Vomiting with the 2nd pregnancy

It's been a while since I've had the time to update this, since the birth of my first son has kept me pretty damned busy for the first year, after which I got a job for another year, and got pregnant again during that time, and gave birth to my second son 5 months ago, after which I quit my job to take care of both of them ... for now.

The bad news is that the vomiting I wrote about with my first pregnancy was also present during my second one. That was how I knew to buy the pregnancy test kit. I drank a Coke and felt the familliar burping / vomiting sensations I learned to dread for 9 months.

The good news was that the vomiting was greatly minimised because I knew the food to avoid, and the food I could keep down. There was still vomiting, though. But for 7 months, instead of the 9 months I had with my first son.

So for fellow sufferers out there, the symptoms seem to get better with subsequent children. That said, I will still kill my husband if I get pregnant again. :)

Too randy? Fear no more ...

My mom was introduced to this ... this ... thing today.

I was feeding baby, so I wasn't really listening when she extolled its virtues to her sister. The gist was it's the "latest" happening thing among the aunties for a health / beauty reason.

The packaging was the holographic type you see on high quality pirated DVDs, so I thought it was some expensive product from France or something. Till I decided to read it.

I nearly snorted Coke Light out my nose.

Waitaminit ... what?!?

I asked my mom between sputters why the heck she bought this. It couldn't be for what I think it's for. And aunties couldn't be clamoring over this for why I think they are.

She couldn't really explain, but I'm guessing it's a literal translation from Chinese and it refers to rough skin (i.e. horny?!) and this lotion's supposed to be great for smoothing it out.

Okkkkkkkkk ..........

I continued reading, to see if I could understand more of its functions before my mom started using it ...

It appears the manufacturers didn't think an ingredient listing was all that important, so they stopped at "grape extract distillate" and abbreviated the rest to " ...etc ...".

I also love how clear the instructions are.

"Days for sub-two, first shall-face wetness, and wield the product gently knead". And if course, if it "into eyeball", you should make sure you're not naked because "sonly washing for clear water" is required "if immodesty".

I mean ... WHAT?!?

In China, the English used on road signs, restaurants, roadworks etc... may be horrible, but at least you can understand what they're trying to say. On this product, it's like the brand manager just Googled random English words from different beauty products and pasted them on without any thought to sentence structure, grammar or comprehension.

I had to find out where this product was made.

What's a Stanchion Time?!? Did they name the company "America" just to give it the impression of being made in America?!? Is that address the manufacturer's address or distributor's? It could be the address of the brand manager's psycho ex-girlfriend ffs!!

Legally, you MUST have the manufacturer name, address and country of origin clearly stated on the packaging - or the product just can't get through customs to be sold here. I've personally experienced how strict our Malaysian regulations are, when I was in Marketing. But none of it is here.

I've convinced my mom to return this.

Her horniness is fine the way it is.

Sexism in blogging

It has recently come to my attention that many people who read my posts think that I am a very "angry" person.

While that's often true, the anger is usually a result of some injustice - either inflicted upon me, someone that I care about, or sometimes even a stranger - that needs an avenging angel to, er, avenge.

I don't like being angry. I don't like being thought of as an angry person. But I suppose it's better than being called bitchy, a label more commonly applied to a woman with any sort of opinion or backbone or loud voice.

The thing is, my rants are just that. Rants. I don't carry them with me, once it's out into the blogesphere. I'm not angry like that all the time (especially since I'm no longer stressed out at work all the time).

I thought my rants would be thought provoking, amusing and (most importantly) harmless to read - much like watching a rabbit try to disembowel you with a pink, plastic Fisher Price knife.

In fact, I LOVE reading posts similar to mine in other blogs, or online profiles. Those dudes show their middle fingers and cuss all the time in their posts. And they too "appear" to be angry and forceful, but they're just ranting AT THAT MOMENT. They're not always like that.

I even found a kindred spirit in one of those people. We were complete strangers, but got on so well (and no, we did not RANT all the time. Our friendship is pretty tame and polite) that we climbed Mt Kinabalu together. He was a cool guy.

