Prep for tomorrow - 300th Post!

This morning we walked FRIM as usual. Sonja and I did the canopy part while Julia walked the flat path and waited for us at the waterfall. After breakfast at Blue Cow, we did a bit of shopping in Plaza Damas (where my visa card was eaten by an ATM machine!) and then headed home.

I had a quick shower and walked over to KLCC in time for my dermatologists appointment at 12. My wart had come back so he froze it again and I also asked him about the scars on my leg from the folliculitis. He gave me some cream for them and asked me to come back in two weeks. I made nail appointments for Tara and I for Saturday, did a bit of shopping (I bought some jeans and a handbag) before walking home.

Back at home, I text Sonja and she came over to help me cook some things for tomorrow's morning tea. We made mini quiches (smoked salmon, dill, camembert and caramlised onion with rosemary and goats cheese), scones (both plain and fruit) and also a zucchini loaf. It was great having Sonja there as it definitely took less time!

We were supposed to have a golf lesson tonight but Ross wasn't feeling well and I was pretty tired from everything to day so we changed it to tomorrow and ordered a pizza from California Pizza Kitchen. We spent the rest of the night on the couch watching mindless TV.

Dad's Birthday!

This morning I headed to the doctor to have them look at the infection on my leg again. I was a bit worried that my ankle and foot had now started to swell. I was called into a consultation room by an intern and once we got chatting, I realised that she was Malaysian. Her family live in Bangsar although she has lived in Aus for 7 years - small world!

She called a doctor in to take a look and he told me that my current antibiotics are probably doing the job and my body is starting to take over the recovery but just in case, they will take a swab of the pussy bits and send it off to the lab to see if the bug is resistant to my current antibiotics. If so, they will prescribe me a different type when I call back on Friday for the results.

I must admit that my leg is looking better. The pustules are now mainly scabs and are on their way to healing but my main concern is scarring so I think I will try and find some anti-scar cream tomorrow.

From the doctor I drove over to Kate's place to meet up for some shopping. She wasn't quite ready so I helped myself to some breakfast while she dried her hair. We drove down to Burnside Village and walked straight into one of my favourite little boutiques. I walked out of there with 2 tops and 2 pairs of earrings! Kate wanted to buy some more shoes seeing as Whistler the guide dog puppy had chewed up a few of hers. We looked in a few shoe stores and I walked out with a pair of flat black "ballet" shoes but they were made of fine mesh and so comfortable I thought they would be great for KL. Kate picked up a pair of pale gold sandals and some pink slip on shoes. In another store, I found the most comfortable slip on sandals in a white and tan colour. Kind of like Birkenstocks I guess. I figure they will be good for walking around KL.

From shoes we headed to Peter Alexander to look at PJs. I wanted to buy some slippers for Dad's place and I also found a great pair of PJ pants with wide legs in pink and aqua stripes and a matching racer back tank top.

After all our shopping, it was time to go and pick Luke up from tennis. We grabbed him and headed back to Burnside Village for lunch. We had sushi and a coffee before doing a quick bit more shopping - I needed to get a card and cake for Dad's birthday. I ended up buying a little apple pie - yum!

I dropped Kate and Luke off at home and drove over to the Tower Hotel to meet Dad and his mate. I couldn't find him in the pub and when I rang he was just leaving the carpark! So I pretty much followed him home.

We spent the afternoon relaxing. Dad had a nap while I messed about on the computer trying to get his iTunes up to date and catching up on my blog. About 6 we headed out to the Maylands pub for a drink and dinner. Stan and Kate had taken me to this hotel last time I was in town. It has been beautifully renovated and we enjoyed a beer at the front bar before heading to the dining room.

We ordered a glass of wine each and our meals. When they came they were huge! I had lamb mignon with roast potatoes and dad had veal scallopine in a white wine and cream sauce. I ate as much as I could but I still had a half fillet of lamb left which I asked to take home. We ordered some coffees and chatted for a while before heading home about 8.30. It was a really nice night and great food!

At home, I stayed up for about half an hour before heading to bed - I was exhausted!

A pretty mundane day

I woke up around 9 this morning and organized the house so it was ready for the cleaners to come in this afternoon. I caught up on things online, had a quick shower, then drove to KLCC in time for my check-up with Dr. Guru. He took the dressing off the wound and was quite happy with how the wound is healing. He also said that there is no need to continue with the freezing. I just have to keep the wound clean and not go swimming for a week to allow a scab to form. I am happy that this is over and done with!

