Ow. My chin...

Unlucky unlucky... My whole of yesterday was spent at the polyclinic and Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Slipped and fell down at home and hit my chin on a slightly elevated tile piece. I don't even want to remember how i fell... The floor was slippery because I just finished bathing and made it wet and my feet was slightly slippery from the soap. I can only blame myself for being so careless.

I walked too fast while making a U-turn into the kitchen and my feet skidded and I fell on my knees. My hands tried to find support from the side of the entrance, but I skidded more and my whole head thumped on, of all things, the edge of the piece of tile lined along the entrance. I remember being shocked for a while and I went to the toilet looking into the mirror to see a 2cm horizontal blood wound just under my chin and a smaller one underneath it. (turned out I thumped twice) Sorry for the extremely graphical description, but you most probably read it already anyway.

Soon the wound had blood flowing profusely and I realised it was quite a deep wound and being at the chin, it was an open wound. I find it quite funny that the first thing I thought when I saw the wound was the scar that will be there when it heals, while the wound itself is too gushing out blood like mad. Its not as if I don't have enough scars on my face, in fact I have MORE THAN ENOUGH, but a new and bigger one just saddens me. Its like already having a moon with all the craters, and what's worse, meteorites are still constantly striking on it. Its just very very bad. Sigh.. Ha... look what the society has done to our generation, making us all superficial and materialistic. Not my fault.

Anyway, my brother happend to come home when I fell, and he helped me stopped the bleeding with ice. Surprisingly the wound wasn't that painful, if not totally painless. So we stopped the bleeding and covered it with gauze and I decided to go to the polyclinic a few hours later.

I waited the longest ever at the polyclinic. Was there at 8am and left the place at 1pm. Waited a full 3 hours to see the doctor, and was told that I missed my number. Either they skipped their number so dramatically, from 2030 to 2097, or I am sure the number just mysteriously morphed from the 2000s to 2100s without my approval. Urgh! Ok I admit I left the waiting area alot of times, because I didn't bring my iPod along and you can't expect me to sit there for 3 hours like an idiot right. And the stupid TV there was showing talk shows, but the volume was OFF. -_- So I had no choice but to go to the other waiting area to watch Tyra and Oprah with the volume on. -___-" I would check the queue number so frequently, only to see that it has jumped by 3 numbers. (until it mysteriously jumped by 100 numbers that is)

Finally I met my doctor and the consultation took 3 minutes. He was uncertain whether stitching was needed, so he sent me for an X-ray first, then go to dress my wound. The X-ray was the biggest mistake in my life. (I make alot of big mistakes in my life) More about it later... After the dressing the doctor says the wound was deeper than he thought and decided to send me for stitching at Tan Tock Seng.

My brother and sister-in-law accompanied me there, and my sister-in-law followed me to the A&E while my brother went Funan to send his spoilt hard-disk. The A&E department was pretty small because it was undergoing some renovation. I always thought A&E department of hospitals seems pretty scary and hectic. All the nurses and doctors do their work and walk around at double speed, like they are prepared to stop and drop to their knees at anytime to give someone CPR and resuscitate the patient back to life.

I waited apprehensively for my turn, worried about the pain of stitching. :( Finally it was my turn and I met my doctor who asked me some procedural questions to make sure I was conscious and alert and to fill up some forms. The doctor was so young and looked like a JC girl because she was so small-sized. I was prepared to say "OK nurse, are you done already? Can I see my doctor now?" when she told me "OK now, I am going to bring you for stitching".

And also, the doctor was perplexed about why I had my X-ray taken because she said it was unnecessary. !!! The doctor at the polyclinic wanted to check for fractures, but she said it wasn't needed for my case. And so I was innocently zapped so many times under X-ray, for no reason. What's worse is that the radiologist took X-ray on my head at different angles plenty times. What's even worse is that some of the photos weren't well-taken and they were taken a few more times. WTH! You may be a camwhore yourself, but how could you shoot my head with X-ray so many times because you weren't experienced. I wonder how much of my cells died because of it. =(

Ok, back to the young female doctor. :) She may look young, but at least she seems experienced and sounded professional. She said my wound was small, but looking at it myself, I wonder what bigger lacerations she had to treat.

The next moment we were in the operating theatre. The doctor and nurse tried to tell me whatever they did on me. I only wished they had given me more time to prepare for it. The big lamps above the bed was exactly as depicted in TV. "Whoosh!" and it blinded my eyes. "The lights are pretty bright so you should close your eyes." They proceeded with preparing for the stitching and the nurse called me 'Sir' so many times, and I had like 10 minutes of intense self-gratification.

I was covered with a surgical cloth so I could only roughly watch what they were doing, not like I wanted to watch. She first cleaned the wound with antiseptic using a cotton wool. She rubbed it so hard and haphazardly like she was cleaning a baby's ass.

"I am cleaning your wound with antiseptic liquid. Now I am going to inject a painkiller into the wound itself."

At that point of time, the thinking side-bubble emerging from my head was probably written "OMG WTH! ?! That sounds PAINFUL!" I had thought the anesthetic would be injected at the side or what to numb the whole area, but definitely not into the wound itself?!

Without further notice, whoosh~ and the needle entered the wound and I felt a piercing pain, but that was as much pain as I felt throughout the stitching.

"Now you will start to feel numb and you shouldn't feel any pain. If you do, just voice out to us. You will probably just feel a pulling sensation."

Thinking bubble: "Omg.. 'pulling sensation'. How gross..."

So I lied there, nervous like mad while awaiting the first needle. But turn out I wasn't really certain when the stitching started because my chin was numb, luckily. Halfway through the stitching, she asked me,

"Are you feeling any pain?"

I said, "No..o.."

"You are just very nervous?"

"Ya.. (duh! Am I wrong to be feeling nervous when you are sewing the skin around my wound like its a piece of cloth?)"

And she wasn't gentle with it at all, pulling the stitches hard to make sure they are tight, before the nurse cut off the excess thread. "I think I will put 1 last one here!" And she ended the stitching, and pressed on the stitching to count them. "1, 2, 3, 4, 5,...7. 7+3. 7 on the big one and 3 on the small one. So a total of 10 stitches" I didn't know the smaller wound needed stitching...

After that I was to be given a tetanus injection by the nurse. "You can take a deep breath first." But before I even suck in the first millilitre of air, the needle was already into my arm. Ow. And that was the end of the stitching. The wound wasn't bandaged and we were told it didn't have to be covered, though my sister-in-law bought some post-op plasters anyway. I don't want to scare people with the stitching. And I was given a measly 2days MC, which was, erm, useless. Would probably go to the MO on monday to see what I can get from the kaopeh MO. Gotta go remove the stitch 5 days later too.

Now the wound is still hurting a little, and I have to disinfect and apply antibiotic cream everyday to make sure its clean. Its gonna be troublesome to do so in camp. And I will be going out these 2 days with the ugly plaster on my chin. :( Pray it heals fast and leaves an untraceable scar.