Hell month's started. Can you believe I'm taking over a month to move some documents to another office 500 metres away? Pretty insane with all the security procedures around, and packing my own things ain't no cakewalk either. No wonder Dr Toh said that house moving is a "mini-tribulation" of sorts. What more an entire office with like what, about a 100 times the size of a house? Not that I'm complaining though, at least I get lotsa experience on that, next time doing logistics will be that much easier. Good eh, at the expense of salary, I learn many new things in life, so effectively my 2 years of NS ain't just a waste.

Anyway, I had to wake up real early today to get to SGH to see my joints. You know, rheumatoid arthritis. Went there late anyway, I was supposed to reach there at like 8 am to take blood test so that the results will be out by the time I was consulted by my doctor, which was at about 9 am. Anyhow I reached there at 8.45, MRT in the mornings are horrible. And then there was this zzzz queue of people taking blood test which got me real sian. I mean, the queue is virtually absent when I go there to take blood test in the afternoon. So, after waiting for 20 minutes, with my name still not processed yet, I got irritated and asked the cashier to check if my name was there. And then she asked if I was serving NS, I said yes to that and she said I'll process your application first. Great, got shortcut because I don't need to pay and process those troublesome fees, just pay through the CSC which were deserve it wholly and deserve even more anyway.

So yeah, blood test as usual, nothing much, except I forgot to ask her to teach me to draw blood, lol. And then it was off to see my doctor. She came back from her course and the clinic was empty so I was first to go in. Anyway after a few checks and some exchange of words, we concluded again that my left elbow still can't bend fully, and now my right wrist can't bend fully. And my right wrist is really weak, I can't really overpower my 10 year old brother with it, because there's always a tight pain whenever some pressure is applied, same case for me when I do bench presses, same pain which doesn't allow me to carry too heavy weights, not that it's practical to carry that heavy weights considering my size anyway.

Then she suggested that I uh, draw out the synovial fluid from my right knee, which was swollen. I didn't know that, because my knee was already like that since I dunno when, quite long already, almost a year? (Must be BMT, it's a torture for me to stand for long periods of time, it's really painful for me.)

So anyway here's some information of the synovial fluid in an adult knee joint, taken from Wikipedia (I just copy pasta'd from the source).



Classification of synovial fluid in an adult knee joint

	Normal	Noninflammatory	Inflammatory	Septic	Hemorrhagic
Volume (ml)	<3.5	>3.5	>3.5	>3.5	>3.5
Viscosity	High	High	Low	Mixed	Low
Clarity	Clear	Clear	Cloudy	Opaque	Mixed
Color	Colorless/straw	Straw/yellow	Yellow	Mixed	Red
WBC/mm3	<200	200-2,000	2,000-75,000	>100,000	Same as blood
Polysegmented neutrophil %	<25	<25	>50	>75	Same as blood
Gram stain	Negative	Negative	Negative	Often positive	Negative

Yeah so, she was talking to me about being a doctor and how the results were nonsensical and don't really reflect the skill in being a doctor. Which is true, because medical courses require alot of manual skills anyway. So being a book-smart person doesn't mean you can handle it. Unlike me, because I know for myself that I can handle manual stuff anyway. Gives me great satisfaction for me to fix up a cupboard and it's shelves anyway, but I digress.

So she took out this uh, really long needle which looked scary, don't think it was large but the length is definitely way longer than those used for blood tests and that was the scary part. She sprayed like some numbing thingamajic on my leg, which I believed was those typical sports spray to relieve pain, only stronger. So anyway my leg was numb in an instant after that, and she JABBED MY KNEE. I couldn't see how deep the needle went because I was lying down anyway, but all I felt was this super acidic feel, something like a super strong lemon juice. The feeling was totally numbing and sour. (I do get these kinda feeling when I hit my joint accidentally, and even then I'm already holding it in pain, the sour-acidic feel. But this was much worse.) She drew out like one and a half full syringes of synovial fluid, which was clear and slightly golden brown. Mind you, the syringe was the large one, about 6 ml. So yeah, she effectively drew like 9 to 10 ml of synovial fluid, which is like 2.5 times of the normal amount going by that table. Anyway I just found this on wiki so yeah.

Arthrocentesis is the clinical procedure of using a syringe to collect synovial fluid from a joint capsule. It is also known as joint aspiration. Arthrocentesis is used in the diagnosis of gout, arthritis, and synovial infections.

She poked in like 4 ml of steroids into my knee after that, which I forgot what steroid it was, and injecting a liquid into the body ain't non-painful either, there's this shocking pain when the fluid first enters the knee.

After that I went back to office, with me limping because my right knee became swollen and numb. And I had to limp around because today's Day 2 of Hell Month.

Okay, I'm weally sleepy now because it has been a tiring day for me and I think I walked too much already, even after that uh, painful knee jab which I don't ever want to experience again. But hey, for the first time in a long long time my knee is not swollen and actually doesn't feel hot. Although it's still slighly numb and painful.

Ah, Day 3 tomorrow, I'm so not looking forward to it, I just wanna sleep, sleep, sleep.

Labels: Life

|| posted by Kuan Hui