Yes lah I know my cancer blog turned into a food blog and now it’s a TV blog. TV is fun!

So I realise that pointing out how nasty Dr House is, is similar to pointing out that the sun shines. It’s the essence of his character! But sometimes it’s just, you know, a bit much. How do you know when it’s a bit much? When you actually feel sorry for his victim.

In Season 2, there’s an episode with a teenage supermodel who turns out to have androgen insensitivity syndrome. I should have caught it sooner, I’ve heard of this syndrome before and as a matter of fact, read a book on it (Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides). Basically a boy fetus doesn’t respond to testosterone and is born looking like a girl. The stereotype of such people is that they become very beautiful girls because they have so much estrogen in their system with no testosterone to make them ugly (sorry guys).

So at the end of the episode, House refers to the supermodel as “he”, since that’s what she is, genetically. She gets so upset by this that she throws off her hospital gown, insisting tearfully that she’s a girl. And you know what? She’s right, and House is a jerk. Her DNA is XY, but she looks like a girl, sounds like a girl, was raised as a girl and has the requisite girl parts! Gender is not sex, and House was especially insensitive to refer to her as “he” instead of “she”. I do not approve.

In the next episode, Wilson’s marriage is falling apart. House is picking up on this, but he’s not sensitive enough to see that Wilson needs him. Or at least, someone to talk to about this. There was this close-up shot of Wilson where you could really see how much it was hurting him, and he’d had enough of House being… House. So sad! Poor, poor Wilson.

On a Wilson-related note, I feel like watching “Dead Poets’ Society” again. 20 years ago, a very young Robert Sean Leonard (who plays Wilson) was the star of this movie about an unorthodox teacher and the boys who call him their Captain. Oh there was this dude called Robin Williams in it, but I think Robert Sean Leonard was the real scene-stealer as Neil Perry. After all, I saw the film when I was quite young, and his performance was the one that stuck in my head.

Going along with the ‘films with morbid titles that aren’t actually morbid at all’ theme, I think it’s especially apt that I should watch “Dying Young” after I’m done with “Dead Poets’ Society”. It’s essentially “Pretty Woman” with a cancer-stricken guy instead of some rich dude. No it’s just not because I have cancer too, okay, I’ve always liked the theme song to this movie. It’s so mushy and sentimental, just like the film.

I don’t even go out of the house nowadays, so all my entertainment comes from the Internet and TV. TV’s great fun when I’m back home in KL, I get American Idol, live football and awesome TV series like House and Brothers and Sisters.

Anyway so I was watching the performance bit of American Idol today, and Adam Lambert gave me a surprise. Not because of anything he did, but because when he started singing “Feeling Good”, I was like “isn’t that a Muse song?”

Apparently not, because this is Rat Pack week – the era of Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, etc. Not British Bands week. Gaaaaaahd, I am so ignorant I didn’t even know Muse covered that song! Not that there’s anything wrong with cover songs, mind you, and Muse did a good version. In fact, I suspect Adam Lambert may have heard their version as well, because I got a little Matthew Bellamy vibe from him towards the end.

Oh, and Kris Allen just put my thoughts into internationally-televised words: The Rat Pack era was 40 years ago, so who’s available to mentor the contestants? As Kris put it: “They’re all… (searches for euphemism and fails) dead.”

I also watch a lot of cooking shows, probably to make up for something since I can’t cook and I don’t eat much nowadays. One of my favourites is “Floyd on Britain and Ireland”. It’s from 1988 so it looks a bit retro, but I love British stuff so I find it super amusing.

The host Floyd wears a bow tie and vest, which is rather eccentric of him. Also he has a habit of breaking the 4th wall (television screen?) by alluding to stuff that’s usually behind-the-scenes on TV shows. For instance, while investigating the manufacture of kippers, he told the cameraman (Richard, I think his name was) to stick the camera inside a smokehouse. Now you don’t usually address the cameraman, by name, on camera.

Another time, Floyd was investigating the making of oxtail soup, which is a long process, so he told the audience: “Now my director will dream up some interlude, and when we return the soup will be perfectly done.” He’s very much aware that he’s on TV, you’re watching him through a TV, there’s no need to pretend otherwise.

‘Allo allo! Here I am, still alive! I haven’t been blogging (or anything else) much because I have some rather serious tingling in my fingertips, a backache that only let up today, and general chemo fatigue.

