click here for my current blog! needed to get rid of the 2-commenting system.

God Luck

back at work today.

hey, anyone have a good idea on how to keep my knee dry while taking a shower? i've been duct taping (yes, duct tape is the cure-all for everything) a plastic bag to my knee, but peeling duct tape off my skin after a shower is not too pleasant.

i'm totally off crutches now. yay!

yesterday at church, my parents gave me a card from a little girl from church (who i don't think i even know. i think her parents gave it to mine). the card reads "Karen I hope you......... Get well soon! and Happy Valentine's Day! God Luck!" yes, God Luck. :) and then she drew little people and wrote "hi!" and "hello!" next to them. SO CUTE. i need to find her next week so i can thank her.

yes, call me disgusting. i have watched 31 episodes of 24 in the past three days (thurs, fri and sat), and i am finally fully caught up. of course, i probably don't remember any of it because i had no time to process everything, but at least i can watch with the rest of the world now, and not be afraid to read people's blogs in fear of spoilers (jean already did all of that for me, thanks.) couple of thoughts on 24. one, i'm tired of moles. it's totally overdone. please stop with it, it's not even surprising anymore. the other thing is president logan is an idiot. it's so painful to watch him, and all he does is blame other people for his stupidity.

i noticed that instead of going back into my old scars, the doctor cut new holes in me. that gives me a total of 9 scars on my right knee!! 5 from the first two, 3 from this last one, and 1 from elementary school when i fell at church and cut my knee so deep that i needed stitches. i now have a total of 12 scars between my left and right knees and 13 total scars from my knees and below. wow, thinking about it, i'm thankful to otherwise be healthy. thanks God.

in other news, michelle kwan dropped out of the olympics. kind of sad since this was her last chance at the gold, but i think it was a long shot for her to win it anyway.

and, aren't you glad that someone like dick cheney, who accidentally shot his hunting friend, is our vice president? kind of reminds me of the dan quayle "tomatoe" incident. ;)

i think i've set a new record. finished season 4 yesterday - so basically i watched the entire season in 2 days. season 5 will begin soon :)

the winter olympics have just started, and they're currently showing a special on all the US skiiers. i'm seriously wincing watching them go down these huge hills, and cringing when they show a skiier bail. i cannot watch skiing anymore. it makes my stomach churn. ugh.

i can get around without my crutches now, although with a big limp. bearing weight is not a problem, just range of motion is. i can't believe i have to work on my range of motion again. blah. and i won't get my stitches out for another 10 days because, yet again, i couldn't get an earlier appointment.

okay, i need to leave the house. my eyeballs need a break. and it's beautiful outside.

jean comes over while i'm watching 24.

she turns her head and looks at the tv.

jean: hey, that's the evil guy!
me: hey! i didn't KNOW THAT!
olivia: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

thanks jean.

*edit*

jean: sigh. i can't believe michelle and tony are never coming back.
me: JEAN!!! SHHHHHHHH!!!!!

jean is not allowed to talk anymore.

guess how many episodes i watched yesterday?

11. :) i was aiming for 12 except my eyes couldn't stay open any longer.

would have been more, but i didn't start until after pt & lunch, and took a three hour break when maria, joy, and andrea came over. caught glimpses of the cal-stanfurd game (maria, joy, and andrea kept making me switch the channel off the game)... go bears! nice game. cal is now in sole possesion of second place in pac-10.

no matter how late i sleep, i wake up at 7:30. for once, i don't want to wake up so early! i'm going to need a mid-afternoon nap - i stayed up pretty late watching 24.

just came back from the doctors. didn't understand a word he (not my actual doctor, but some other one) said about what they did to my knee, all i understood was that structurally everything looked good, but something about lots of inflammation and tissue in my knee and ... i don't know. the rest was over my head. i asked him some questions that he couldn't really answer since he wasn't the one who performed the surgery. great. and i don't see my actual doctor until march. it was supposed to be a month from today, except the earliest appt they had available for me was march 28! that's the one frustrating thing about going to a well-known surgeon. anyway, for now the scheduler double-booked me for early march (actually on my birthday, of all days) but he said that the appointment is not guaranteed, since i'm the second person in that time slot.

okay... more 24! more than halfway done now.

went to PT this morning. they didn't really do much, it almost felt like a waste of a PT session covered by insurance. my PT tried to do some exercises with me except my scars started bleeding, and the blood ran down my leg, onto the table i was sitting on and onto my shirt. so we stopped. fun.

why does the weather always have to be beautiful when i'm trapped indoors? it's gorgeous today. 75 degrees in the beginning of february. gotta love california.

i'm well-stocked on food, thanks to lots of people. can't wait to eat gourmet chef john's food :) my stomach was happy yesterday since i could actually hold down food and liquids. i feel totally dehydrated, though. been drinking water like a camel.

okay! back to 24! i'm starting to think i'm a little over-ambitious - trying to watch all of season 4 and the 7 hours of season 5 in the next three days. think i can do it? :) sad how the only thing i'm ambitious about in my life is watching 24. haha.

