Saan's eating pattern has changed since she started on the pills. She's been off them since Sunday, but she's still going around feeling the need to eat (usually around four pm, until six, seven pm) something fatty, without actually being hungry, or even really wanting whatever she's putting in her mouth. Then there's usually a thirty minute break. And then she really starts craving fibre, juice, fruit and vitamins... but usually doesn't find anything munchable at the ready. Peeling seeems like something that goes too slowly, bananas are too high in sugar content to satisfy. She eats more at breakfast. She is already hungry again by half past ten. She's still hungry (ravenously, stomach-achingly hungry) after eating her lunch and then some, for about an hour. ... If this keeps going on after a week of detox, Saan's gonna start worrying.
Saan managed to catch up with some of the homework she lost over the weekend, and it made her feel good. The shower hose has been repaired, and she's going to the planetarium tomorrow. Saan's quote of the day 'Take care of the little things in life and the big ones will take care of themselves'. She's now going to take a shower without flushing out her eye for the first time in three weeks.
Saan's weekend spun out of control and now Saan is desperately chasing behind it in the hopes of catching up before Monday comes along. No post today. Sorry.
Okay, so first of all, Saan would like to announce her opinion on the two Dutch-speaking official (read: governmental, non-commercial) Belgian television stations: they're racist, chauvinistic xenophobes pretending to be decent. Documentaries on racism, moral issues, medicine and new laws mostly show only one side of the story. They tend to be either patriotic: 'look how advanced we are' or really just a pissing pole: 'look at how fucked up those economically/politically/peacefully less successful coutries are'. Those last ones often have problems in them that happen in Belgium just the same, but that factoid is rarely mentioned, which has mostly bad consequences according to Saan. They scare people who would help or visit the countries (who could, in 99% of the cases, really do with some good publicity). They create the false illusion that Belgium has no problems of the same kind. They confirm the vision of the narrow-minded criminals who do the same in Belgium: 'Look, we are right: people abroad do the same and get away with it'.
Another thing bothering her is the fact that they mention it EVERY time when someone commiting even a minor crime, or even a suspected witness is of a different skin color, or from a less successful country or hasn't a purely Belgian pedigree. It denounces those people to things, in Saan's opinion. 'It's not human, it's (for example) Polish.' Even if someone has two grandparents who are/were not Belgian, they are considered strangers. If your grandpa on father's side of the family was French and your grandmother on mother's side of the family was American, you are not Belgian. You are a Foreigner. You might never have left the country in your life, speak only one language, be a right-wing bigot and live off of french fries, steak and chocolate, you are still a Foreigner to the law and media.
Now, Saan is not going to pretend to be 100% non-xenophobe. She gets uncomfortable around people who look or sound as though they aren't from the same country as her, and admits to it. It freaks her out if people start talking French or English towards each other on the train. She takes a lot of time to warm up to people who do things like that, or are too extroverted for Saan's comfort. She gets nervous, thinks she'll insult them by breathing, make a horrible faux-pas and get branded as a racist bitch with no respect for other cultures. Which is why she turns all quiet when H. and relatives speak Chinese in Saan's presence. The fact that she doesn't understand a word of what they're saying has a lot to do with it, too. Saan minds when people do stuff like that, because it makes her uncomfortable. She doesn't mind much--smoking, arrogance or excessive drinking are a few of the many things that bother her far more--and the people who do or are it have every right to do so. It's Saan's problem. Six billion people aren't going to tiptoe around every teenager who gets a case of nerves around things they don't know much about. Saan is sane enough to keep telling herself that she's not going to get eaten. She has the same problem if she is on holiday abroad. She comes off as a hyperventilating jitterbug, but it's a fear she's learned to relativate. It's unreasonable, she knows it. Breathe in, out, end of political correctness rant.
