I cut my finger. A long story.

So last night, I remember that the light bulb in the hallway needed to be changed. I begin to unscrew the lampshade, and I start feeling the shade getting wobbly. Before I have a chance to tighten the screw again, it begins to fall—I thrust my hand to cradle it into my hand but the balance is off—the shade flips over to the wall, and since I moved too fast, shatters, in my hand. I look down to see shattered glass all over the hallway floor, and some dull pain in my right index finger from bumping against the wall. I look up at the index finger, making sure that I didn’t get cut. I stare in bewilderment to see a 6-inch piece of glass sticking out of it. It doesn’t hurt like a scrape or cut usually would—it just kind of throbs a bit like a dull pain. I pull the shard of glass out, and apparently I’m Moses tapping a rock in the desert from which a geyser shoots out water. Except this time, it’s my own blood shooting out, dripping the faux-wood floorboards.
My initial reaction? “CRAP! The deposit!! I need to get this cleaned up! How much can I clean up until I pass out?!” Yes that’s how I know I’ve moved to California- all I care about is getting the deposit back for when I move, rather than my own safety. I quickly grab the first clean shirt I find (unfortunately it happens to be my favorite OU shirt ever) and wrap it around, then raise my hand above heart level.
In the meantime I call my mom and stay as calm as possible. Just a nice easygoing lax conversation, that’s what I’ll do. Easy breezy… that’s the style I’ll need to convey.
“Heeyyy, ma… how’s it goin? Yeah? Really? Oh cool! So listen, got a little bit of bad news- I cut myself on some glass here… yeah… oh nothing too much, just called 911 to be on the safe side though… uh huh. No it’s fine! I feel great! Just calling to let ya know. And actually the paramedics are here so I’m gonna go now. Great! Good talking to ya!”
It goes well; she seemed to take it well. I make sure to have my wallet, keys, and phone. The three critical things in going to the hospital- insurance, a way to get back in the house, and access to Twitter. I come out and greet them, and they take a look at my hand— one of them says, “Oh it’s not too bad, it’s actually really small.” Now I don’t know why but this kind of irked me. I’m not really the type to go to the doctor, much less a hospital, for minor things. And this guy has the nerve to say it’s really small? Alright then hotshot! Then fix it now! So I can go back inside and have my pot roast and lasagna!
So two paramedics start working on my hand, and a third rather portly fellow asks, “Do you really need an ambulance? Because if not, I can send it back. If you can take yourself to the hospital then no problem, I can send the ambulance back.” Wait— I’m losing blood by the quart and you want me to drive myself to the hospital? What kind of paramedics are these? I ask if they think I should, and he responds, “Hey no pressure—if there’s no one who can take you then we can take you. But I can send it back now if you’d like.” I stutter a bit, and he continues, “How about now? You want me to send ‘em back?”
So what exactly DOES count as a valid reason to go in an ambulance? I get it, if my finger’s sliced clean off then maaaybe I’ll get an ambulance. If I’m having a heart attack too—but apparently this doesn’t warrant it. Anyway I get to the hospital which happens to look like it’s something from the Dharma Initiative. All the equipment is from the early 70’s, and there’s a stench of non-chalance about the place. It’s disorganized, and the look of disdain is running rampant through all the employees’ eyes. When finally the ER doctor shows up, he’s as cold and non-personable as can be. Wonderful. I felt like I was in a 3rd World Country. By this point my roommate has arrived, and I’ve already told my parents what’s going on and how it’s completely fine—there’s not much to worry about. Of course if I actually believed what I said it might have had more weight, but you see—I have a fear of needles. And I knew that this would require stitches. So it was hard for me to convince them fully.
An hour after my initial consult Dr. Lee comes back in, and puts my arm on a rolling trolley so that he can start suturing it. He takes off about 3-4 yards of blood-stained cotton that the paramedics had put on there, and of course—I start gushing onto the trolley. He begins squeezing and probing the inside of the cut with his fingers with more force than was necessary. He tells me, “This may sting a bit—I’m gonna numb it up,” and proceeds to insert a needle into the wound. My finger is throbbing with pain as an acid burn courses through my veins. He asks the male nurse for rubber tubing, and he proceeds to make a tourniquet around the finger to cut off all blood flow. NICE. So that means that in a few minutes, if he’s not careful- and he certainly doesn’t seem like cares- my finger will be dead forever. He continues injecting the local anesthetic, and I’m writhing in pain.
“HOLD YOUR HAND STILL,” he yells. I can barely FEEL my hand, much less tell what I’m doing with it, especially because I’m not looking at it. “I’m…. trying….,” I manage to tell him through clenched teeth.
“HOW ABOUT THIS? YOU FEEL ANYTHING SHARP? YOU FEEL PAIN THAT’S SHARP?”
“NO it just HURTS when you squeeze it so hard!”
“Yeah yeah I know it hurts- but SHARP pain like glass. I’m trying to find if there’s any more glass in there—so can you feel anything?” I shake my head no, and he gives a final tenderizing blow to the finger like I’ve done many a time with a cold steak. He proceeds to start stitching it up, but by this time the tourniquet has already proved to be ultra-efficient: the pressure is building up and it’s killing me that I’m not getting any circulation. I start writhing again, and he yells at me yet again to stop moving.
I struggle, “The pressure—it’s getting too much… it hurts.”
“Yeah, yeah it hurts. Give me a couple of minutes I’m almost done stitching you up. Then I’ll release the blood back into your finger. Stop moving and talking.”
I want to kill the b****d. I resist doing so thankfully, and I can write this instead of being in prison for assaulting an ER doctor.
“There. We done.” And he releases the tourniquet and blood gushes into my finger—causing an overwhelming and delicious feeling of released pressure and tingling.
There’s some x-rays done to make sure that there’s no glass still stuck in the finger, and I’m released home. I don’t think I see the doctor for more than 30 seconds after—he doesn’t explain how to take care of my finger or what I need to do. Just scribbles a prescription for antibiotics and barks at me to go see my regular doctor to get my stitches taken out and if there’s further swelling or pain.
So that’s my finger story.

