"They're tryin' to make me go to rehab"

My cast is off now, and i'm begining the rehab process. Wow, is it painful! My arm and hand were feeling nice and cozy in that cast, as heavy and bothersome as it was. Now that it's off, every movement (fingers or wrist) sends shooting pain up my arm. So, I constantly dread the physical therapy exercises I have to do 6 times a day. When I first got my cast off, I couldn't straighten my fingers, or come anywhere near making a fist. I can straighten my fingers now, but as you can see, I still have a very long way to go.

Me, trying to make a fist

It's amazing how much more dominant my left hand is becoming. It feels so strange to even use my right hand anymore. I have to remind myself that I can use it at all. At this rate, I'll be eating with my feet soon.

Tomorrow we're leaving for sunny SC. We'll be staying with Arie's mom, so hopefully we can make it over to Asheville to Tupelo Honey for some down home southern cooking. mmm...I'll take the sweet potato pancakes AND the fried green tomatoes AND the vegetarian eggs benedict on freshly baked biscuts, please. Julie's New Year's Eve wedding should be a blast. Although, I can't believe her wedding is the exact same time as the Clemson-Auburn bowl game. Of all the Clemson fans!

More Margaritas, Please?

Well, my surgery is over. It went quite well. They gave me a nerve block to numb my entire right arm. I had some other medication via IV. That was the part that hurt the most. The anesthesiologist said that he found my vein, but it kept moving on him. After the surgery, it was my IV hand that hurt the most. Its got all these holes in it now. Before they gave me the nerve block, the doc said "I'm giving you 2 margaritas now." Then my mom and Arie came in to wish me luck. When they left, I was way to alert. I'm definitely not one of those people who want to watch as they get hacked open. NO THANK YOU! So i asked them, "Can I have more margaritas, please?"

The surgery went well. I woke up as they were bandaging me up. That day i felt fine. Since my arm was totally numb, I didn't need to take any pain medicine. That night i began taking Percocit, which made me terribly nauseous. I couldn't keep any food down. I had to have them call in an anti-nausea medicine. Just like a tyipical pill, it helped the nausea, but caused dizziness and extreme drowsiness. Today, I finnaly got a handle on all the drugs. I'm just taking Tylenol now, and i feel soooooooooooooooooo much better! Heres a couple of pictures. I promise i didn't

look this alert yesterday. It's amazing how much a little makeup and some Sevens can do!

Big cast, huh?

Here's me and my mommy, who has taken SUCH great care of me. She has worked tirelessly to make sure I am comfy, well-fed and pain-free. See Arie tring to get in on the picture?

Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me. Your prayers have definitely been felt.
Also, thank you, Deja, for typing this blog for me. I couldn't have done it without you. Well, actually, I could have, but it would have just taken me a very, very long time! So, thank you.

I'm leaving you with some priceless headlines from The Onion:
"New speaker of the house caught wearing women's clothes"
"Expired coupon gains on US dollar"
"EPA mandates environmentally friendly DVD players for all SUVs"

Surgery Day

Tomorrow is surgery day. I'm definitely not looking forward to it, but I will be very glad when it's over. I took my epi final this afternoon, which actually was a good distraction. My mom's here and it's been really fun to steal her away from my dad and Deja. She's been keeping busy-cooking up a storm, helping me study, and pretty much not allowing me to do anything that might involve my hands. It's been so great having her here. I'm trying to soak it all in since tomorrow I probably won't remember much.

We found this picture online. It's of Bandipur, Nepal, where most of my family was born and grew up. What's great about this picture is that you can actually see my mom's family home, my grandmother's house, and my uncle's house. In just this random google images picture!

Tonight we watched the movie The Namesake. It's a wonderful movie-if you haven't seen it, you need to rent it. It's about an Indian couple who move to America and the story of their family. Lots of similarites to my family. Besides that fact, it really is one of the best movies I've seen in a while.

Well, the next time I chime in, I might be in a very drugged state-so don't believe anything I say.

Enchrondroma and Other Happenings

So, it turns out, i have an enchrondroma-in my finger. It's some kind of tumor (most likely benign) that i've apparently had for some time. Recently, it was quite aggravated by everything I did with the move, so it was bothering me a lot. I went to see a GP to have it checked out and he had x-rays taken. (which i've posted below) As you can see, it's in the bone and it doesn't look exactly kosher. My GP set up an appt. for me with an orthopedic doc, but that wasn't until jan. 25. I was a little disturbed after seeing the x-rays, so i decided to call Neil, a guy in my epi class who just happens to be an orthopedic doctor, that night. Well, Neil is a total God-send. He pulled up my x-rays from his computer at home, contacted the head of the orthopedic department, and got me in for an appointment the very next morning!