i'm alive and well...

i'm back from the hospital, alive and well ("...i'm alive and well, your Spirit is within me, because You died and rose again" - one of my favorite worship songs.) i'm super, super groggy, but not nauseous so far, praise God. they doped me up on the same anti-nausea stuff as my second surgery since I told them that was the only thing that has worked on me. so i got the patch behind my ear and four bottles into my IV, and so far, it seems to work well. although surgery was scheduled for 9:30am, i actually didn't go in until a little after 11. left around 3ish, so i don't know if my surgery took longer than expected or it took me forever to wake up. in my previous two surgeries, they shook me awake, so it was a little different waking up naturally. but it looks like the doctor just cleaned out my knee, although i don't know how much was actually in there. they gave me pictures and some videos. anyone want to see the videos? i think i'll stay away from them. want me to upload them? hehehe. maybe someone can tell what's going on in the pics/videos.

i'm pretty mobile, can bear some weight on my knee, although i teeter around since i'm so dizzy. there's still some pain, especially when i try to use my muscles (ie lifting my leg on its own) but obviously nothing compared to my first surgery. hope to shed the crutches by the end of this week. i'm supposed to start on PT tomorrow. tomorrow?? didn't expect that. i need to call and make an appt.

thanks everyone SO much for all your emails, calls, visits, soon-to-be-visits, and prayers. now... on to 24, assuming i can stay awake! YAY!

my boss took us out to dinner at alexander's tonight because he got promoted from sr. director to VP. our group also got renamed from sales operations to business operations. what change does this mean to me? nothing, except that i now report to a VP. too bad his promotion doesn't trickle down to raises for us. needless to say, though, my stomach is fully satisfied as probably my last meal for the next 24+ hours. and i have a 11:50pm "snack" for tonight. "snack" = half a prime rib. :)

tomorrow i go off to the hospital again. the surgery is set for 9:20 am, so i have to be at the hospital at 7:20am. eegads that's early, even for me. but at least my surgery is early.

it should hopefully be a minor surgery, so long as the doctor doesn't find anything funky when he goes in my knee. but i really covet your prayers, because:

-this is the third time someone is cutting open my scars and going into my knee in less than nine months. i don't know how much more intrusion my knee can handle.

-i have a really bad reaction to anesthesia. i throw up all day, even when they give me anti-nausea medicine in my iv. after the first surgery on my right knee, my stomach tried to throw up even though it was empty - no food and not even water. so i was dry-heaving pretty badly. and that prevents me from eating, drinking, or being able to take my pain medication all day. (and no, i didn't get any of those fancy ice machines or tubes that feed your knee pain medication. i was sent home with a bottle of vicodin and an ace bandage. so i really roughed it that first night with absolutely no pain killers in my body. i was in total misery. but this time should be much more minor, so it will not be anywhere near as bad as my first one.)

-i have lived with constant knee pain for a year now. i know several people have mentioned to me, "a third surgery? but you look fine, you're not limping." what most people don't know because i haven't really vocalized it is that i really am in pain. constant pain. sitting, standing, sleeping, driving, stairs, everything hurts. it's really at the point where sometimes i have to do these actions on my left leg only to remind myself what a "normal" knee should feel like. "normal" in quotes, because it's not like my left knee is 100% either. gee, you'd think i'm in my fifties or something. :)

-even though my doctor will be cleaning out my knee, the scar tissue could always grow back. it grew back with a vengeance after my second surgery, and it could grow back after this one. it's a different doctor than the one who did my first two, so hopefully it'll make some kind of a difference.

anyway, if you can remember, i'd really appreciate your prayers. even though i know to trust in God's purpose and plan for everything, i still have that little nag in the back of my head that's been hard to shake off that's filled with doubt and anxiousness that all my pain will just come back a few weeks after the surgery just like last time. thanks to everyone already for coming up to pray for me, offering to come visit and/or cook/bring me food, and for praying alongside me as i have gone through my entire knee saga this past year. i'm truly blessed.

p.s. - so long as i'm awake and not vomiting, new lost tomorrow night! usual lost crew welcome to watch with me :) maybe you guys can hold the barf bag for me. :) :) mary - NO BURRITOS ALLOWED. and i can't wait to start 24 season 4! woooohooo! bring it on.

for your pleasure

found a site that can host my videos. so without further ado... i hope jono doesn't kill me...

ever wanted to know what the real man inside of jono is like? ever wanted to hear what taiwanese sounds like? ever wanted to hear an asian man try to sing in a scottish accent? watch all of that and more!




notice how olivia was totally unfazed the entire time? unfortunately, my taiwanese is not good enough to know if jt's translations are actually accurate :)

and just for fun, a video from our spain 2005 trip at the bullring in seville. not too sure what the guys were trying to do... yeah they're kinda weird.




