One week update, hospital facts, some fun traditional remedies

I’m still alive and kickin’ here, in case you are wondering 😀
Thanks for the encouraging comments on the last post. They meant a lot to me :). So my typical days recently are get up in the morning, workout (if I have time), go to work, come back home, have a quick dinner, then drive my parents to the hospital to see my bro, hanging out there until we all got kicked out by the security guard because we usually stay beyond visiting hours, come back home, shower, sleep – rinse and repeat. That’s weekdays.

Weekends are pretty similar but add the hospital trips during daytime as well.

My hubby and I had the luxury (pun intended) to have lunch at the hospital's cafeteria because we had to drive my parents there earlier than lunch time and we weren't hungry when we left. Then it was too much hassle go back and forward, might as well stayed there for lunch

Not bad actually and I finished this whole bowl by myself - hubby took a little taste

My hubby had the wraps, which in my opinion wasn’t that great. The wrap was a bit salty for my taste.

Another thing that I had to come up in order to squeeze in as many chores as possible is to prepare a ready to mix bread mixture. Yup, I had to pre-measure all the dry ingredients and put them in the zip lock and set them aside. So everytime I want to make a bread, all I need to do is pour that whole dry ingredients into the bread machine, add the wet ingredients (water, oil and almond meals), press the button and walk away until the mixing and rising is done.

bread dry ingredients in the zip locks & almond meals (almond waste from almond milk) in plastic wrap. All measured up. Sadly those are still sitting on the counter because apparently I STILL DO NOT have time to mix these ingredients in the bread machine and press the button...SIGH.

fresh fruits are always the best meal for me!

Oh and did I tell you that I had the honor to have another meal at the hospital cafeteria for Monday night dinner?

None of the dressings they offered appealed me, so I grabbed the packaged lemon juice and mustard

A closer look of the inside - I had to pick the shredded cheese before eating this. Such a pain

So it’s been one week and you guess they found out what kind of infection my bro is having? WRONG.

They HAVEN’T FOUND anything concrete regarding his illness. Lots of tests, biopsies, cultures and other medical gibberish I don’t understand and they still can’t pin point what kind of infection he’s having. He’s still under TB meds and had lots of antibiotic IVs infused into his body and yet his fever is still hovering between 99-100s°F. His heart rate is insanely high (120bpm-150bpm) for someone who’s only lying down on bed whole day. That’s crazy! Normal people only get that high heart rate when they jog or run! Like me this morning.

Btw, the hospital workers are TERRIBLE! My bro told me yesterday that he was in pain for 15 minutes in the afternoon because some stupid nurse combined his potassium IV together with the antibiotic. A little bit of medical stuff here: potassium IV flow is much SLOWER than antibiotic. Why? Because you could DIE from potassium overdose in a short time! Even with a very slow flow, it still hurts (like a burning sensation on your hand according to my bro).

So guess what? He was in an extremely burning pain on his right arm and been calling up the nurse for help BUT NOBODY CAME!!!! FUCKING RETARDS! I was so mad last night when I heard him telling me that and had to restrain myself to storm up to the front desk and yelling at the staff. But I know better. Do not make enemies at the place where they can create some kind of medical errors to harm the patient. So I stayed quiet. But I did bring this matter a little bit to the night shift nurse, not sure if he got what I meant. My bro said the daytime nurses are the WORST! Gosh, I hope I don’t have to be hospitalized like him. I don’t trust my health to strangers. Sadly none of our family member can always stay by his side to help him get stuff. Just like my friend said, you always need a family member around the patient to get his/her needs. Can’t trust those hospital nurses.

Ok moving on.

I had some fun traditional remedies that I just learned recently. Ever since my brother’s been sick, one of my relative who’s an expert in traditional Chinese herbs been advising my parents with lots of traditional remedies.
Remedy #1:

Dried red chilies

(source)
Place a handful of dried red chilies in a sandwich size ziplock bags and hold them in your hands and put some on your body as well (packaged in a zip lock bag). According to them, it’ll help drive out the fever from your body. Believe it or not.

Remedy #2

Rice vinegar

(Source)
According to my other aunt, soaking your feet into rice vinegar will make you feel less tired after a long walk or something like that. Interesting!

So any other traditional remedies that you’d like to share?