Saan is also pissed off at every relative and befriended nurse who terrified her parents with tales of lost data, hyperventilation, claustrophobia, laws of physics, burning metal bits the doctor missed and horror movie sound effects when talking about the NMR-scan. The strip of metal on her teeth was safe. A medically trained person put it there and didn't go 'Do NOT under ANY circumstances take an NMR-scan as long as that thing is there'. It wasn't on the little 'you've lost your braces, this is what you gotta remember' leaflet. She only had to take off her glasses. Seeing as she had her eyes closed the entire time (beige gets boring faster than you can blink), it wasn't a problem. Half an hour of semi-repetitive noise isn't a fate worse than death, and everyone made it sound like a medical examination in a concentration camp. She didn't even get a headache. It was sort of like a bad didgeridoo music piece, on the world's first digital didge. Not pleasant, not unpleasant. Fifteen minutes of Geography on Friday morning is worse. Her head wasn't forcefully strapped down. They put a pair of headphones with a wonky radio station (Bach-heavy metal-pop, or something like that), which gave her little place to move, but she could move easily if she wanted to. There was... something hanging above her head, but it didn't touch her face. The scanner was lit, and open on the side she could see. The ceiling of the scanner was sort of close, like staring at the wall of a semi-crowded elevator. Close your eyes, let the noise go to the background and you should live. Saan nearly fell asleep, but then the man behind the machine came out and kept up the Hurt Saan When She Is Your Patient In The Hospital Tradition by sticking a needle in her arm. Saan came out of her doze and got shoved right back under for three more minutes. Halfway through those, she had to sneeze. She knew she wasn't allowed to move, so she swallowed it. For those who plan on trying the same, Saan doesn't reccomend it. It gave her mild breathing problems for about fifteen minutes, and a sore throat.
Next stop on the Saturday Morning (Saan got up at the ungodly hour of 5.45 AM) Tour: pick up mom and sis and ride to Ikea for breakfast and a book case for Saan's desk. They had the book case, had the possibility of doors in it, but didn't have the case in stock. Saan did get a new laptop case (solid and bright orange, so she doesn't trip over it after a nap when she's looking for her glasses) and ice cream.
A.S. Adventure was next, where they hoped to find khaki Crocs (the Mary Janes model) for Saan's sister, for shoes for her Confirmation. Turns out the Mary Janes aren't made in khaki. So in church, among the insanely expensive shoes, there will be found one pair of Beach Crocs in khaki (which still need to be bought, because they're cheaper elsewhere for the smaller sizes). Saan's sis loves that model Crocs. She already has two pairs. So, in an attempt at decoration, Saan's sis will probably get Jibbitz. First, she'll get one to test if the things don't make the shoes uncomfortable (if you only have a matching color in ghastly but comfortable shoes, decoration should not get in the way of comfort. It's a rule somewhere, really.), and if they don't cause problems, Saan's parents will probably find a friend of a friend who lives in the States and is willing to lend their address and send through two sets of the things to Belgium. Saan did get Crocs (hurrah for being a big girl) in the nifty new turquoise color. She's been wearing them ever since the end of the shopping trip and loooooves them. After a day of higher heels, or hiking boots, they're heaven to your feet. They are, by looks, pug-ugly. Only nurses and kids can sort of pull off the look. If you're looking for neutral colors, you get dirty colors. The other option is eye-stabbing bright. Saan will not be tripping over her lazy home-shoes this summer. She also fit rain boots of the same brand, but those weren't comfortable. And a bit too pink for Saan's tastes.
The car drove on and brought them to the Big Shower Store With Free Hot Beverages, Water and Pencils. Saan and her sis got bored, made a sign saying 'All Good Kids Wait For Their Mommy Here' in two different languages and dropped it on a random bench in the store. Then they went to the coffee-tea-cocoa-empty cup-machine, where Saan pushed a button that she should have figured out before pushing. '+ Fort'. Stronger. It was the '+ Lait', 'With Milk' option above it that threw her. Saan's French is there, just slow. Hot Chocolate, Extra Chocolate-y. 'Twas yummy. Saan's sis discovered how to work the water tower-thingy while Saan tried to pry out her cup without burning herself or spilling anything, which she managed after a while. When they left, the sign was still there.
Moving on, there was a store where Saan got cookies (and should have gotten decent shoes. She didn't get those, because Saan has gotten even pickier around shoes since her several days of agony over what actually was less than a square centimeter of body.) and her mom got corrector-ribbon-mice-thingies and an inflatable mattress. Quick visit.
