne, a ‘threesome’ outing for Valentine’s day. Haha. I was so worked up that I didn’t even care that I have an unfinished logbook. I really really wanted some oncoming bus to slam right into me whenever I was walking back and forth from my hall to the campus. We had all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ in Causeway Bay which we had to wait for like more than 30 or 40 minutes? I don’t really remember, because I was ‘with good company’ (quotes Maryanne). Anyways, when we finally had a table, they told us that we could only eat for a time limit of 1 hour and 15 minutes. F*CK. We rushed to get meat and side dishes. The food was plentiful and satisfying. But when the freaking bill came, it was HKD 144 per person instead of the displayed price HKD 118. Rupa-rupanya, V-day’s price was HKD 124 per person and there was another HKD 20 for tea money. Now, I know why my brother advised me to always read properly before signing anything in Hong Kong. Damn it.

When I was back at my hall and checked my receipt for the collection of my pants from G2000. It was ‘14/2/2008′. And I was ‘ …… ‘. If I had checked my receipt before that, I could have collected it straightaway before having that BBQ. ARGH!

Today:
I thought class started at 9.30a.m. and rushed over to campus. When I tiba-ed, the class looked weird. The lecturer was another person, and there wasn’t a single familiar face. I held the classroom door ajar for a moment, faces turned, and I quickly scrambled back out. I thought there was a switch in classrooms and I panicked again. I quickly called my class rep and rupa-rupanya I saw the timetable wrongly – classes was at 10.40a.m. F*CK!

And now, why am I sitting here narrating on my horrible past few days? It’s because I can’t freaking hell find where is HW LG-3 and my fellow lab partners are there which means that they can’t receive any reception on their mobile phones so I am unable to contact them to find out where the hell it is. I thought it was in HW 1-16 but rupa-rupanya, it was amended to HW LG-3. *screams*

Oh, and… I just found out I have a freaking book due today, and I’ll have to walk all the way back to my hall to get it and all the way back to campus. F*CK. And I was thinking of staying here to do my next Autocad assignment.  

If my day gets any worse, will someone please take a gun and shoot it right at my head. I really can’t take this anymore.

KILL ME.

Black Gecko.

As usual, I was going to read a few chapters of Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ before I sleep (meaning around 2a.m) and I’ve sort of picked up this bad habit of snacking while I do, be it Rocky’s or chocolates. Last night (okay lar, this MORNING) I caught the pack of unfinished Japanese milk chocolate DARS out of the corner of my eye.

I proceeded to grab the box unsuspectingly.

I knew there were only three pieces left and therefore attempted to shake them out. They did not budge which was weird because usually they’d just slide right out.

So, I pulled out the paper-cardboard-ish thingy out of the wrapper.

AND WHAT THE BLOODY HELL DID I SEE?!?!?!?!?

A freaking dark-chocolatey-black-disgusting lizard with huge-black-beady eyes on the cardboard thingy staring back at me! T.T

It didn’t move and neither did I. I was practically in shock and stunned for around 5 seconds before letting go of the box and wrapper which landed on my comforter. The stupid lizard flew out and too landed on my comforter. I think it was in a real shock too coz it didn’t budge after another 5 seconds of me giving it a chance to fly (like experienced lizzies normally do when they kena caught), land with a ‘plop’ and just disappear out of my sight. But nooooooooooooooooo, it just lay there.

With the little courage I gathered during the 5 seconds interval, I shoved the whole comforter onto the floor hoping that the lizard would unstuck itself off my comforter and get lost. BUT, with my ’skillful’ shoving, I made my comforter all crumpled up which sorta meant if the lizzie hadn’t jumped off during the split second before the comforter landed in a bunch, it would be trapped, inside the pile, or worse yet, BE SEVERELY FRACTURED, DIE STILL GLUED TO MY COMFORTER! Ew!

Anyways, I ran out of ‘courage’ and decided to just go to bed without having a security blanket over me. But then, I couldn’t sleep soundly the whole night because I was afraid that my mum would come into my room, assume that I kicked my comforter onto the floor, PICK IT UP AND COVER IT OVER ME! The HORROR! Therefore, I was half-awake and cold the whole night.

I woke at 7a.m. grateful to find the comforter still exactly where I left it. Groggily, I got a clean comforter from the cupboard in my parents room and went back to sleep, knowing that my mum wouldn’t be that crazy to cover me up in TWO comforters.

Woke up 3 hours later and left the comforter in a pile. While I was practicing my guitar, mum came in and asked why the comforter was on the floor. Told her to shake it (after I was standing on top of my bed, safely away from any contact I might come in with the lizard during my mum’s shaking).

Turns out it wasn’t there anymore, well, nothing dropped out after my mum un-piled it. I never did check it thoroughly though. Maybe it might be stuck, dried up, hardened. Ugh.

Not a really dramatic ending but whatever.

I think someone up there wants me to heed my mum’s advice: sleep early and stop snacking in the middle of the night.

I hate lizards.