I found a piece of paper on the dining table today; it writes as follows:
Good morning!
Mags had to leave early. Things for you to do today, please:
1) have breakfast
2) clean coffee table off
3) fix couch covers
4) ensure your dirty laundry is in hamper
5) vacuum
6) put your soup can in the recyclingI’ll take car of kitchen, laundry, yard work, Punky
Thx
Dad
I got up very early this morning, excited about checking my mom out of the hospital. The doctor in charge has agreed to release my mom from the hospital after Uncle Dong’s visit. However, I still want to confirm if this is the case with other doctors. I had the taxi booked; the driver was the one who took Uncle Dong back to ShuCheng yesterday. He was to pick me up at the hotel around 9:00 am. In the morning, decided that I wanted to get in the hospital earlier. I called the driver around 7:00am to see if he could meet me around 8:00 am. He happily agreed.
When we arrived in the hospital, my mom had everything packed already. She was sitting at the bed waiting – I could see the light in her eyes even though she looked calm and indifferent. She told me that the doctors and nurses have already confirmed that they are preparing the files for her checkout – what a relief!!!
Monday is the busiest day of a week in a typical chinese hospital; doctors usually gather together in Monday morning to discuss the critical cases they had in the previous week and then they will visit every room to check the patients there. It took us 3 hours waiting and finally we got out of the hospital around 11:00 am. This is usually the time for my mom having lunch. I suggested stopping somewhere for lunch – my mom rejected the idea. She insisted having lunch at home. I managed to convince her to have a banana. After all, It is an hour and a half drive; I really don’t want her to starve.
The trip went smoothly. I have to give the credit to the driver: he drove the car carefully and I didn’t have many heart attacks – we arrived in ShuCheng around 12:30 pm and the lunch was on the table already.
Now my goal is to survive the next 5 days in ShuCheng without mom having any relapse.
My plan is to have my mom checked out of the hospital tomorrow (May 17): her condition is stable enough now to apply medication from home. The doctors also believe that she recovered well. They keep telling me that she can be out of the hospital in a few days. Don’t fall into a trap here – if you are told that something is going to happen in a few days here, it actually can take place in a few weeks or months before you realize what that means. My job here is to make sure that a few days is equal to “Monday May 17, 2010″.
I successfully attended the meeting through Skype this morning and I felt sooooooo great! I said hi to my colleagues via Skype as well; this was definitely a memorable experience in my life. With everything else going on here, the energy and excitement I felt through the meeting surely boosted my spirit.
I have to think really hard to remember what happened on May 14. The confusion with dates never went away.
I felt exhausted in the morning after more than 8 hours of remote login to work. There was an all hands staff meeting scheduled on Friday (Vancouver time) to celebrate the acquisition of Bycast.
Everything has to have a purpose;
Without a purpose, I will be lost.
You bring the best out of me;
And you keep me focused.
With your love and support;
This journey does not feel lonely and cold.
While I was waiting for my room ready, I ordered the cheese cake. It was a treat to myself. This photo is dedicated to my husband Chris – without his encouragement I would not take pictures.
Today is the forth day in Hefei – It felt so long ago and it felt that I have been in the city forever. I went to the hospital this morning for a short visit. I need to be back before noon. Today is the check-out day and I have to move to Holiday Inn Hefei. I only booked 3 days with Hilton Hefei before I left Vancouver. My original plan was to extend the stay if needed; however, my plan was aborted – the city is hosting the national sports competition event and Hilton was sold out after I arrived.
I think I better write down everything before I forget. I talked to Chris this morning and I started mixing dates up again.
The email client on my macbook has a performance problem now. I believe it is related to the threading setting. I’m having lots of problems viewing messages that have lots of threads in them. It takes fever to download the message.
I confused the days. It all went so fast and didn’t have time to think or remember. I am sort of living in the time between Vancouver and here; I’m having difficulties to tell which day is which day now.
This year’s Mother’s Day was extremely hard for me – my mother is in the hospital and I was on my way to see her; Tim and Chris had to say Happy Mother Day to me via email and facebook and I didn’t even have a way to say that to her. She has not been doing very well this year and was in and out of hospital a few times already.