At this point, Saan put on her Crocs. They did the Saturday Afternoon Horror Tour of Saan's hometown, which amounts to trying to find a parking place. Saan got new glasses for her glasses, de-mirrored and thinned. After a while, she got used to seeing everything focused properly again through both eyes. A quick stop in another store earned Saan the first 'Oh my GOD what the FUCK has taken over her FEET?!' stare that is something you get for free after forking over a saffron yellow bill and getting a red one in return, along with the shoes. Saan always thought they are ugly, they still are ugly, but she can feel her feet and knees and ankles for the first time in a week, in a good way. Eye-stabbing turquoise brings a cheerful note of color to life, and the shoes bring feet back to life. Beauty can go hang itself.
Okay, so now you are reading the writings of one proud Saan. She finished her own version of Lupus in Tabula, including background, rules of play and quick sneak peek sheet for the game master. She's still not completely happy with the citizens, but the whole looks nifty for the moment. It'll probably look a whole lot less nifty during the process of going from 6 pages of paper to 24 plastic cards, but Saan's not complaining yet. She still needs to find a bag or box for it (cards will be about eight by eight centimetres) and find a few people (at least six players needed) to play it with on the train, too.
Her homework got finished, her test went pretty well. She still needs to do her Latin translation and type a few lines on detoxication from drugs. And her classmates (Saan really, really, really didn't do anything wrong) earned the entire class a test on a lesson they didn't see by next week. Saan still thinks the teacher had every right to do it. Talking, studying for other subjects, listening to music,... Fifty minutes per week of attention is all the man asks. It's not even hard, if you listen. Looking vaguely interested is far less tiring than gossiping with your neighbour. Own fault, and Saan knows what the lesson was about because she was the only one who asked. Probably the only one who heard, too.
She'll probably be going under the scanner tomorrow morning, unless the scanner-people veto that plan on the grounds of a small scrap of metal being glued to Saan's lower front teeth.
Okay, so Saan sort of kick-started herself into realising that her trip to London is fast approaching. And that she hasn't got the money to buy Lupus in Tabula with her own money. So today she spent her time which she should have spent studying, looking up pictures for her own version of the game. She's still looking for citizens, a leader and the roles of each player as she types. After that, she'll finish her homework. Promise.
Or so goes the most useless and addictive song in the universe. For eight whole minutes. Over and over. All ride long on every summer trip. Saan needs to get more events in her life to fill in the title of her posts.
Nothing much happened today. Her homework didn't give her trouble, her attempt at total city domination on the Sims 2 is taking shape and going well, nothing much botherting her. Only her writing is going a bit slowly because she's actually putting a whole lot of effort in it for once. Words won't come out the way she wants to. She knows where she wants to go, but it's difficult to get there. Give it some time and it'll come.
Her watch's strap has developed a most unsightly case of dried-in sweat. Flaky, dusty, brownish spots all round. It's icky. Her spare strap has gone AWOL, leaving Saan stuck with the original first, which suffered through the worst years the watch ever saw. Paint, bricks, tears, snot, heat waves, nerves, you name it, the thing has lived through it. There are reasons why Saan's watches are always delivered with certificates of being shock-, dust- and water-proof.
And Saan is still feeling compleeeeetely relaxed from her shower.
Saan's pc is falling back into its bad habits of running stuck. So now Saan is working with relatively safe applications, anti-virus wide open. The reason why Saan isn't whining at her brother's room at this very moment is her promise to H. to post the weekend's photographic evidence on the web. Photobucket seems a bit dodgy (Dodgy as in Saan logging in and the words 'Behold the monster you've created' looming up at the horizon), so Saan has dug up her old Webshots account to make a neat, chronological photo album of the pictures that are somewhat decent. Sadly enough, the site's slow to its lazy-ass/paranoid/install-un-savvy users and now Saan is stuck uploading 20 pictures at a time, at snail-paced speeds. Which should give Saan time to re-figure out how the site works. Hear the rusty wheels churn.
Upbeat news: Saan's meds are slowly dwindling to the point where she doesn't have to choreograph her entire eating pattern to it. Yay.
Saan had a bit of a sucky day. She forgot her keys, which meant she couldn't get into her locker. She had a free hour of studying, which she had to spend next to her classmates. Result: a headache until now, dead tired and her good mood, which had held up quite well until then, down the drain. And now her mother insists on mussing up Saan's hair every time she passes her, as if it doesn't get greasy fast enough as it is.