Then it hit me. All these entertaining, ranting bloggers were GUYS.

What the fuck?? So if a girl like me were to blog like this, I'd be labelled as bitchy, unstable or angry. But if a GUY blogs like this, he's fun to read?!?! Sexism in the blogesphere!!

Another piece of proof was this blog I'd created as an experiment. No one knew it was me, including my sister. She read the first post and actually thought it was well-written or entertaining or something like that, NOT knowing it was me, and her assumption was that it was written by .... jeng jeng jenggggg ..... a GUY (must be all that writing I did for FHM).

Bloody hell. This is so unfair! I don't like being thought of as this uncontrollable, angry chick - but I like writing like this. It's therapeutic. And I find it funny, even if no one else does. Sob.

All this because there's a preconceived image of girls being all feminine and gentle. So, I can't get away with writing the way a man does, because girls "aren't supposed to be like that". WTF.

My brother's theory is that when people imagine a male blogger speaking out the words, it sounds like a controlled, male rant. But if they imagine a FEMALE blogger speaking out the same words, they would automatically assume a whiny, bitchy or naggy voice instead - thus ruining the enjoyment of the post.

Bah.

Pregnant Peeves

There are several things that pissed me off no-end during my pregnancy (aside from all the stupid and embarassing bodily functions that come with it). Here they are :

1. SMOKERS
I hate going out during this pregnancy because of these motherfuckers. Be it at a mamak or at a Starbucks, there's always a shithead sitting nearby with a fucking cancer stick.

Don't get me wrong, I've got smoker friends who are VERY considerate and are very aware of where their smoke goes. When they smoke, I sometimes don't even notice that they're doing it - so discreet and considerate are they. Either that, or they move somewhere else to get their fix, and I really appreciate it.

But most of the assholes in public don't care where their smoke goes. They just puff away, and the smoke always, ALWAYS finds me. It's like they instinctively know where the non-smokers and pregnant women are sitting and position themselves upwind of us. Motherfuckers.

Today, I was having lunch outside, and a Chinese SALESMAN was sitting at the table next to me. He was reading a stupid book filled with stupid Chinese characters, having just finished his food. After I sat down, he took out his cancer stick and kept blowing the smoke RIGHT AT ME! There were a million places he could have blown it, but he aimed it dead centre at me.

After a few not-so-subtle waves of my hand and crinkling of my nose, he still continued. So I finally asked him nicely if he could blow his smoke in another direction, and not at me, because I'm pregnant. Being CHINESE, and a SALESMAN, he obviously didn't understand my request and thought I was asking him to put out the cancer stick.

Instead of being sorry about blowing smoke at me all this while, he actually retorted back, "There are so many empty places here what. Why do you have to sit here??" I couldn't believe my ears. For the sake of my baby, I restrained myself from kicking the table up into his ugly, yellow face.

(In another place, I'd asked an Indonesian worker if he could blow smoke elsewhere, he had the decency to look chagrined, and apologised profusely before complying happily with my request. Malaysians should be ashamed of themselves)

I repeated to the Chinese fucker that he could just blow his smoke away from me, and that would be fine. Piece of shit. He didn't stay long after that. Wish I got a photo of his stupid face. He even had the typical Chinese flat ass. Bloody Chinese SALESMAN.

To all the smokers, if you want to end your life, do it to yourself and don't take me and my baby with you. Assholes.

I hope the government stops in-fighting enough to ban smoking in public places. It's a disgusting habit. And NONE of you look cool doing it. Dumbasses.

"Lookit me. I'm so hawwwt when I smoke ..."

(Pic from http://www.welaf.com/)

2. PEOPLE WHO RUSH INTO THE LIFT BEFORE LETTING YOU OUT FIRST
Self explanatory. Usually, these are Chinese people, too. Hmm. Maybe I should just change my entire list to "CHINESE PEOPLE". Then again, try taking an LRT around town and you'll find this applies to all races and walks of life. Stupid assholes.

I mean, were you born in a barn? If you don't have the brains for common courtesy, common sense at least dictates that you should let the occupants out first, so you'll have enough space to get in, hence avoiding all the squeezing and struggling which will impede your progress into said lift in the first place!