The doctor tested my tingling nerves today, but since I still have some feeling in my fingers he wasn’t too concerned. The feeling is like permanent pins-and-needles, which makes it somewhat unpleasant to do things with my hands (which is pretty much everything). Typing is especially yucky now.

Anyway, back to the “absurb verbs”: The verbs themselves won’t be absurd, but they will be part of a funny activity I’ve set myself for the day. For example:

Tomorrow, I will:

1. Revise: The Malaysian highway code. I haven’t driven a car in 2 years, and I don’t think I’ll be doing so anytime soon. But once upon a time, I scored a perfect score on the written driving test, okay!

2. Write 500 words on: The invasion of New York by a giant, 50-foot pizza. Describe the carnage that follows.

3. Spend 5 minutes: Perfecting my “tree” pose in yoga.

Day 2 of Round 3 of chemo, and it seems everything’s going my way after all.

The nurse comes in to tell me she has good news and bad news. I always go for bad news first, so that recency effect allows good news to be more salient. She says the bad news is, my saline drip line shouldn’t have been removed for me to go shower, in order to minimise infections. Well, that’s not THAT bad. Certainly avoidable, but not monumental.

The good news is that the pharmacists put all of my chemo drugs into one bag, so I only need one line. No IV plug for me, this time (or ever). The nurse apologised that they had needlessly stuck a plug into me for the previous 2 rounds, but then again it wasn’t her fault anyway. I have been spared the IV plug, ’tis a time for rejoicing!

So today I went to see my oncologist, who by the way is nothing like Dr James Wilson from ‘House’, and he looked at the results of my blood test. “Your body’s very strong,” he remarked. My blood count didn’t drop at all. This means he gets to increase the dosage of my chemo drugs. He actually had to check with another doctor that there’s no limit on the dosage amount, I guess he’s never had to raise the dosage so high before. I am a record breaker! Wahahahaa. He knew I was reluctant to increase the dosage in case I ended up puking more, but since the vomiting was intermittent in the last round, he decided to go ahead.

He checked my PICC line and said he would spare me the pain of having it replaced. Oh, so I DO have the option of having it replaced by a double-lumen line. But then they’d have to take this one out, give me another session with the local anaesthetic needle, and then put a new one in. Nah… I mean, IV cannulas aren’t pleasant but the pain only lasts 2 hours, take a nap and I wake up okay.

The doctor did call up some others (doctors? pharmacists?) to ask if it was truly necessary for the etoposide to go in through a different line, since in the original journal paper, the authors just mixed the drugs together. If they could all be mixed together then I can be spared the cannula. So kind of him to remember that I don’t like that thing, plus I guess he was thinking of the long-term welfare of my veins. Veins generally don’t like having stuff poked into them, they might swell up or harden or some other side effect.

After all this, I went over to visit Kelvin. My mother insisted that I bring him something, so I got him a magazine. When we got to his ward, his bed was empty. The nurse asked who I was looking for, and when I told her, she said “Kelvin is walking around.” I’m thinking he does this a lot? Anyway he soon showed up, and I gave him his magazine. There wasn’t any FHM in the shop, so I got him HWM instead. It’s a tech magazine, and his PC was the cover model. Anyway he’s tube-free now. So envious of him. He just has to sit around until he’s discharged on Friday. Pretty quick recovery for someone missing one-quarter of his liver.

Finally, the aches and pains that have been dogging me decided to subside today. I don’t know if it’s the painkillers still doing their work, but whatever – at least I don’t feel like an old lady today.

The cardiac surgeon said my scan came back clean, my heart’s not making fluid anymore – it shouldn’t anyway, that’s what chemo is for. I did tell him that my voice hasn’t been the same since surgery, and I guess he was worried I might sue him for malpractice or something, because he took pains to assure me that the surgery went nowhere near the nerves that control the vocal cords. I didn’t think it could have been surgery anyway. And it’s unlikely that intubation would have affected my vocal cords for such a long time. Grrr. My inability to talk for long is probably due to my poor lung function, and the nerves are probably irritated by the mass – the same reason I keep coughing. If it doesn’t get any better, I’ll have to see about getting a portable microphone setup for work, unless my students keep very, very quiet so that they can glean my pearls of wisdom.

Anyway he said I probably don’t have to see him again, yay! It’s not that he’s unpleasant, it’s just nice to be able to close off this one chapter and stop worrying about it. Don’t wanna drop dead during one of my runs or something, see.