Saan has a post, and a great time, but the pc ate the post. You'll have to get by with a very short version.
Okay so Saan: -Had the best camp-like experience of her life. No exaggeration. The eclipse and the planetarium were awesome, as was the company and the mood. -Slept in her clothes and didn't mind. She went to bed at three, decided to consider sleep at four am and was out of bed and wide awake by half past seven this morning. She slept from two to five pm at home. -Sat in a car that smelled of sick, because her dad was kind enough to ship two girls from Saan's group to the Louvain train station. Accidents happen. It'll pass, and the girls got home. No problem. -Loved everything about the complex she stayed the night at, except the fact that the sheets were a bit funky, the cupboards loomed above your head with sharp corners and the heating system was too complex to figure out. And the toilets were tricky to find. -Walked four, maybe five miles at night without having her toe act up. Good walking shoes and a flash light had a lot to do with that. One of the boys fell. A lot. At one point, sharply and deep. Saan could stand and move without handholds, but the guy kept slipping. It was sort of terrifying to realise someone (by all means able-bodied and walking straight behind the guide) can be worse at walking than Saan, whose eyes need a lot of light to see clearly, who had dirty glasses, whose toe was still a bit tender from having the dead skin removed and who was making minor changes to the path chosen by the guide. -Played Lupus in Tabula and (like always with these games) never got suspected of anything until the later parts of the game. Having no clue what you're doing and letting it show, without being obvious about the fact that you're not the bad guy (one girl had that problem. She, strangely enough, always got picked off as one of the first three), seems to be a key to surviving in the game. Half of the time, Saan was chuckling evilly or randomly, insistently pointing at people (who were looking the other way) and still it went "I'm going for... Well, she's going 'Jesus, this is so exciting... Man, I'm not it and I'm gonna DIE... I have no idea who it is, the suspense is killing me!' in a way no one can fake without winning an Oscar. Let's kill her."-"YEAH!". Number of actually motivated accusations by Saan in four hours of play: one. -Managed to drink from a bottle without spilling half of it down her lap. And sleep without gelling her eye shut (in the afternoon). Progress! -Got branded as ungrateful for not wanting, needing or accepting the eye mask she had stated she didn't want or need and had said would not help her sleeping problem. She didn't mind, because she didn't do anything wrong. -Ate vol au vent with her french fries tonight -Rediscovered her old black ankle boots. They still fit perfectly, better than her running shoes, still feel great and probably still eat all laces for breakfast. -Got a tad mad at her pc for making the internet act up. -Was very happy, because she really did have a great time. Spring break, late and short, but spring break nonetheless.
Saan is now officially done with her homework, chores and packing. She discovered everything she needed to know. She's on schedule with her meds. She told her dad where he has to be tomorrow morning. She does not look like a five-year old on a midwinter school trip any more.
And seeing that she still has more than forty minutes to eat a quick bowl of soup (with cream cheese and microwaved warmth) before she has to leave, she's quickly making a short post on the blog. ... Her bag still looks as though she'll be camping out in a blizzard instead of taking a nighttime hike in a forest, though.
Whoops. Half past nine already. Where did Saan's afternoon go off to? One minute she's napping, the next it's dark outside. And she was planning on for once breaking her Friday-ly habit of not doing any homework, under the prospect of having to get up early and do it on a Saturday morning.
She'll be going to watch the lunar eclipse tomorrow evening, but she has to leave in mid-afternoon, so she'll miss out on her usual homework time. And her mom was going to go look for a new lamp for Saan's room with Saan. And Saan still has to pack her overnight bag! And figure out how the camera works at night! (If H. is reading this: only found the 1 GB card. Should also do the trick.) And do her chemistry and Latin homework!
Okay, so Saan's good at procrastination. It's fun to do, seeing as she can work efficiently under pressure and relax fully when not under pressure. One of the bad things about it is that, about the minute before she actually gets her ass in gear, the work just sort of looms up in front of her like a miniature Mt. Everest. Which Saan has to scale with just dental floss and a handful of popsicle sticks. Please excuse her as she starts climbing.
If there's no post tomorrow, there will be one on Sunday.
