#309 - the procedure

** UPDATE**
how disgusting is this? and this is AFTER the cyst was removed... this is what's left, it's like a bullet-hole. hope it heals... eventually...
anyone squeamish?

not that my writing could do justice to the disgusting-ness of the procedure, but if you are, best not read any further.

so after a weekend of slouching (because it was too painful to stand up straight), constantly rotating from one side to the other of my couch (because each shift in bodily position had to be carefully selected for minimal pain and cyst-squishiness), not being able to lean back in a chair, and getting neck pain from lying on my stomach forever (good thing it's aussie open time, i would've been so bored otherwise), i was finally able to get a doctor's appointment yesterday to take care of this nasty thing on my back. turns out i was right with the diagnosis at least, it was an infected sebaceous cyst. the cure? excision!

after reading up on it on the internet and seeing youtube after youtube of guts and pus spewing out of people's backs, i was a bit nervous, but my sister had a cyst removed and she said it was painless after the lidocaine. and after spending the weekend with a ticking-time bomb on my back i would've done just about anything to get rid of it. so here's how it happened:

1. the needle - not so bad, easier than an injection for like dental procedures, and after the numbness took over i was feeling pretty good

2. the incision - hardly even felt it. there was a slight sharp slice through the numbness (like a fingernail running down your back), but that might have been more my imagination than an actual sensation

3. the guts - well, since it was on my back, i couldn't see what actually spewed out... but i felt stuff trickling down my back and they were sure wiping up a lot

4. the pain - so after the initial and primarily painfree slice, he started to squeeze. and then it was all over. the pain. holy crap the pain. that could possibly have been the most painful medical procedure of my life (at least, that i can remember... probably getting the wisdom teeth out was more painful, but my memory of that is kinda fuzzy). it wasn't that each squeeze was excrutiatingly painful, it was the constant, unrelenting squeezing. i tried to block out the pain by imagining all that crap being finally purged out of my skin, but after what seemed like minutes of squeezing i was getting the pain trembles and everything.

5. the searing - after he finally (FINALLY!) stopped squeezing, the doctor cauderized the inside lining to kill all of the infection, then slapped a bandage on the thing and told me to give it a good squeeze after showering and not let the wound close before the next appointment next friday (otherwise he might have to reopen it... and hell no, i do not want that).

so it's gone. hopefully. what's left is a putrid crater of seared, blackened skin in the center of a red, irritated mess of bruised skin. it's great. not. so i'm squeezing whatever's left outta there and hoping that when i see the doctor on friday it'll be all cleaned out and he can patch me back up and i can get on my way... until then, i'm having a great time taking it easy and watching aussie open all day... too bad for andy, but go roger!

#308 - the human body is so gross

i'm sick of this. i guess i've been lucky to have been pretty healthy so far in life, and have avoided major accidents or whatever, so when these weird medical things happen to me i have a hard time taking them in stride. just 11 months ago i got shingles, which was the worst medical thing to happen to me since i had chicken pox as a kid (or maybe when i got slammed in the face by a surfboard, i had bleeding sinuses, but that one was kinda cool). shingles sucked. a lot. and now, almost one year later i've got this gross infected cyst in the exact same spot as the shingles. it's probably my fault. after the shingles was over i noticed that weird lump, but it didn't hurt or anything, it was just there. so i figured it was just some scar tissue or whatever. i suppose i could have gone to the doctor right then and have him take a look at it (or take it out), but i thought it was kind of lame going to a doctor and saying, "here's a weird bump, what should i do?" although, in retrospect, i think that's probably exactly the type of thing you SHOULD see the doctor for huh?

anyway, fast-forward to last wednesday, that bump started to hurt, which was annoying, and i started to think about finally asking the doctor about it. well, i hardly had time to think that over because within the next two days that fricken' thing swelled up, turned red (that's what she said), and started to hurt like a bastard. yesterday i couldn't even stand up straight. it was like someone had sewn a marble under my skin and every twist of my torso made the skin stretch and hurt. gross. now all i can think of is all that bacteria and gross stuff swirling there under my skin and it completely grosses me out.

