A new start? How I spent my holiday break – part 1

Ok time to try to put more effort to my blog. Sigh. been thru much recently, but glad to say it has been mostly good times.

Firstly, my previously mentioned medical crisis seems to have stabilised for now. Not as intense or frequent as before, but still feels it occasional, especially when i’m going thru bad stress or juz lack slp. my whole right side of the face will turn burning numb >_<. but anyway i not taking any medicine for now, having almost exhausted my painkiller. and my specialist appointment is coming soon, on the 7th.

Sigh. Today, just a few hours ago, i got another family disturbance again. I seriously hope the ones involved can be more matured please. I seriously need to focus on my studies this coming sem, and I cant afford to be derailed again like last year by these kinda family problems on top of my studies. which are not easy, being engineering modules. sigh. the difference btwn A lvl n uni seems so big… or was it coz of the army? >_<

Had a good time at engin camp, thou I hardly took part in anything, but was rushing out videos all day (and night, literally) long. Hah due to various issues, the story vids weren’t ready b4 the camp start, so had to edit them out along the way, fight fire each day. Well at least I survived thru it despite the intense pain due to my condition at tt time. And was satisfied to hear good comments abt them, although certain vids weren’t done to my liking. Had a minor (to me) issue with the finale vid that credits the camp committee at the end of the finale night. Basically I was too shagged by then. and I had to choose from thousands of photos and video footage and try to find n fit the best into around 3 mins else it’ll be too draggy for a credits roll only. worse thing was that the editing program managed to screw with me and mess-up/hung wad i painstakingly put together. and not once, but twice. so in the end i had absolutely no time le and just slap together a few randomly chosenly photos that i could find. I had planned for a unglam/candid cam/NG shot followed with a more glam shot for each comm personnel, so that everyone can have a good laugh while still showing the comm members properly. sigh sadly the program screwup left me no time to finish it.

That’s not all. Oh i forgot to say, for the finale vid showcasing the camp memories, luckily we had the engin club it guy yman to help out. he managed to within 1 night and morning look thru the photos and vids and put together a rather decent effort. kudos to him, i had 1 less vid to worry abt, and can focus on the credits vid. sigh, sadly, when it was time for playing the vids to the entire camp, a few hiccups at the start spoilt the momentum. >_< also the speakers for then-unknown reason sounded very screechy, so the entire music track sounded ear-shriekingly deafening. T_T. i later realised that it was probably due to the invited band that performed before the video screening, having tuned the speaker to boost the bass to the max (and somehow the speaker interpreted my music’s swing jazz/brass instruments as bass and amplified them overwhelmingly). Oh well.

Next I had my own MSE camp. well, i encountered not quite a few problems too. but at this time, i have run out of stamina to write anymore, so i shall leave it for next time.

EDIT: PS: I realised i haven’t update in this blog that what my medical condition is. It is suspected to be trigeminal neuralgia, as preliminarily diagnosed by NUH A&E some time back. given specialist appointment to neuroscience clinic to confirm and treat it.

I’m not dead…yet

You Are Pretty Logical

You’re a bit of a wizard when it comes to logic While you don’t have perfect logic, you logic is pretty darn good Keep at it – you’ve got a lot of natural talent in this area!

How Logical Are You?

Too busy and sick to post.

Pain

As of 28 May 14:35, I’ve had experienced extreme pain on the right side of my head, face and neck area. Especially the temple, eye, back of ear, and back of head areas. Since last last sunday. Which is 18th May, the day after the girls calling (another story some time later, if i survive this). I’m blogging about this in case anything untoward happens and i’m unable to get my last thoughts down.

When it started i thought this is juz another headache caused by stress/not enough sleep, since i’ve been juggling duties of MSESIG prez and camp director, and engin camp’s pub head. tried paracetamol based painkillers (specifically 450mg paracetamol + 35mg orphenadrine, under the brand names Suniton or smth like that, and Anarex, excess from past visits to docs). These manage to make me drowsy (good for forcing me to sleep) but in terms of pain-killing, wasn’t good enough. At 4 pills in a single dosage, i would still feel some pain + burning sensation. Btw my full symptoms at this point included feeling very heaty (though i doubt i ever had fever), and slight nausea.

So on last mon or tues i went to see doc at eden family clinic near my place, now prolly infamous for the recent expose on one of its associates Dr Tam having sex at the clinic with one of the staff (link may expire), and the subsequent lawsuits blah blah blah. Anyway, (the doc whom i saw was a chinese male one, so may have been Tam himself!) I remember telling him that paracetamol-based painkillers had little effect, and he promised to give me stronger medicine. He diagnosed me as having “tension-bend” headache, and prescribed me Anarex (ofmg u noob and obvious liar), and a antibiotic Cephalexin 500mg, which according to wiki is commonly prescribed for penicillin-allergic patients (i’m allergic to penicillin and erythromycin), and treats a variety of infections. Anyway, the bottomline is that after finishing the entire course of medicine prescribed, my condition did not improve at all. Also, i highly doubt his diagnosis of “tension-bend” headache (note the quotation marks, as i cant find any such headache in google or wiki. the closest is tension headache), as the pain is in one side, and not bilateral as in the wiki description.

So i went back to the doc on last saturday evening (yes eden again, given tt it was saturday evening, not many alternatives were available). This time it was a chinese female doc associate who saw me. She prescribed me Synflex (aka Naproxen sodium), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug for painkilling, and cafergot which is apparently a vasoconstrictor (meaning it narrows blood vessels) used to treat migraines. She did not make any definite diagnosis, but said it may be due to shingles. But damn unlikely given that i had no rash, and the non-rash version of the disease apparently only occurs after the rash version had occurred, according to the wiki.

So how did the new medicine fare? Well for one the painkiller really works this time. However i experienced diarrhea during the first night (and next day), and has been experiencing dizziness and increased nausea, with blurness of vision. Which i read from the respective wikis that gastrointestinal disturbance is a side effect of the painkiller, while the dizziness is a side effect of the vasoconstrictor. The dizziness and nausea also made me unable to sleep properly. Also even though the pain can be stopped now, i would still experience discomfort (for lack of better descriptive terms) in the areas tt experienced pain. A few hours ago (at time of this post), after letting the previous dosage of the new medicine lapse to see if i wld still have the headache, and also because i couldnt bear the dizziness and nausea, the headache returned with a vengeance. It caused me to have convulsions/fits, and cold sweat. This is the worst sickness i’ve ever experienced so far in my life. I immediately took another dosage of the new medicine, and suffered the convulsions for around 30min until the medicine kick in. Now (while waiting out the sudden thunderstorm tt occurred), i’m going to see the doc for referral to specialist (she wrote me a referral to a neuroscience specialist but i kept it pending to see if the new med works), or to see the a&e dept for scanning etc.

Coincidentally, apparently my block had 2 people who fell victim to dengue fever, as the nea officers who came to my house for inspections 2 days ago told us. I heard that the symptoms for dengue is quite similar with intense headache and nausea, with 2 difference, dengue wld also suffer from fever and the characteristic bone/joint aches. so i dun think i got dengue. Also my lil sis is also sick concurrently, mainly with UTI and most recently a complaint of sore throat, blocked nose and headache. In my family, sickness usually doesnt occurs alone but strike multiple members, though in this case the sickness aren’t related. (what i want to put at the end of this is some exclamation about what a pain etc, but cant find the right words)

Anyway, signing off for now.

To those that care, thanks. To those that don’t (then why are you reading this?), same to you. The world moves on anyway.