...She got to shower today. Which means she got to wash her own hair, and scrape some of the caked-on disinfectant from her toe and didn't have to turn all wrinkly to get clean. After two weeks, that's pretty much heaven. ...She finished her paper on Euripides. Which means she's now officially released from all horny women tearing men and cattle limb from limb. Women of Troy got replaced by the Bacchants. ...She's going on another trip with Li'll Miss H. No butterflies. ...She might get a small gift in the mail one of these days. Might. Gifts are always fun. ...She might go to sleep before 11 pm for the second night in a row. Woohoo. ...Her face is slowly starting to hand back the full control to Saan. Slowly.
...where you're serving as a weight for someone scaling a wall? Saan usually takes that position in favor of dangling three feet above the ground, scrambling for a foothold. At the time itself, everything's straining at your body and you just want the person on the other end to move. Saan actually managed a teensy-weensy nap today, at noon. Consequence: headache for an hour, pissy mood and now she's less tired than she should be. Her hair cut got reduced from short layers to a shortish... something. It looks a little like a more mature version of Saan's portrait at five years old. Minus the red bow in her hair. Saan's betting it'll look like it did this morning (only shorter) after a night of kicking the sheets around. But until then, she's gonna enjoy the fact that the hair dresser (albeit with too much products and blow dryers) managed to get her hair flat, soft and managable. And finish her Latin homework.
Okay, so the really, really worst thing that happened today was the hour where Saan believed herself to have murdered her brother's thick sock with isobetadine wraps. The music is gone because Saan's got a headache which is not passing for the next few days. She managed to get her homework done, and her +dozen pages of 'Women of Troy' tied together. The fact that it took her hours to do those three small things is irrelevant. Tomorrow, Saan is continuing her quest to find a hair dresser's that is not infested by five-year olds gaping away at Disney DVD's. And going to the Oxfam shop. She's dead tired and her eyes are light-sensitive, but school is trudging on mercilessly with presentations, tests and assignments. The doctor hinted at keeping Saan at home. Saan sees the point, but it's either struggling through exhaustion now, or dying of too much work later. Or being accused once again of 'not participating in group work' because she's sick or someone sends her last-minute mails when Saan's getting her eye gelled shut so her coronas won't dry out. Which probably makes Saan anti-social. Not so bad. She'll get social when she's not risking her eye-sight or the muscle functions in the right side of her face in favor of jumping through hoops for a gang of ungrateful teenagers. And now she's going to gel her eye shut and catch some sleep.
Okay, so it's probably just a combination of lack of sleep, irritated eyes, cortisones and PMS more than just bad karma these last few days, but Saan is sort of dragging herself out of the abyss of self-pity. Or trying to. Really. The eye-gel and -drops are doing a lot of work (apart from in the middle of the night, when Saan longs desperately to un-stick her eyelashes with some cold water) and she has to take a whole half yucky-tablet less.
Her two little oral excercises today sucked, even though she really had practised them. No one believed that one since she was mumbling and losing track of her lines. Fuck them. Saan couldn't care less about school at the moment, however important that might be in later life. Eye-sight and a functioning face seem more important than rattling off a text she doesn't give a shit about. Some French guy made money by letting a gay guy die of cancer on screen (or playing it out anyway) and some British teenage twerp raped 'Cinderella' into snobby spoilt-bitch play. Any comments made by Saan are ignored or sneered at, so Saan is fully planning on not doing a single thing for them any more. They want to walk over something, let them spend some money on a doormat.
But at least she didn't feel like crying and burying herself under her pink playbunny-covers or hitting someone in the face for the entire day. Just the first eighty percent of the day. And the doctor (the nice, half-hour ride doctor) proclaimed Saan's face to have 95% chances of healing. Apparently, pareses are more worrying as you grow older. Seventeen is a youthful, recovering age. Saan has also been proclaimed not fat and not tiny, with a nice and stable weight. And free of breast cancer. With a healthy liver. And lungs. And blood pressure. And the stitches are out of Saan's toe. The toe stings again, and she still can't shower, but she's been excused from soccer for an entire month and the bloody stiff wires are out. Hurrah!