Then it was upstairs to Level 8 where I had to go give some blood for tests. It was interesting watching the nurse take blood from my PICC line. She attached a syringe to the port, then drew back the plunger. The plunger went springing back to its original position, as though vacuumed. My vein is a vacuum! She kept drawing the plunger back, and my blood bubbled into the syringe, resembling a vampiric cappucino. Funny, I thought my blood would be rushing in to fill the emptiness, but no. Then the nurse told me to turn my head the other way, following which it flowed more freely. Apparently I was squashing the vein. After getting maybe 5ml of blood out, I felt a “thud” into the plastic bag next to my leg. She threw away the syringe containing my blood. She THREW AWAY my blood! I’m vaguely offended. It’s for quality control reasons, the blood she threw away was probably sitting in the line for goodness knows how long, and they need fresh blood for the tests. But still! That’s a part of me, sitting in the rubbish.

After all this fun ‘n’ games of blood and heart scans, I went to visit Kelvin in the main building. He just had surgery to donate part of his liver to his little cousin who has a congenital health problem, and since he visited me the last time I was in hospital, it’s only polite for me to reciprocate. It was a bit of a long walk to his ward – I couldn’t find it initially. When I finally got there, I saw that the rooms had glass windows facing out to the nurses’ station, just like in ‘House’. Not like my previous wards where the rooms are, well, rooms. With walls. The curtain was drawn in his room, and I caught sight of a nurse, so I waited outside until he was done with whatever they were doing to him.

Apparently they were taking out a plug. Eeep, but better out than in, anyway. He was hooked up to a lot of wires, but at least he wasn’t on a breathing tube. He told me they took it out the previous day. See! One day after extubation and he’s speaking normally! What is wrong with my voice!

Kelvin said the nurses weren’t terribly kind to him. Not cruel, just not as nice as my nurses were. I pointed out that he wasn’t dying, whereas I have cancer! You have to be nice to me! I found all his tubes and machines very fascinating. He said I was morbid. Eh until I was 16, I harboured dreams of being a doctor okay! And I could have made it too, if not for the fact that needles and sharp things scare me.

I’ll drop in again on him tomorrow and kacau him some more. He hasn’t touched the magazine on his bed – I think he’s in too much pain. So tomorrow I shall invade and pretend to be his doctor and interrogate him. Haha I know, I’m such an entertainer.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my oncologist to prepare for Chemo Round 3. Have you ever thought about how mentally strong you have to be, to work in oncology? Imagine your life’s work revolving around telling people, “You have cancer.” Of course not all of them will end up dying of it, but I think if it were me, I’d end up crying with the patient. Obviously I am not mentally tough enough to work in medicine – I made the right choice when I sent in my uni application, aided by my fear of sharp pointy metal things.

Neuropathy means there’s something wrong with my nerves. It’s a common side-effect of chemotherapy, and it manifests as tingly feelings in my fingers. It doesn’t usually bother me, I’m still functional, but it’s there. And just the fact that it’s there when it shouldn’t be, annoys me.

I don’t know if the numb spot on my thigh is the same kind of neuropathy, or if it’s from surgery, but it’s numb. Yup. No feeling, no response. That’s worrying, you know. Loss of sensation is actually very serious, if I hurt myself there I wouldn’t know.

And I have joint pains like an old woman. Back hurts. Knees hurt. Hips hurt. I lie down in bed and just feel the pain. Doesn’t stop me from hurting, but at least I’m not aggravating the pain. I took a walk around 1 Utama Shopping Centre today, is this my joints’ way of telling me I overdid it? If one little shopping trip leaves me an invalid in bed, how am I going to run 10km in December for StanChart?

I did manage to shift my attention away from the dull aches for a while though. While eating my pickled papaya slices, I bit into a slice of cili padi. Fire, fire! I downed a glass of juice. Still on fire! I put an ice cube in my mouth to at least numb the pain. The ice melted and there were still embers of pain in my mouth! Oh man, I’ve been eating bland food for so long that my tastebuds have regenerated and lost their tolerance for capsaicin! I’m okay now, but it was really exciting to run around while in a cloud of neuronal firing.

With this litany of aches and pains, I suppose it is a small mercy that the blood withdrawal site on my left arm is perfectly fine. The procedure itself was relatively painless – the needle was small and my vein was very obvious, so it was over quickly. In fact the grossest part wasn’t when the lab tech stuck in the needle – it was when she pulled it out. I could feel it. Brrrr.

It’s not even 10pm and I’m contemplating going to bed. I am really getting into this old-lady act.