Tags: California, Happenings, Health

Weight loss.

So during the times when I’m in a play and such, I don’t get much time to work out or even eat healthy. By the time I get out of rehearsals it’s usually around 10 and the only things open at that point are McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and their ilk. Not so conducive to eating healthy. However, after I finished my last show, Rumors, I decided it’s time to change my lifestyle. Really make a big change, especially because I hated the way I felt and looked. The show ended in April, and since then I’ve committed hardcore to eating right. Sure I have a ‘bad meal’ about once a week or so (bring on the queso and burgers!), but mostly it’s meal replacement shakes, steamed Chinese, and whatever I can buy that’s under 300-400 calories per meal.

I also decided to join a gym and work with a personal trainer. Now I made a small mistake in that I didn’t check my weight before the eating healthy began, but considering my waist size was around 38, I’d say I was about 225lbs or so, and 5’11″. Overweight? Yes. But even by the time I started at the gym, I had dropped down to 215lbs.

My usual day now consists of a Slim-Fast (or a shake of that sort) in the morning, a healthy lunch, another shake right after I work out so that my body can use the protein in it to build muscle, and then at night something light– steamed veggies and grilled chicken or something.

The REALLY interesting thing I learned from Trevor (my hilarious and often pushy trainer) is that the cardio I was doing was fruitless. This is what I WAS doing:

Run for 20 minutes.
Weight lifting.
Leave.

He told me that in the first 20-30 minutes of your heart rate being up, the body is burning glycogen, not fat. It’s only after the 30 minutes that your body starts burning fat as its secondary storage of energy. So instead he recommended the following:

10 minutes of cardio to warm up.
20+ minutes of weights (the more weight you use the more glycogen is burned off and the faster the body gets to burning fat)
25-30 minutes of cardio.
Leave.

