had already published the previous post and was wondering sth was missing. and i realised is this: the manys and manys of people who extended their well-wishes. sometimes (or most of the times for the really suay peoples), shit happens. and the only thing that is certain regardless of who you are, shit still happens. shit doesn't look at your face one day and decides you are not worthy enough to be shitted on. so, shit is fair.

however, bad things dun always come alone. it comes in a package. it comes along with an accessory. and that accessory is sometimes not so obvious. but if you do notice the accessory package that comes with it, the bad things things may not seem too bad after all. one of these 'accessories', will be the well-wishes of your friends and relatives. that, i'd prefer to see it more as a pseudo-accessory. becomes good things are never too small. no matter how loner you thot you were, you'd be surprised at how many ppl will come forward and ask you a simple, yet profound question of great significance: how are you. it makes a 'blind' person 'see' things in a whole new perspective.

honestly man, that morning b4 i went to sch on fri, i felt really helpless as i was alone and my parents would only be back till this sunday and so i had to depend on myself to survive. my RE was hurting real bad back then and i could not open my left eye for more than 5 seconds either. that made me feel vulnerable. i'd rather stayed at home but i knew i had to step out of the door and at least go for prac and let the lecturers help me check my eye. i was really on the verge of breaking down. but with all the subsequent well-wishes and anaestetics and bandage CL and reassurances from dr Sachins and Anna yeo, i'm finding myself at a better capacity to pull thru these turmoils.

so to all those dwarves and elves and humans and halflings and wizards and even orcs out there, you know who you are. thanks for just asking how am i. just to show my appreciation, i'd like to rmb these ppl who have come to know my condition and expressed their concern: ws, feilou, xiong-ge, bandrew, xt, qh, carl jung, hui, lingz, partner, ms yeo (who laid down her tons of work to accompany me dat day at ah), burden chua, kiat wee (for asking me if i could still run for poly 50), raymond geh, haishan, paul, small des, aikleng (for 80% laughing over the phone, and only 20% really asking how was i), layhoon, dr zhu (for asking me why i came to her lecture only when she finished... well ok, she din know i nubshitted my own eyes den...), cheri, the nurses at ah (for asking: are you the harry potter guy?), chris (for telling anna yeo abt me after he heard it from xt), jess (who just msn-ed me b4 i was to publish this post), szeyee and many others who had (and i had forgotten) and who are to come. i thank God for all of 'em.

sure to hear another genre of 'concern' when my folks come back from korea this sunday. any good places to buy earplugs anyone?

my folks have gone to korea and it is home alone! while i thot finally i can try to be home late without any qualms, i was only half right. while the whole week was spent uneventfully, though it should have been given the absence of my parents, i spent my days trying to finish my reports and going for swimming with kaiyuan. on thurs, i finally got to go out with the BOA party for dinner and movie subsequently.

this is the pic that i deliberately took to document my one week old gucci sunglasses. it was taken b4 the dinner and xiong ge had his shang fang bao jian which he kindly stewarded for andrew i think. den we finally got to eat at the Phin's steak house which we'd passed by countless times for our ah chew's supper meetings. the doneness of the meat was up to my expectations and you could almost taste the medium-rare meat like the cow was just grazing the New Zealand pastures 5 min ago. i'm not really good at discerning freshness. but if you were to ask me, i'd say this is it. and the wild mushroom sauce was a pleasant surprise. its thick yellowish graving doesn't look all too flattering but a touch of it on your tastebuds and it'd bring you back to Fangorn (the hometown of Treebeard just at the backyard of Saruman's tower aka Isengard in LOTR. you can really TASTE mushrooms and it really doesn't taste like it's been processed at all. if they did, they really preserved the original flavour really well.


after huimin nice pang seh, huiling, yuntheng, siong-ge, andrew and i went for the harry potter, the haLf blood prince movie. perhaps being forewarned more than enough times of the sleep-inducing potency of the show (must be one of the spells...), i tried to keep my ears open for the storylines instead of anticipating any actions. and perhaps that was the reason which caused me to have an extreme low threshold to any actions-cum-suspense-cum-frightful scenes.

at the scene where bumbledor (forgive me if the spelling is wrong) brought frodo, oh erm... harry (dun you think he looks a little like frodo?) to collect fordomor's spirit item thingy inside this wrong-looking cave, when bumbledor just finished drinking the moquitoe larvae infested drink, i was compelled to place my hands close to my face as a promising scary scene is impending. then when those Smeagol-looking things came and grasped harry, i poked my finger into my right eye and cut my cornea. the immediate feeling was that of an everted eyelid. then the next thing i knew was that i was lacrimating non-stop. serious. it was so much that i felt dehydrated when i reached home. these happened on thurs. i had to act like a kung-fu master on the cab ride home and even direct the taxi-driver which route to take with my eyes closed most of the time. he would have missed the expressway exit had i not opend my eyes in time! scary...