**note: the picture below is what joy & andrea really wanted them to do**

i was talking to sanj and somehow got on the topic of my coworker, who i know goes to the same church as her. so i ask her if she knows him, to which she says there's two people with that name at grx and that she knows one of them and gabe knows the other.

so i ask my coworker, (yes, we im each other even though our cubes look directly into each others.) and his response:

[10:57] peter: yeah there are
[10:57] peter: one is korean and smart (mit)
[10:57] me: what are you then?
[10:57] peter: one is chinese and dumb (davis)
[10:57] peter: but i do sports ministry
[10:57] peter: so i'm the athletic one
[10:57] peter: haha
[10:58] peter: he leads a redwood city small group
[10:59] me: so one's the small group leader and smart
[10:59] me: and one's the sports ministry and dumb
[10:59] me: nice
[10:59] me: love it
[10:59] me: love the stereotypes
[10:59] peter: yup
[10:59] peter: korean vs. chinese

awesome. way to propagate the stereotypes. not sure what the "korean vs. chinese" is supposed to mean though. does he mean koreans are supposed to be smarter?! i think not.

by the way, peter is taiwanese. he's one of those taiwanese who says he's chinese. apparently, his parents don't lecture him about being taiwanese like my parents do.

**
i was checking my medical claims online to make sure everything was okay. and this is what i discovered:

1) currently, my insurance denied my third MRI. crap. i hope that gets fixed. i don't know why it was denied. the forms online and the hard copies that my insurance company mails me are so disorganized, that they're impossible to decipher. i sure know i'm not going to pay that $2k, so it'd better get cleared up and fixed.
2) my physical therapist charged my insurance for a session that i paid for in full. (because i thought i had used up my 20 sessions. did i miscount somehow? good thing i have all my receipts.) they got paid by my insurance, so i want my money back. all claims after that by them were denied. and why the heck is my pt clinic trying to claim from my insurance when i paid for those sessions in full?
3) i have a freakish amount of medical claims. They show 16 claims per page online, and i have 4 pages. all from last year.
4) i really don't like our medical insurance. my company used to use united healthcare and for some reason, a few years ago, switched to great west (yeah, who?). they claim great west is better, but we know they basically went for the lowest bidder. great west has been the hugest pain to deal with - thank goodness for our HR who helps mediate because their customer service is completely incompetent. and i'm not the only one with problems, lots of my coworkers have had problems too.

but in the grand scheme of things, i shouldn't complain. i have health insurance, period. that is already a blessing. i always live in my own little bubble of a world, and then God has to pull me out of it and put things in perspective for me. it's like the Tim Keller sermon that my small group listened to on forgiving grace. we have trouble forgiving the people around us for the smallest of things - and often, though we claim we forgive them, our attitude around them (ie snapping at them, acting colder towards them, etc) really shows that we haven't. yet we've been forgiven of all our sins by Christ. always and forever. so how can we go around, forgiven of all wrongdoings we've done, yet not forgive others? Keller referenced the parable about the unmerciful servant, and i was sitting there, thinking to myself "i'm totally not that person. i never hold grudges, it's just built into my personality. i don't need a lesson on forgiveness." boy, was i wrong. wow. how's that for some perspective.

ok, if you can't tell, i'm totally just typing whatever comes to mind. not sure how i ended up on this topic from an IM conversation about two guys with the same name. haha.

mandarin vs. taiwanese

growing up, i didn't know there was a difference between mandarin and taiwanese. my parents never taught me or my brothers taiwanese (i swear the sole reason of that was so that they could communicate to each other without the kids understanding) and i was a pathetic third-grade chinese school drop-out. so all the way up to middle school, i thought it was all the same language. believe me, i was shocked when i found out that my parents were really speaking two different languages my entire life. but by high school, i could pretty much differentiate one from the other, except for foods, which i still sometimes mix up.

nowadays, it's always weird for me to hear taiwanese spoken in public - like my ears immediately perk up because it's not very common. for example, i was at target picking up yet another prescription for vicodin (i think i have a lifetime supply of that stuff from all my surgeries. come to think of it, i probably didn't need to fill this prescription. oh well, it was only $5 anyway.) and this elderly couple comes up to the counter seeking to fufill a prescription. the pharmacist told them they'd have to order it since they don't have it in stock, but apparently the man wanted the medicine immediately. he asked "would lahngs or watahgleen have this medicine?" (i loved how he kept calling walgreens "watergreen") anyway, the pharmacist said she didn't know, they may, so he could go check. so the elderly man turned to the woman he was with, and starts speaking frantically in taiwanese to her because the target pharmacy was about to close. of course, i didn't understand what the heck he was saying, but at least i immediately picked up that he was speaking taiwanese! hey, for me, that's pretty good.

by the way, i should thank the US government for not accepting taiwanese as a language when my dad immigrated to the US. my dad told me the taiwanese translation of our last name is ku. and... if that were the case, my initials would have been kkk. :o great, just watch, people are going to google kkk and be pointed to my blog now.

question for all you taiwanese people: when people ask you what you are, do you say chinese or taiwanese? i used to say chinese until my parents heard me and started lecturing me about how i'm taiwanese. so now i have to say taiwanese. but really, i'd like to say american. of course, some certain friends, ahem, thought i was cantonese. cantonese? go figure.