so i've quarantined myself indoors this weekend (as to not upset it, the cyst) because when i called the doctor's office on friday morning they told me i'd have to wait until monday to come in. which i figured was probably just procedure on friday morning, but now (on sunday morning) i think it's a load of crap. couldn't they have just squeezed me in for a quick lancing? i mean, don't doctors keep some time open for emergencies. well, i guess this isn't really an "emergency," but shouldn't you NOT wait to take care of medical procedures? but i may be over-reacting. perhaps you need to wait for a lance-able time to take care of an infected cyst... except how would the doctor's office know when they set up my appointment without seeing it? i wonder, if it had gone to the hospital or something would they have done it? hmm... i guess i don't know much about how the medical business works, but hell, as long as my doctor just gets rid of that thing by tomorrow i'll be happy.

anyway, this post was gross, but educational. i had no idea how common infected cysts were, and had i known i might have decided to go to the doctor much sooner, rather than stick to positive thinking and telling myself it'll get better on it's own. so if you or anyone you know has some weird bump, just go get it checked out and save yourself the trouble. i really should've gone to the doctor when i first noticed the non-infected cyst after the shingles was over. but it's too late for that, it's made its' presence known... and now i just want to get the damn thing outta me!

(that's what she said)

#307 - the good old days

what does that phrase mean? i mean, of course i know what it means, but the words make no sense unless you understand the context, which is the case with most of english obviously, but i still don't like to use it. the only reason i use it to name this post is to make this point... that i don't like it and don't like to use it. ha.

anyway, being back to work for one week after a vacation-filled december has made me a bit nostalgic. not for too long ago, just a few years back, in my third year of undergrad. at that time i had finally chosen a major, but had taken all my intro-to-that-major classes a year earlier (to see if i really liked it) and so for the first sememster of my third year i was taking all the back-up pre-requisite courses that i was missing and so i had just a few classes (i took one online) and a lot of extra time (because those classes were retarded and i didn't need to study for any of them... and quite frankly, i really didn't care what grade i got in them because 1) i personally did not see how they were related to my major anyway, 2) i thought it was a waste for me to be taking them, seeing as how i already started taking my major classes and were acing them anyway, and 3) i considered them nothing but an exercise in brainless busy-work... which is why i got my first and only B-... in stats, which was surprising because i did crossword puzzles in class every day that i went to class and didn't know wtf i was doing on the final so i thought i'd get a C at least).

holy crap i just realized that my idea of "just a few years ago" is actually 8 years ago! dammit.

anyway, during those last two years of undergrad i had a lot of extra time. there weren't a whole lot of classes to take in my major area so i was taking a lot of language classes (japanese, hawaiian, spanish) and PE classes. those are both things i wish i had started doing earlier in life. i only started learning japanese in high school and i only started working out (seriously) in my first year of college. well, i guess i really had no reason to learn a foreign language (and if you don't use it, you'll forget everything so i guess it's okay that i really didn't take that up), but i wish that i had taken a earlier interest in fitness. i mean, as a kid my parents shoved me into every sport they could think of, i didn't really like any of them, but more for social reasons. i didn't like the mean-ness of competition. i didn't mind the physicality of it (although i hated being out in the sun in full baseball gear for sure), and i actually liked running and conditioning exercises, but socially i wasn't gonna be best buddies with my teammates (who were jerks, i assure you) and i thought all the coaches were grumpy old men. but, if it had started thinking about fitness earlier, like in high school, maybe i would've been a more confident and/or out-going person y'know? then again, it was high school and can you really consider ANY high schooler a socially appropriate person? probably not.

so it took me all the way until high school to figure out that i really liked tennis, and it took me until college to find weight training and surfing. one of the best decisions of my life was to take food science and human nutrition in my very first semester of college. it turned me on to proper nutrition and creating a lifestyle of eating right and exercising, and i embraced it fully. which, really when you think about it, is probably the way most things are right? in college you're finally out living on your own and you can choose what kind of life you want to lead. well, for two great years i lived that life. of course, i didn't have to worry about a mortgage or actually working for my money (thank you, bank of mom and dad), and thanks to my glorious brain (haha) i was able to spend pretty much all of my time outside of classes doing whatever the heck i wanted to. so for those last two years of college i had a great life plan:

alongside my regular classes (those which were required, which was really only 2-3 per sememster) i took language classes (i love learning languages) and PE classes. my language classes fit on MWFs and i put the PE classes in the morning on tuesdays and thursdays. forcing myself to wake up for a 7:30 or 8:30 tennis or volleyball class gave me the entire rest of the day free until my next class at 1:30, so after tennis i'd grab breakfast (chex used to make little breakfast mix packets, which is what started me thinking about all this because i just had chex mix for breakfast this morning), walk down kalakaua ave. to rainbow drive-inn, pick up a loco moco (it was only $2.00, then later $2.75) and eat it at waikiki beach, then take a mid-day nap on the sand and then go for a swim, a jog, or rent a board and go surfing if the waves were decent and the crowd was thin. then i'd walk back up to campus, grab a jamba juice along the way and brush the sand off my heels before my 1:30 class. how could it get any better than that? those were the healthiest years of my life, for sure.