then the next day, which was fri, i decided to skip dear Zhu's lesson and went in late when she just finished her lecture. wanted to return some notes to ailing and xt thought i purposely went back to let everybody see my eyes... erm, and that's the last thing i would have wanted to do actually. haha!

den i went to spoc and iryn happened to to be the one to be available at that point in time and checked my eyes. she took less than a minute on the SLE and decided that she dun want to seen me anymore but to go straight to A&E. honestly man, i'd have been devastateded to hear her say this under normal circumstances... but her sense of urgency really woke me up from my false optimism that only my eyelids were affected. so i called sihui to ask if she could be my eyes and bring me to hospital, since we were supposed to go oob to collect our cert at 4pm. i was surprised when the other gals turned up at mac where i was waiting for sihui. and xt even offered to drive me der. i was so relieved and really appreciated her doing so. cld really save me the trouble of getting a cab!

when i reached alexandra hospital, i actually wanted to take a pic of myself on the wheelchair. but decided it was too morbid so... maybe not. then anna yeo called me and wanted to accompany me to the eye clinic if the MO at the A&E decided it was serious enough for me to go and see the ophthal. i was really grateful that she got to know of my condition and called me. it's great having someone to accompany me (since sihui and xt had to go back for prac) and not blind my way around, and even better if that someone is an experienced optom with loads of connections in the eye clinic.

after a round of diagnosis by dr sachins, a cornea expert, and ms anna yeo, they decided that it's a sterile corneal abrasion that din hit the stroma. but they weren't sure if the BM were affected. if it was, it could cause recurrent epithelial erosion and the doc would have to do puncturing to deliberate scars to protect my cornea. this could only be done of the injury was off axis. if it's along the visual axis, it would be really tricky. after their descrition of my cornea, this is the one pic i found closest to their desrictions: a patch of staining paracentral to the corneal.



i had wanted to post a pic of my own eyes on the blog and realised better not... apart from the sapphire iris and high nose bridge, this is exactly wad i see in the mirror (ok... kamen... pls stop thinking about other things...): hyperemic conjunctiva, ipsilateral ptosis, and mild lid edema on the right eye.



and this is exactly wad i see when i compare my right eye (the problematic one)and left eye (the good one). in fact, my right eye is a little worse than that shown on the left. hope God will heal me and teach me how to appreciate good vision with 2 eyes... i want my stereopsis back!!!

it's been a really long time it seems since i last blogged. i think mainly because it's my reluctance to go through the hassle of plugging in my LG handphone to import the pics into the LG software installed into my laggy laptop. and also becos i have no confidence in my literary skills and decided it's better i distract you guys with the pics instead. grumble grumble... ok that's all side track.

anyways if that's the excuse for not blogging, i've run out of it. cos the pics you're going to see are exported directly from the lab com that's attached to the slit-lamp directly. this should help you guys see the structures better.

anyway gonioscopy is a way of assessing the anterior chamber depth quantitatively as you can see exactly the different structures as far as the AC depth allows us to see. some crash course for beginners: the more the structures of the eyes seen, the more open the angle it is, and therefore better. which mean liquid which is constantly being replenished in the eye can be diffused exteriorly, maintaining a balanced intraocular pressure.

but the lesser structures we can see, the worst it is. means the angle (ie the drainage system) is closed. that sucks. means you're refilling water into a balloon non-stop and the pressure just keeps going up. the pressure has no where else to go and so it just has to push backwards on the back of the eye: optic nerve head. which basically is the cause of acute angle closure glaucoma.

the pics below are some of those i had taken on peiyik's eyes. of course, 0.5% of proparacaine has to be instilled first before all these torture can take place.

using a 2-mirror gonio lens, the image on the right is in fact a mirror image on the left part of the eye. means if this is the left eye, then i'm actually looking at the nasal part. we are only interested in the 1st white band from the left of the pic. but if we look close enough at the white band, from the left, we can see a hint of greyish band which shows the ciliary body. this is followed by a really ambiguous streak of brighter white line which counts for the scleral spur. the adjacent brown, pigemented region which is the trabecular meshwork. and the white part is the scwhalbe's line. if you see the ciliary body, it means you've got great angle of grade 4. if you see only the scwalbe's line or nth at all, you're in grace danger, my apprentice.


another shot of the same thing, same place


reflected part of the superior angle


inferior


temporal


*bear in mind that these pics are on the left eye.

there's something that i have been praying about for a long time. and i think it takes more than believing for it to happen. it requires faith, and actions. of course, not without the will of the great Buddy up there.

many times i have tried to give up, but many times He gave me hope. every time i look into the night sky, i know hope is still alive. Lord, if it is Your will, please let it be done!