So now, I have surgery scheduled for dec. 18 (notice-a good month before my appointment was supposed to be!). They're going to go in and remove the tumor and do a bone graft from my wrist so that the bone in my finger can begin to repair itself. I am so thankful for how everything has worked out in this situation. Having the surgery at the beginning of break gives me a month to recover and be in a cast without worrying about writing or typing. God has definitely taken care of me and aligned things perfectly.

They made me a splint for my finger because, did I mention? It also happens to be broken. Yup. Only I would be walking around with broken finger for who knows how many months without the slightest clue. No wonder it hurt so dang bad whenever I banged it!! Bonus points-see if you can find the break in the x-ray :)

In other news, we finally got our first real snow fall. It was about time too! Last weekend it iced about 2 inches and it was just wicked cold. If it's going to be cold like that, there better be snow! The ice was just awful. Poor Khairie had to nurse a bloody paw. She's just not used to walking on sharp, jagged ice. I'm definitely starting to feel a little stir crazy. I haven't been able to run very much since Thanksgiving. I'm hoping the ice melts soon, but somehow I kind of doubt that will happen. Other than the hurt paw, Khairie is absolutely loving this weather. The other day I took her to the dog park in (literally) a blizzard. Not surprisingly, there were only snow dogs there. The four owners were huddled together trying to keep warm-which was pretty funny looking considering how big this dog park is.I am very happy to say that I'm pretty much done with my first semester of grad school. I turned in a semester-long project on thursday. I had to come up with an original research project, design it, figure out how I would do it and read absolutely everything published about the subject (to review it and verify that my project was in fact original). It's titled "Immigration, Acculturation and Obesity Related Risk Factors in Asian Indians Living in Chicago." Yup, I think that pretty much sums it all up!It feels so good to have that turned in, and now I can just breathe and relax!

Thanksgiving has already come and gone. Crazy! We went to Greenville the weekend before to see family and friends. John and Kelly were great hosts and Kelly and I shopped our little hearts out. It was so great catching up with everyone. It's amazing how so much can change, but seeing loved ones makes you feel like nothing's changed. Got a chance to see MB's baby bump. So exciting! On monday I went by Camperdown. It was great. The kids have grown up so much, they're hardly recognizable! I got lots of, "so, how do you like Idado?" and "Where do you live now, Ohio?" But I felt very loved. When Arie picked me up, I told him, "I'm hugged out!" Monday night we had a Pre-Thanksgiving dinner with friends. Allison's parents were so sweet to allow us to gather at their house (the only place that would accommodate all of us!) It was such a blast. The food was amazing and the only thing better was being surrounded with such great friends.

Mary Beth, Allison, Shannon, Kelly, Bailey, Me and Nina

such goofballs!

Garrett, Jonathan, Jason, Arie, John, Donald and Joe

Wednesday we were back in Iowa City. We went from 70 degrees and sunny to 3 inches of snow! It was very pretty. I wish I had gotten a chance to take some pictures of the first snowfall. Maybe this weekend, it's supposed to snow again. Unfortunately, to Khairie, 3in. of snow + deck = a great place to pee. Not so great when you live on the 3rd floor. I don't think it leaked down. I really hope not!

We had a great Thanksgiving with my parents and Deja in Madison. We made our traditional Shrestha thanksgiving (chicken for mom, dad and Deja and salmon for us) along with all the sides. My mom surprised Arie with homemade baklava. 2 pans of it to be exact. We were eating it at all hours of the day. OMG! so good!

So, my dad found out that Circut City was selling $300 laptops the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday. And since Arie and I are constantly fighting for computer time, we thought it would be a good idea to score a new computer for 1/2 off. Even though this was something that we had never doen, we decided to go to bed early and wake up before the crack of dawn to try to get one. Next morning, my mom wakes us up (with a ridiculous amount of energy) at about 4:45. We finally get to the store at 6am. It was complete insanity. First of all, the parking lot was totally full and cars were parked on the grass. We went into the store and it was just swarms of people everywhere. As for my computer? Yeah, right! Apparently, they had given out vouchers for them to the people who were standing in line (outside the store) since 3 in the afternoon the day before! The computers were gone by 3 am. By the way, the low was 20 that night. We left, empty handed, before the sun had even rose as people all around us wheeled overflowing carts to their cars. The entire experience was really sad. It just showed me how completely vacant of meaning Christmas has become and how hyper-materialistic we've become. I'm going to try my hardest to keep that in mind this holiday season.