1. Saan's medication seems to effectively disable all effects of the pill. Saan's PMS returns with a vengeance. 2. Saan will be in London in 5 weeks. She has no bank card. 3. There's a diner named 'Philou' in Scherpenheuvel. 4. Nikon has a few taglines that seem to go towards honesty when promoting their cameras. Example: 'The greatest pictures you'll ever take without knowing what the heck you're doing.' for their new D50 digital SLR 5. Saan's homework will take her well into the night. And she does not sleep well these days. 6. Lack of sleep seems dangerous when there's sciences among her subjects tomorrow.
Okay, so Saan was planning on doing a post yesterday. Really. Right after typing out her medication schedule. But then she got frustrated with her new MS Word's total and utter lack of fonts. So now she has all sorts of things no one really needs (and a few she needs to remove because they have one letter that works and no more); a few cute ones that tend to turn into Arial, lots of flowing, handwritten-like scripts, warped up and down things, backward typewriters and a few half-way decent ones. Getting them all to work took a while. Next she spent half an hour waiting for her dad to get ready to go to the book fair, for which a few cousins had invited themselves. So what was meant to be a quick stop 'n' drop of forgotten jackets and shoes turned into another half hour to round up three girls and two cell phones. They spent until closing time at the book fair. Saan's booty: one manga volume, two novels, a clip-on reading lamp and a tiny, tiny pocket book. By then it was nine pm and Saan hadn't eaten yet.The next hour and half was spent de-virusing another cousin's pc, whose anti-virus had upped it and died, and looking at the insanely expensive electric trains of the first male cousin of the evening. On her way home, Saan got herself some dinner. At home, there was the small celebration of her parents' 28th wedding anniversary. By the time that was over, it was more than time for bed for Saan.
Neurologist proclaimed Saan's paresis (Look it! Name!) caused most probably by her little flu attack of last week. The right facial nerve (Which is situated in a tight little bone canal behind the ear. You've got one on each side) got infected and cut off its own blood flow when it swelled up. Normally, 70% of the people who come across this problem find that it cures itself. The doctor thought 30% was too big a risk for a 'young woman' to be what amounts to disfigured for life, and prescribed (again) an intensive but short treatment, this time with cortisones, a type of steroid usually found and produced in the body itself. Adding more of it to what her body is producing on its own may have nasty side effects, both outward (like, general swelling of the body) as well as inward (like, your immune system being suppressed). Saan is really hoping she won't get any of those. The treatment pushes back the risk of the paresis being permanent to fifteen percent at most, five at least.
On the tiny, tiny chance that she did not induce swelling of the nerve through infection, but through brain damage, Saan received a brain-activity scan and will receive a scan of her entire skull later. Her registered brain activity was perfectly normal, despite what some people might think after reading some of the fatigue-induced musings dumped here. The only thing she had to suffer through was being poked in the head (but not pierced, luckily) by a needle in the head and have conducting gel smeared through her hair. Imagine how smug Saan felt after being scolded for not taking a shower that morning or the evening before (Saan can't, since her stitches can't get wet. She'll have them removed on Monday) after that.
The treatment should help speed up the healing process. If the treatment doesn't have any effect whatsoever or the second scan shows something it normally should not, or both happen, Saan has to go back to the hospital. She did get some eye drops for the eye that won't close fully, which help, but make her eye feel cold a lot.
On a lighter note, Saan finally got to leave the house for something other than pharmacists, doctors or hospitals. She did spend most of the time in the car, reading, trying to get past the car's eco-mode and playing music on her cell phone, but it was nice all the same. Especially the restaurant afterwards. The waitress was kind enough not to make any comment or strange face when a seventeen year old requested a straw for her lemonade, while the three younger girls did not. Which limited the spillage to just the dessert. Solids go down better than anything drippy, which tends to end up on Saan's chin and face, if not her hands.
More happy news: Saan is mobile in time for THIS. It's the first time in...Four years that her dad wants to take her. Admitted, all books there are cheaper than most worthwile sized drinks in a cinema. Saan should not have managed to chase the price up to fifty euros all (or pretty much, anyway) by herself. She did. Her mom freaked. Her dad was surprised when he saw the bottom line of Saan's little rampage and proclaimed in the car that he would never, ever take her again. Ever. Apparently, he thinks Saan has matured enough for her to choose a little. Sadly enough, Saan doubts it.