so that's what i'm working towards. the weekends, vacations, retirement. all the elements for my ideal day off. sweet right? but today i am at work, and will have to wait until this weekend to do it again. still, i think those two years are just about the only two in my life that (if i could) i would live over again. sure, there are a lot of years that i wish i could DO OVER again (like all of high school), but only those two years i would like to live over again. but for now i'll have to settle for finding the little moments in between the rest of my life to fit the good stuff in.

anyway, eating my chex mix for breakfast this morning got me thinking about that. chex mix, loco moco, sun, sand, ocean, jamba juice, walking. all those things have just kinda grouped together in my brain making me remember that time in my life. sign, well, at least i have something to look forward to in retirement... or summertime at least!

#306 - 2010!

so if you've been watching "attack of the show," it should be no news to you that this is now the year 2010, and it is very exciting. so what do i have to get excited about in 2010? not much i thought. but let's try and be a little more positive huh? here's something that can ring in 2010 on a high-note:

UH men's vball - of course vball is always fun, but 2010 brings a new season, a new coach, and a new system for the UH men. last night they started out with a win against #10 Ohio State and looked great doing it. i am already impressed with charlie wade as the new coach (i always thought wilton had a lot of short-comings in the coaching department... of course he had some great talent in the past, but lately his inability to recruit locally, his "cauldron-system" that used points earned during practices to determine that week's starters, his lack of creativity and intelligence in running offensive/defensive systems and such left UH with 3 consecutive losing seasons). i liked wade as the wahine's assistant coach and i think he brings the same kinds of good points to the men's game as well. such as:

- quick-tempo offense: it's about time hawai'i got with the national and international scene in running a quick-tempo offense, getting the ball out of the setter's hands and to the hitter much quicker and running fast and multiple hitter plays much more often. it's efficient and effective. much like the wahine team this year.
- the middle attack: there IS one this year! amazing. of course the passing has to be on target in order to run the middle, but i think a good ratio of kills for outside hitters to the middles is 2:1 and that's pretty much what they got last night. last year the middle attack was pretty much non-existent.
- blocking: last year's block was pretty much the ONLY good thing about the team (that and ric cervantes) and it looks as if that will continue this year. they didn't get as many block in the stats, but it was an effective block, changing the other team's shots and putting ball back (if not down).
- serving: last year's serving was like "flash in the pan" serving, one great serve sandwiched around multiple service errors. they still had a lot of errors last night, but now those are sandwiched in between pretty great serving. with zemljak in all the time and tuaniga really improving his already pretty good serve from last year, they put a lot of pressure on other teams. (still, no one can match eyal zimet, remember him? he used to yo-yo other teams, ace them twice deep and then pull the string and send a roller short over the net for another ace).
- jonas umlauft: i love when freshmen start. because then you know they're good (if they're starting as freshmen) and you know they'll get better for 4 years. he doesn't jump very high (he probably touches just as high as joshua walker) but he's got smart arm swing and uses the block very well. he reminds me a lot of costas theocharidis (he even kinda looks like him) the way he gets most of his kills off the block. but what he is to the team is the outlet, something they haven't had in a few years. someone who can take a good swing out-of-system. the middles and walker are great in-system players (walker's vertical looked pretty spectacular actually), but this new guy can keep hawai'i in a lot of plays that they couldn't last year.

overall i think it'll be a big year for hawai'i volleyball, i'm not sure what the other teams in the country look like right now, but i say no way will hawai'i end up #12 in the country (like they are now) when this season is over. i think the possibility for a top 5 is there, and a run at the post-season wouldn't be out of the question either... but then again it's a long tough season in men's vball. there aren't a lot of schools even fielding teams and even less scholarships to go around so every single team out there is quality. it's going to be an exciting year though, and it continues tonight vs. #5 Penn State and saturday vs. #1 USC. good stuff.