"Most women would kill for your lips!"
Two weeks ago, not far from the deadline for my master's degree dissertation, my lips decided to have a little party.
It started as a harmless-looking spot of acne in the center of my bottom lip. It hurt all day but I didn't think much of it because I've had acne around my lips before. Pretty much overnight, the lip swelled up to twice its size, leaving me writhing in pain and unable to really focus on anything. I could feel a circular structure inside my lip knocking against my teeth every time I tried to talk or eat. The lip continued to balloon at an alarming speed and my resemblance to a primate also began to increase with it.
The sore lip and the dark rainclouds hovering over the city made Monday morning a real treat. I must have had on an unusually tired face because one of my workmates asked me if I was hung over. Eventually the pain (and the fear of the looming presentation that I had to do) got the better of me and I went to the chemist's to get some paracetamol and ibuprofen. On the way to the chemist's I passed a man with an amputated right arm - that really put things into perspective for me. I decided to quit complaining and get on with it (for the rest of the day anyway).
The swelling was decidedly there to stay, so I went to see the doctor. Their earliest appointment wasn't for another six days, so I made a fuss about it being an emergency. They booked me in with the nurse that afternoon. When I went to se the nurse, she seemed disoriented in time, place and person: she asked me what the date was twice during the consultation, which was enough of a push for me to disregard her diagnostic skills completely. Without so much as feeling the lip, she declared the swelling to be a (viral) cold sore and then proceeded to prescribe antibiotics in case it was a bacterial abscess (which it most likely was). She was just a bag of inaccuracies, that poor maid. She refused my pleas to get it lanced and drained because it wasn't 'ripe' enough according to her.
Back at the lab, my workmates sympathetically mocked my misery with comments like, "Most women would kill for lips like yours!" or "When are you getting your next (collagen) filling?" Once the antibiotics and the painkillers were in me, I was able to laugh with them. I maintained myself for the next few days on a steady diet of pills and potions (mostly the pills) so I could attend to the more important things in life, e.g. my dissertation. The abscess drifted in and out of consciousness, oozing pus every time something (usually my finger) woke the beast. Puckering up, which had never before been so satisfying, played a big role in squeezing the last droplets of pus (which looked suspiciously similar to my hair conditioner) out of the abscess's two mouths.
The abscess finally gave up the ghost last Monday. Its remains now lie buried deep inside my lower lip, and I'm not sure if there will be a Second Coming.
Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/chnrdu/3899986476
I handed my dissertation in on Thursday afternoon. Two Soft-bound Copies and an Electronic Copy, word-processed and double-spaced. At least 15 (Bonsai) trees will have died for all the copies of my dissertation that got printed. My journey with the dissertation was a bit like my experience with the lip abscess: a small, inconspicuous dot that was going to get very big and painful very quickly, and which would leave me with pure relief once it was gone.
I had finished writing my dissertation at least a week before I was supposed to hand it in. But then my idea of a finished dissertation was of a much, much lower standard than my supervisors. Mistakes were corrected, sections were removed, whole new were sections added and last minute analysis was done to convince ourselves that what I had written did actually make some vague sense. It still hasn't hit me that I have finished my dissertation (and with it, the project, which was part of the most challenging six months of my life) - or maybe I'm just in denial. The complete lack of work in the next few weeks should hopefully help me with that realization.
I'm really going to miss working in my lab. For six months, I felt like I was employed. I had a set of goals to accomplish, and I had helpful, friendly people watching over me to make sure I wasn't straying too far from the course. And of course, the continuous supply of coffee (and inventively designed fruit tea) - sometimes half a dozen in a day! - made it feel like a real job. I'm looking forward to going back to medicine and being on the assembly line to becoming a bog-standard doctor, it will just be difficult for me to cope with being told to be in a particular place at a particular time on pain of failing the year, by the medical school. I'll settle down eventually I suppose.
It started as a harmless-looking spot of acne in the center of my bottom lip. It hurt all day but I didn't think much of it because I've had acne around my lips before. Pretty much overnight, the lip swelled up to twice its size, leaving me writhing in pain and unable to really focus on anything. I could feel a circular structure inside my lip knocking against my teeth every time I tried to talk or eat. The lip continued to balloon at an alarming speed and my resemblance to a primate also began to increase with it.
The sore lip and the dark rainclouds hovering over the city made Monday morning a real treat. I must have had on an unusually tired face because one of my workmates asked me if I was hung over. Eventually the pain (and the fear of the looming presentation that I had to do) got the better of me and I went to the chemist's to get some paracetamol and ibuprofen. On the way to the chemist's I passed a man with an amputated right arm - that really put things into perspective for me. I decided to quit complaining and get on with it (for the rest of the day anyway).
The swelling was decidedly there to stay, so I went to see the doctor. Their earliest appointment wasn't for another six days, so I made a fuss about it being an emergency. They booked me in with the nurse that afternoon. When I went to se the nurse, she seemed disoriented in time, place and person: she asked me what the date was twice during the consultation, which was enough of a push for me to disregard her diagnostic skills completely. Without so much as feeling the lip, she declared the swelling to be a (viral) cold sore and then proceeded to prescribe antibiotics in case it was a bacterial abscess (which it most likely was). She was just a bag of inaccuracies, that poor maid. She refused my pleas to get it lanced and drained because it wasn't 'ripe' enough according to her.
Back at the lab, my workmates sympathetically mocked my misery with comments like, "Most women would kill for lips like yours!" or "When are you getting your next (collagen) filling?" Once the antibiotics and the painkillers were in me, I was able to laugh with them. I maintained myself for the next few days on a steady diet of pills and potions (mostly the pills) so I could attend to the more important things in life, e.g. my dissertation. The abscess drifted in and out of consciousness, oozing pus every time something (usually my finger) woke the beast. Puckering up, which had never before been so satisfying, played a big role in squeezing the last droplets of pus (which looked suspiciously similar to my hair conditioner) out of the abscess's two mouths.
The abscess finally gave up the ghost last Monday. Its remains now lie buried deep inside my lower lip, and I'm not sure if there will be a Second Coming.
Image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/chnrdu/3899986476
I handed my dissertation in on Thursday afternoon. Two Soft-bound Copies and an Electronic Copy, word-processed and double-spaced. At least 15 (Bonsai) trees will have died for all the copies of my dissertation that got printed. My journey with the dissertation was a bit like my experience with the lip abscess: a small, inconspicuous dot that was going to get very big and painful very quickly, and which would leave me with pure relief once it was gone.
I had finished writing my dissertation at least a week before I was supposed to hand it in. But then my idea of a finished dissertation was of a much, much lower standard than my supervisors. Mistakes were corrected, sections were removed, whole new were sections added and last minute analysis was done to convince ourselves that what I had written did actually make some vague sense. It still hasn't hit me that I have finished my dissertation (and with it, the project, which was part of the most challenging six months of my life) - or maybe I'm just in denial. The complete lack of work in the next few weeks should hopefully help me with that realization.
I'm really going to miss working in my lab. For six months, I felt like I was employed. I had a set of goals to accomplish, and I had helpful, friendly people watching over me to make sure I wasn't straying too far from the course. And of course, the continuous supply of coffee (and inventively designed fruit tea) - sometimes half a dozen in a day! - made it feel like a real job. I'm looking forward to going back to medicine and being on the assembly line to becoming a bog-standard doctor, it will just be difficult for me to cope with being told to be in a particular place at a particular time on pain of failing the year, by the medical school. I'll settle down eventually I suppose.