Not to mention that they don't care if you're pregnant. They'll just push their way in, bumping against your poor belly without a second thought. That's when I normally shoulder them roughly out of the way. Good thing I'm bigger than the average scrawny Malaysian male. Assholes.

3. PARENTS WITH DESIGNER PRAMS
Gone are the days when the prams are small, petite little things. They have transformed into a 10-in-1, multifunctional contraption that not only houses drooling infants, but can be used as a car seat, shopping trolley, armoured vehicle or spaceship.

As a result, these parents take up unneccessary amounts of room in shopping complexes and lifts. But what I really hate is that they usually do not watch where they're going because they assume everyone is going to make way for their little prince / princess in their mini Humvees.

I usually don't bother changing direction and walk right into their path. If I get to kick the stupid pram in the process, that's a bonus.

4. OTHER PREGNANT WOMEN
I don't know why. I should be more sympathetic since I am also pregnant, but I find pregnant women very messy looking and clumsy. The stomach is like everywhere, they walk funny, all their joints are ungainly and swollen, they look really sickly and either wear tents or something tight and short because they think it's fashionable to show off their bellies (yuck).

Also, they tend to be grumpier than normal human beings. I had my fair share of unfortunate run ins with grumpy preggos (one of whom was the shampoo girl at my mom's regular salon who tried to rip the hair out of my scalp while washing it), and it's probably conditioned me to hate the very sight of them.

Traffic Bitches

I was driving to my hubbie's office at 7pm today, and was horrified by the jam in EVERY direction. In fact, I could barely even leave my own housing area because kiamsiap assholes who are too cheap to pay the fucking toll were cutting through my neighbourhood, and didn't understand the concept of NOT stopping at a fucking yellow box.

So I decided to cut back into my housing area so I could take another route. And it took me 15 minutes to GET BACK TO MY HOUSE. There were cars EVERYWHERE!

I mean, can you fuckers learn to car pool? And they all drive like motherfuckers. I wish I could conduct a demolition derby on all their asses. Yeah yeah, they're all eager to rush home after work, but I can't even MOVE around in my own home because of these assholes!

Screw all you assholes with cars! Especially VIOS drivers!

I noticed how jammed the flyover to the University Hospital was, and (since I was stuck in a jam just outside my house anyways) I started imagining how I would rush my mom or an emergency patient to the hospital if they had collapsed during rush hour.

The answer : I can't.

Even a fucking ambulance couldn't get through there. There's no emergency lane. Even if there were, fucking office drones (usually in bloody behind the wheel of a fucking Vios) would be driving on it illegally, thinking they're very smart at beating the rest of the jam.

What's the point of building the fucking flyover there?? To move the bottleneck CLOSER to University Hospital? At least with the roundabout, the cops could be deployed to "sort of" help alleviate the congestion. But now, it's jammed all the bloody way, and woe to the poor soul who actually needs to go to the ER.

I wonder if anyone realises how dangerous it is to fall sick in Malaysia.

If you had a heart attack and no one in the house knew CPR, you'd be dead before the ambulance arrived (45 minutes later). Or, you'd die in the car on the way to the hospital, thanks to our considerate Malaysian motherfucking drivers and the asshole civil engineers who designed the traffic flow and roads.

I have enough of these things to worry about, much less read about the latest shit our politicians are up to in retaining their tenuous grasp on their power and contracts in this shitty country.

If they want to win favours with the public, start fixing the traffic flows for the routes to the fucking hospitals for a start.

Then have a look at the fucking potholes that are littering the whole of Petaling Jaya - I wish we could sue them for destruction of private property. That might get them off their asses.

So grumpy

I don't know if it's the weather or if it's my pregnancy hormones.

I'm just so damned grumpy these last few days. I hate everyone: every race, creed, colour, religion ... including my own. Everything is pissing me off.

Moving out of the apartment is really tiring, especially in the 3rd trimester. Feel exhausted from just a small, bit of exertion. And as though I'm not grumpy enough, I'm discovering how shitty it is to live in a condo.

