Homecoming

After a whole lot of rushing to get home, I'm home! Yay!

I think God really likes me on planes, this time, and the last time on really full flights I get 3 whole seats ALL TO MYSELF! = ) Of course later on some guy took up the seat on the far end from me. I wasn't really sure if he wanted to get past me. He just stood next to my seat on the aisle looking ambivalent. After I got the idea he wanted to get past me I gave him way. A simple "excuse me" would have got him what he wanted.

Other than that I'm really happy to be home. Really happy to see the YMers having a sweaty time at camp. My heart and mind really wanted to be with them and stay the last night with them but my body was shutting down from all the stress and strange sleeping (or NON sleeping) hours I've been getting the past week. I figured I'd better go home to rest. Rest I did by sleeping 20 hours. My sleep debt had better be paid off and my body clock set back to NORMAL. Yes Kelvin I CAN be normal. (He says my sleeping patterns have never been normal. = P )

WARNING GROSS MEDICAL DETAILS ON WHY MY BODY SHUT DOWN YESTERDAY. People who are easily grossed out or faint of heart should stop reading NOW.

What are you still doing here? It's going to get really gross from here on out, well, you have been forewarned...

Before takeoff just after they passed out the hot towels I felt what I thought was mucus flowing out of my right nostril. I happened to look at my hot towel and there were bloody spots. A NOSEBLEED? I'VE NEVER HAD A NOSEBLEED IN MY LIFE! Nosebleeds in my family were mainly the domain of Al. Anyway, I hit the "attendant" button and a nice "Singapore Girl" airline stewardess came by. I calmly asked for some tissues as I had a nosebleed. She looked slightly flabbergasted and asked how much I needed. I looked pathetically and said "I've never had a nosebleed before...". She went off to get a handful for me. I felt a bit embarrassed for bleeding on their hot towel. Oh well.

By this time I was making a self-diagnosis. Hey I've learnt a thing or two in vet school. Hmm, the hot towel must have set off some vasodilation (dilation of blood vessels) in the arteries in my face and the stress I've been having the past week must have made my body more prone to bleeding. Nothing to be worried about, or so I thought. I passingly noticed that the blood coming out of my nose was quite fluid, and that the bleeding took a longer time than normal to stop. It eventually did and I did not think more of it the rest of the day.

I touched down around 7am and followed dad to help out at the youth camp at 10am. My job was basically to guard the "disgusting food" station. A station where the groups were to choose random numbers of food and to consume the whole combination.

Out of bordom, and a little carelessness, (the game was running from 10 to 2), I picked at a tiny pimple. Then BLOOD started gushing out of it like there was no tomorrow, I was afraid the YMers would think someone had stabbed me in the face. In the process of trying to stop the bleeding I realised the blood was very fluid, much like the kind when I had my nosebleed. The bleeding carried on for a few minutes. (A normal person would stop bleeding from such a small wound through clotting in under 30 seconds, maybe up to a minute). My medically trained albeit fatigued mind started to kick into action. I'm out of clotting factors! ARGH! Probably due to all the stress and non-sleep I've been pushing my body into. I was initially going to spend the night with the YMers, but after realising I could bleed totally out if I got a cut, or even worse start bleeding from every orifice, made me realise I had to go home to rest if anything. I still have 3 months to hang out with the youth.

I think I should be fine now. I still haven't poked myself ro see if my clotting factors have been renewed.

And that was my truly bloody homecoming. = )