HUGE difference. In about a week or so I noticed a difference in how I felt and today I checked the scale to see my weight was down to 205lbs. I’m teetering around that 200 range, and I’d say my goal is to be around 180-190. Not bad.

Then onInternet Casino – Casino Treasure- Internet Casino Spiele, die man direkt online entweder zum Vergnügen oder für richtiges Geld in 11 Sprachen poker regeln kann (Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch, Niederlän. top of that we did a type of training today that absolutely fatigued the shit out of me and even got me a bit dehydrated. (Whenever I have a trainer I tend to give much more to a workout than when I go alone.) Basically the idea is to trick the brain into thinking that fat needs to be burned off first. But how do that when glycogen is still stored? Well, by basically not stopping between exercises. So this is what I did today:

1. 3 sets of bridges, 1 min each
2. 2 sets of crunches (15 reps)
3. 1 set of leg raises (15 reps)
4. 20 pushups (I have zero chest strength so after doing 5 I had to resort to doing ‘girl-pushups’.)
5. 1 minute punching bag
6. 1 minute of another exercise I cant remember the name of– kinda like squats
7. 1 min punching bag
8. 1 min squats
9. 1 min of pushing a 15lb medicine ball above my shoulders, while squatting up and down from an exercise ball
10. 1 min punching bag

Now at this point I had to stop. I felt like I was going to throw up, I could FEEL my heart bulging my eyeballs out, and I was sweating buckets. After a stop of about 3-4 minutes, I kept going. I got this far; I had to keep fighting. Besides, Trevor was playing Eye of the Tiger in the background– how do you NOT work out with that?

1. 1 min bicep curls, with 50lbs.
2. 1 min military press, 20lbs.
3. 1 min stepping up and down a raised box, with 15lb dumbbells in each hand
4. 1 min punching bag
5. 1 min lateral raises with 8lb weights in each hand
6. 1 min rear lateral raises
7. 1 min punching bag

And then I had to stop– fully. I collapsed onto the ground, panting like a dog in heat, tongue out. I saw stars, I saw the universe– I saw my life flashing before me. But here’s what I didn’t finish–

• Carry a punching bag 50 feet to the other side of the room
• Do bear crawls 50 feet back
• 3 more sets of bridges
• 2 more crunch sets

Anyway, from what I understand that type of circuit training keeps your heart rate up AND rips through your glycogen deposit so that you’re burning fat (almost) the entire time. It’s also so intense that it’s not something that the body can handle more than once a week. I hope I can do it before I leave for New York on Friday. Until then, I’ll keep with the other stuff I’ve learned thus far.

And with that I’m out. This was a VERY long post, but I hope you learned maybe a little somethin. Peas.

Tags: Exercise, Health

What? Can’t be real.. right?

I read about a ringtone that apparently only people within a certain AGE group can hear. It’s called Mosquito Ringtone and you can download a bunch of different files from their site. So if you don’t want your old-fart physics teacher knowing that you’re getting phone calls in class, you just have to use one of the ringtones under his age range.

The science behind it seems a bit… shaky. But I tried it, and I definitely couldn’t hear the 18 and under ringtones. (Although I couldn’t hear 30 and under either– I had to go all the way upto 39 and under.)

Check it out and let me know your thoughts..

Thanks to Amy for the link.

Tags: Friends, Health, Neat

The Prozac-ification of America

I know, the video’s message itself might be a bit trite (or completely true, based on your views) but the editing and use of typography are absolutely BRILLIANT. I sighed when Amy sent me the link because you know the drill that happens when people send you a link to YouTube; it’s usually some annoying baby saying a curse word, and you’re supposed to think it’s hilarious.

Not here. Enjoy.

Oh. And I also came to find out that this guy did this for a class project in college, and that AMY was in his class!