Management won't let me move out at my convenience. It has to be at THEIR convenience. Weekdays, or Sat up to 1pm. I mean, WTF?? Just so happens I can only move out on Sat afternoon. Instead of providing a solution to this problem, they just keep repeating how their bosses won't budge and they must "follow procedure". The 2 exact words that make me want to vomit boiling acid on the face of the motherfucker who said them to me.

Rarrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!! DIEeee MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRRRS!

Am so glad I'm moving out of this stupid apartment, with it's stupid rules and it's stupid Building Management who insist on perpetuating flame wars with its residents instead of doing their jobs in making this a safe and pleasant place to LIVE.

Poor, Poor Ovaries

This post has been a long time in the making.

Back in October 2007, I went for an Executive Screening programme at a hospital which shall remain unnamed (you never know who's reading this), just to see how bad a shape my body was in given all the stress it was exposed to at work.

I didn't actually expect them to find anything serious, because I wasn't suffering from any symptoms other than tension headaches and mental burnout. But shit, a chance ultrasound discovered a cyst in my ovaries. Quite a big one, about 4cm in diameter

Some X-Rays and MRIs later, I was scheduled for a laproscopy to remove it. They made 3 little punctures in my tummy and demonstrated just how skilled you have to be to be a surgeon. Not to mention how strong a constitution you must have.

They took a video of the whole thing. But ... but ... I managed to get the video of some other patient to illustrate what happens during the operation. Yes. This is not mine. No. Nope.

So, here's some screen captures of the action. The video starts with them just having made a hole in the belly button and shoving a metal pipe through it so the camera can go through :


Then, another hole is being made by skewering something sharp throgh the right side of the belly. Observe how hard it is to poke through the skin. Argh :


Another metal pipe is shoved through the new hole, to let more implements slide through :

This cool clamp thingy come through the pipe and grabs at the gigantic ovary. You can see the normal-sized one on the right :

OMFG! The cystic ovary is bigger than the damned uterus (the pink, round thing dangling to the right like a testicle down there)!!

A healthy ovary looks like an ugly shrivelled white raisin - ala the small puckered thing on the right. Observe the frightening difference :

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA :

The surgeon uses this cool tool that can clamp things as well as BURN them. He burns a hole in the ovary containing the cyst and yellow puss stuff spews out :


He uses the other clamp to rip open the ovary skin, and more toxic yellow puss oozes out :

More ripping occurs :

The ovary is peeled open like a Mandarin orange. The red lump inside is the cyst, covered in a fleshy bleeding skin :
As the cyst is being pulled out, yellow puss SPURTS out like a fountain :

50% done now, just gotta fully pull apart that "orange" :

The cyst is now out and left to reside in the body cavity, which is now a pool of poisonous yellow puss:

The poor ovary is still bleeding, so the implement is used to cauterise the weeping wounds :


They stuff in a bag to contain the cyst and it's juices when they pop it. Because in case the cyst was cancerous, they can't afford to have any cancerous cells spilling all over the intestines :
Up, up and away. The cyst is deflated and a sample is taken out for a fast biopsy :

They pump in water to clean all the organs of the yellow gunk and blood that came out during the whole process. Meanwhile the biopsy is being done. If the biopsy shows the cyst is cancerous, the whole ovary has to come off !!!
The biopsy shows that the cyst is benign, so the surgeon proceeds to patch up the poor ravaged ovary with a needle and thread :

The thread is purple! My favourite colour! Coooooool :

In such a small space, accidents do happen. The needle stabs the uterus by accident :

After 3 knots, the ovary is left to its own devices to heal : The left ovary is now normal and raisin-like again!

The cyst is cut open, and to my disappointment, there are no teeth inside (which is normally what you find in a Dermoid cyst). Just a clump of hair that you'd find in your shower after not cleaning the drain out for a few months :

Yucky yucky.

Go get yourself checked-up with an ultrasound today! Don't wait for symptoms to show, because usually when Dermoid Cysts are discovered, it's when they get so big it twists the ovary (you're in a lot of pain) and you lose the ovary anyway.