I rang Ross on my way out of KLCC and picked him up for lunch. We drove to Great Eastern and had lunch at O'Briens - a good sandwich place. Ross also dropped into the tailor and picked up his pants that he had made and a shirt that he had altered. We picked up a Starbucks and I dropped Ross back at work.

From there I headed out to Mid Valley mall to look for tank tops and a T-shirt for Ross. We are going to make tour T-shirts for our road trip up the WA coast so Elyse, Dee, Ross and I will look like the Wiggles in our brightly coloured matching shirts. I will iron on the logo this weekend.

I drove home in the rain and got in about 3. I spent the afternoon on the bed watching TV with the cats until Ross got home at 6. We made gourmet pizzas for dinner (although we had to ask Brian if we could cook them in his oven as ours stopped working!) and I whipped up a batch of Pina Coladas (see photo) in time to watch the AFL. A lazy Friday night.

We were supposed to have a golf lesson tonight but it has been changed to Sunday. Probably a good thing as it will give my foot an extra couple of days to recover.

Golf and Guru

This morning I woke up with Ross and headed off for golf lessons at Titiwangsa at 8am. I bought myself a bucket of 100 balls, did some warm up stretches and started to hit some balls. I could already tell today was not going to be my day on the driving range!

Rimma arrived about 8.30am and there was still no sign of Mr. Aro our coach. Rimma asked the man behind the desk to call him and find out where he was. Aro finally arrived at 9 - an hour after he was supposed to. This already put in bad mood as I hate waiting for people and wasting my time.

Anyway, we started as usual with him taking one of us and hitting some balls. Today I was having a shocker and really only hit about 10% of the balls correctly. Aro was frustrating me too by telling to change one little thing each time - it was all too much to think about without enough time to practice in between.

Rimma was also frustrated but she was doing better than me. I was watching the way that Aro was teaching Rimma and it was completely different from the way that Eric teaches at KDE. Her arms were bent on her back swing and he was asking her to pull the club back until it was parallel with the ground. With me, he was asking me to 'throw' the club at the practice mat rather than work on a smooth swing. In the end I just hit ball after ball not really listening to him as he was really starting to piss me off.

After our 'lesson' Rimma and I both agreed that he was a real pain today. I know I won't be continuing with him in the future and will just stick with Eric. I think being taught by two different coaches was not a good idea to start with. Now I have to try and remember the way that Eric was getting me to swing last week in time for our lesson on Friday. Ross is going to join me so it should be fun.

So after a bit of a frustrating moring at the driving range, I went home, jumped in for a quick shower and walked to KLCC in time for my appointment with Dr. Guru. On the way to the clinic, I picked up breakfast which I drank and ate while waiting for my appointment. I didn't have to wait too long today, about 15 minutes, before Dr. Guru called me to look at my wart again.

He said that we could continue freezing it but it would take at least another 3 or 4 sessions or he could cut it out today. I thought about it for a bit and despite the inconvenience of having to stop going to the gym or swim for a week, I decided that it is probably best to cut the bloody thing out and get it over and done with.

I went back outside while they prepared the stuff they would need and then was shown back in. Dr. Guru cleaned up the area then sprayed some really cold spray on my foot to take my mind off the pain of the local anaesthetic. Yep, that didn't work too well - it hurt like hell!

Once the anaesthetic kicked in, he used a thermal cutter to cut around the wart to remove it. The first cut he made really hurt as I could still feel the heat but after that it got a bit better although it was a really weird sensation and I wanted to keep pulling my foot away. The smell was awful too! In about 15 minutes he had removed all that he could but said that I would probably still need more cryotherapy to remove the last of it as it was really deep. They bandaged me up and sent me on me way with a bill for 1000 RM. Not bad for 20 minutes work!

Now I have to keep the dressing on until Friday when he will remove it. I am a bit pissed off that I have to slow down on the exercise but I guess one week isn't too much to ask. Actually it will take 1 week for a scab to form and then I will need to be careful after that. I just hope it is all fixed by the time we go to WA in July as I want to be swimming every day :-).