Tags: America, Health, Neat, Video

Step by step

No, I’m not trying to illicit fond memories of the Suzanne Somers show from the early 90′s. ‘Step by step’ is the approach I’ve taken to weight loss. When I got here and I realized that my mom does more cardio than anyone I’d ever met, I came to the conclusion that keeping up with her is going to be impossible. So then, after a few days of running on the treadmill, I got bored, and more likely, lazy.

Vinni and I have been watching Celebrity Fit Club on VH1 and at first we were watching to see how crazy Dustin Diamond would get every week. My first foray into the show happened to be the most explosive, where this Navy Seal physical trainer dude threatened to “kick cartoon f**king ass” and so forth. (“Is that a threat”, Dustin whimpered– to which Harvey replied, “It’s a f**kin PROMISE!“)

ANYWAY. So I started seeing that their weight loss goals for a week were usually 1-4 lbs a week. All of a sudden I thought to myself, ‘Seriously… I could do that, right?’ So now, continuing with my diet being pretty healthy (regular readers will remember that this wasn’t too much of a problem anyway), I just decided to add some more physical tasks to my day.

Examples include (but are not limited to):
Washing cars, cleaning the house, walking a little extra during the day….

So far I’ve lost 10 lbs since I’ve gotten to the US. I’m at 200lbs right now, and even though the BMI calculator tells me that I’m supposed to be in the 165lb range, I look a bit sickly around that weight. So instead, I’m aiming for 180lbs or 170lbs. Another 20 to go…

Tags: Happenings, Health

Back

Well, I got back to America last night. Right now, it feels just like I’m back for another vacation or something. But I think as soon as I start looking for jobs (probably start Monday), and move out of here then it’ll REALLY hit home.

The flights were…. okay. Nothing too great. I was actually less than impressed with British Airways this time. Of course I was in Economy Class, which translates to “crap” on all airlines.

Oh- and I think I managed to get sick too. I’ve got this nagging sore throat/cough. And the crappy thing is, it’s not like I can just get the medicine by myself from the pharmacy downstairs! In America you need a prescription!!

Peas.

Tags: America, Health, India

I laughed today.

I know, you’re thinking, ‘That’s enough to warrant a post?’ But considering the last few hellish days I’ve spent tossing and turning in bed, groaning in intestinal cramps, headache and fatigue, a laugh is definitely worth writing home about. (Or writing a post on.)

First off the basics– no, I’m not all better. That’s the downside. But after the morons cut off the power again today at 2 pm and I was all of the above PLUS sweating non-stop, I decided I couldn’t get better just on my own- I needed to go to a hospital. So I did. I spent a few hours at a clinic, where they stuck an IV in me and replenished my fluids. The doctor told me to stick my tongue out, and went, “Yep, you’re dehydrated.”

There were three nurses trying to get a good vein where they could insert the needle, and they were all talking in a mixture of the three of the four main South Indian languages. Malayalam (which I speak), Tamil (which is similar), and Kannada (which I’ve started to understand because Apsi speaks it). It was mostly just “Ooh, no that won’t work. How about there… no that won’t work either.. how about there?” And then one of them, in Kannada, goes, “This is the problem with having fat patients- it’s hard to locate a vein.”

She didn’t think I understood her. I did. And I started cracking up.

All three looked up totally embarrassed and flustered. I just chuckled along, and told them it’s no problem, keep going.

Later, I was talking to Eleyah and I gave her the run down of what was going on. She goes, “Wow you must’ve lost a lot of weight, huh. I’m on a new vegetables and fruit diet.” And that is what I laughed at just before starting this post. I mean think of it, I’m in a whole world of pain, but right now what’s going through her head is how to lose weight. I can almost imagine her thinking, “I wonder if I can get food poisoning to lose weight! Yes, that’ll do it!”

Funny stuff. On another note, Vinni made a good point about editing comments that you’ve left. Say you’ve left a comment and you realized that you misspelled something? No problem- just become a registered user and you can edit to your heart’s delight. You can add italics, bold, whatever. Just click here for now; I’ll have to make a dedicated button for it somewhere on my site later.

Tags: Funny, Health, India, Vinoj.com