My ENT must need a new pair of shoes...

So, if you know me, you know that I have really bad nosebleeds. It’s disgusting. I feel really bad for my roommate.

About two weeks ago, my doctor finally had the brilliant idea that something *might* be wrong.
So he sent me to an ENT (ear, nose and throat specialist).
It was not fun.

First of all, the ENT does not have her own office. No, she works at the Springfield Clinic, which is basically a large building that smells like Lysol. And not the pleasant lemony kind of Lysol—the weird antiseptic-smelling kind.

So, on Good Friday, I went to the ENT. What I hate most about going to the doctor is that your appointment is never really on time. If they say 10:30, you might as well not even show up until 11:15. But my freakishly organized mother insisted on getting there at 10:15. So I got to wait a full *hour* in the waiting room with children who had shoved rubber balls up their noses, old men whose ears were leaking crap, etc. It was not a pleasant experience.
Then, when the nurse finally called me back to the office, the ENT came in.

“So, you’re having nosebleeds.” She said.
Duh.
Then, after several minutes of mindless, faux-polite Q & A, she said the one thing I didn’t want to hear. “We’re going to have to cauterize it.”

Um…thanks, but no thanks.

First of all, have you ever been in an ENT’s office? It’s a creepy place. There’s this big chair in the middle of the room that looks like some sort of death chair or something. And there’s a big cord hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t know what that was for. The creepiest thing is that all of the doctor’s tools are just sitting out, on this big cabinet. They are really sharp, and some of them look like blowtorches. There’s this big machine that I don’t even want to *think* about.

Needless to say, I wanted to get out of there. But the ENT had other ideas. She took this big headband thing with a light on it, which she plugged into the cord hanging from the ceiling.

She looked like she was going to go spelunking in my nose.

Luckily, my mom happened to mention that we were getting on a plane for San Antonio the next morning. So the ENT decided it would be best to wait a week, after we got back, to cauterize it.
So a week later, yesterday, I went back to the ENT’s office, absolutely dreading it. Cauterization = not fun, from what I could tell. Basically, the doctor sticks a match up your nose, except it has silver nitrate on it. Yeah.

So we got back in the little room again (which looked even more like a death chamber the second time around) and the ENT came in. She put on her spelunking headdress and looked in my nose. Her breath smelled like lemon Starbursts. I kind of wanted to run away.

“Well,” she said, “it looks a little better today. I think we’ll wait about a month or so and see how you do, and then we’ll cauterize it.”
Um…are you kidding me?!

Seriously, lady, if you’re going to put me through excruciating pain, just get it over with! So now, instead of just paying her for one office visit, we get to pay for three!

I mean, hey, it’s not like I want to get the inside of my nose burned, but this is getting ridiculous.

Long story short, my nose is still bleeding. And I have to go back to the ENT...

How To Tell When You Are In Desperate Need Of Money:

You babysit two kids for four hours and make less than fifteen dollars, and think, "Score!"

Perspective

Quick Fact:
SAT Math score 740 will get you:
at IMSA: 50th Percentile
in the Nation: 97th Percentile

I Can't Wait

So today i met a guy who went to community college.

I was shocked.

Sometimes i hate what IMSA has done to me.

Also my parents were upset i came home at 12:30

Typical Asian parents

I can't wait until i go to college

My Life Flashed Before My Eyes

A bird flew into the side of my face today.

Actually it didn’t, but it would be interesting and humorous (definitely more retrospectively, but I imagine there still would be plenty of humor).

I was walking out of the house taking out the trash, and this huge black bird swoops down only inches in front of me. Had I not stopped and complained to my mother for doing all the chores in the house and been a few seconds faster it would have flown directly into the side of my face. Don’t get me wrong now; I am delighted it didn’t hit me. But looking at it from the onlookers’ perspective, it wouldn’t be too bad if it did.

Immediately from the experience I imagined this huge hole shaped gash on my cheek. People would be all concerned and asking what happened, and I would reply nonchalantly that a bird flew into me. I mean really, how often does that happen?

That or, I could picture myself in the emergency room. Somehow the avian creature managed to wedge its beak so deep into the side of my face that I assumed I shouldn’t take it out myself without the doctors properly giving me a dose of anesthesia. So I would be slouched in one of those overstuffed couches in the waiting room, you know for four hours of course, just tweedling my thumbs with a bird sticking conveniently out of side of my head, while people came in gushing blood and seizure-ing. It would be kind of funny.

Actually, the unfortunate bird would probably be alive through all of this. Provided that birds don’t pass out from shock or anything, the new vision would be of me, tweedling my thumbs in the waiting room, with a bird lodged into the side of my head flapping furiously trying to get away. Would it get tired of struggling say for after 3 hours? Probably. I would probably be lying on one side because I would have a headache from the beak wedged into the side of my head for 3 hours. So I’m lying there. And the bird is lying on the side of my face. The bird is tired because it’s been flapping for hours.

Oh god. What happens if it ends up dislodging itself in the waiting room? I can see that too. The bird somehow gets free, and starts to fly away. I would spring up in enormous pain because the bird just extricated itself and now there is blood spurting out of my head Kill- Bill-style. In the meantime, the bird having used up all its energy trying to dislodge itself from me can’t exactly fly so instead, it falls to the ground and just kind of flaps around the ground like a fish. That might not be as funny.

I am thankful for those two seconds that didn’t bring us together, and I think I am slowly dipping into this isolation induced insanity since those flashes of what would have happen happened in the 20 feet walk between my house and the garbage can. Hooray for spring break.

book

I'm reading Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. It's a good story but her writing is a bit stiff. I guess I can't blame her since it's from the 50's and all. I hadn't really expected to completely agree with Shrugged's premises. I find that I can't help it, though. Turns out that my (somewhat) longstanding theory about the very modern and very scary inability to accept personal responsibility being the prime factor in most of our nation's problems ties in quite nicely with the book's theme. Besides, a lot it just makes sense, shaky plot devices aside. A certain monologue on the nature of money was especially brilliant, in my opinion. Has anyone else read any Ayn Rand, and do any of them care to comment on her ideas? Does anyone else think they're becoming increasingly relevant in society? Juuust wondering.

Risks... Why can't I take them?

Actually posted this on my own blog a few days ago:

Here's something I'm thinking about right now. I'm watching Dancing with the Stars and Marlee Matlin just performed. She did pretty well, for her second dance. What's special about her is that she can't hear the music. She's almost completely deaf, yet she still came out and volunteered for the show and has been trying her best.

I've been told before that I should take more risks. Do more things that scare me. Now, a lot of things scare me. I've classified myself as paranoid before. But I'll admit, I'm not very fond of stepping out of my comfort zone... A quote I keep running across is, "Well-behaved women rarely make history."

Okay, so I'm ranting, but here's what I'm getting at: I want to take risks. I want to make my life more exciting. I enjoy the thrill of doing something a little bit scary, but... it's like I'm in this shell, and I don't know how to break out.

When I do take a risk, even if it's a tiny one that no one else notices, and it goes badly, it's like taking two steps back. I just turn bright red and make a mental note not to do the same thing again. Everytime this happens, it creates a brand new fear for me.

Sometimes I find that I'm able to just throw all my inhibitions out the window, even if it's just for a little while. Those times tend to be my best... that's when my adrenaline is pumping and I enjoy every moment of whatever I'm doing. It's... such a thrill.

So this has all been pretty random. Long story short: I want to put more excitement into my life... but I honestly don't know how.