After visiting Dr. Guru, I walked around KLCC for a while. I bought a three tiered tray in preparation for the inevitable ladies morning tea that I will host at some point I'm sure and also did a quick bit of shopping before hobbling back to the apartment. The photo today is of the Taj Mahal... made out of Lego which was on display in KLCC.

At home I had some lunch and spent the after noon on the computer catching up on things and also finally finishing the iTunes library - YIPPEE!! So now I can synchronize my iPod again. I also downloaded some new music to add.

Ross came home about 7 and we had tomato, tuna and olive pasta for dinner. After dinner, I tried to catch up on all the medical claims that I have had over the past few months. I will have to spend more time tomorrow submitting 5 outstanding claims to BUPA to be reimbursed. But the main thing is that they will cover it.

Ross and I both feel into bed about 10pm exhausted.

Doctors and dentists

This morning started with a golf lesson at Titiwangsa. Letty walked from her condo next door at Park 7 to Stonor and I picked her up to go to the driving range.

We arrived a bit before our lesson was due to start at 8am. We bought a bucket of balls and I had a bit of a hit before the instructor arrived.

We did some warm-ups before practicing our swings again. I was starting to get the hang of the full swing now. We took it in turns to hit about 15 balls each. Rimma was doing really well and although she didn't hit the balls too far, they were always dead straight. I was hitting pretty far (around 100m) and mostly straight with a few errant balls every now and then. Letty was a little more inconsistent but was definitely getting the hang of it by the end.

After hitting 200 balls between us, I was completely exhausted! I think that hitting balls on driving range yesterday was perhaps not the best idea as my body was already sore. Last week, I bought a glove so my hands wouldn't get so sore but because I have "man hands", I could not find a glove to fit my right hand and so ended up with a burst blister on my thumb after just a few swings. Who knew golf could be so painful! :-)

At the end of the lesson, I dropped Letty back and had a quick shower before driving to KLCC - I was too exhausted to walk! I had my second appointment with the dermatologist to get rid of this wart on my foot. He cut away the dead skin from the freezing last week and froze it some more. He didn't seem too confident that it would clear up by freezing alone so it looks like he may have to cut it out next week if there is not much improvement. I'm not looking forward to that as it is really deep and I don't really want to have to stay off my foot for any length of time. Anyway I guess we'll see how it goes.

I had to wait an hour before getting in to see Dr. Guru (love the name) and by the time I hobbled out of his office it was already 1pm - the time I was supposed to be at the dentist at Mont Kiara. Of course, I had left my phone at home so I couldn't even call them to tell them I would be late so I arrived half an hour late to find Dr. Sharifa in the front office waiting for me.

She didn't seem too fussed that I was late and we chatted about my foot for a while. Some how we got talking about the gym and she said that the latest research shows that you shouldn't drink sports drinks straight after exercise because you have only a small amount of saliva to protect your teeth from the acid in the drinks. She said to wait 30 minutes before having one. I don't like sports drinks anyway but I thought that was interesting to know. She said that the sports drinks have been linked to increases in tooth decay.

Anyway, after our chit-chat, we got down to business. I had been having terrible pain on the bottom left side of my jaw and it was realy sensitive to hot and cold. I thought I must have a cavity. Dr. Sharifa took a look and showed me with the mini video camera that I actually had a split in one of my molars and that was why it was so sensitive. It was in a tooth that was already filled when I was a kid so she said that she would remove the amalgam filling and replace it was a tooth coloured filling and fill the crack also.

She gave me the dreaded local anaesthetic injections and while she waited for my mouth to go numb she gave me a scale and polish. By the time she had finished, I was drooling so I assumed the anaesthetic had kicked in! Out came the drill and away went the amalgam. She used a clamp to pull my tooth together so she could fill the crack properly. She set the filling with UV light and after some filing, I was done. All in all it took about an hour. I walked out feeling like half my head was made out of marshmallows.

By the time I got home it was 3pm. I was completely exhausted and hungry but the numbness made eating a bit of a challenge. Let's just say that my crumpets with vegemite ended up mainly on the side of my face - not a good look.

I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the couch and just woke up as Ross came home around 6. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself with a sore tooth, foot, thumb, finger and lip so Ross made me chilli con carne and then ran me a bath. The anaesthic had completely worn off by then and I had a massive headache which I also nursed with laying in the bath.

I was in bed by 8.30pm... exhausted!

Today's photo is of the lilies that I bought from Chinatown now starting to open up.