Friday, May 16, 2008

Pain in the Arse... in the literal sense of the phrase :)

The procedure went pretty well, well... much better than expected I guess. I expected a hell of a lot more pain. However, due to the significantly lesser number of nerve endings down there and the life-saving painkillers I am downing every 6 hourly, the ordeal has been rather bearable, almost painless and free of discomfort in fact. The cleaning ritual isn't too bad either. I was mentally prepared to undergo 2 to 3 hours of "severe discomfort" on a 2 times daily basis but, it turns out that the incision was rather superficial and a simple rinse and dry technique is more than enough to keep the wound clean. Again, the lack of nerve endings there makes the cleaning too a lot less uncomfortable. Given the rather superficial incision and my age, the doctors are expecting me to take one to two weeks to fully recover. Till then, I guess I'll be hanging around at home, "BUMMING" around :) Thanks for the calls and messages anyway :) 

My time so far has been divided between KotOR (Knights of the Old Republic II:The Sith Lords, which to you without a clue out there is the single most enjoyable game I have ever played in my freaking miserable gaming career...), reading stories of individuals who have undergone an infinite times more amount of pain and discomfort I have gone through, trying to make heads and tales of the whole procedure of investing and Blog/Channel surfing. So... despite my temporal partial incapacitation of the lower half, or should I say lower mid-section of my body, I am having a pretty good time here.

I chanced upon a book given to me by a good friend which depicts the life-changing story of John Maclean, a promising young athlete who's entire life came to a crashing halt when he was knocked down by a truck during a bike ride down under. The book titled "Sucking the marrow out of life", is a chilling yet altogether heartwarming story of his struggles and triumphs against the immense odds stacked against him after the accident. Despite becoming a paraplegic, Maclean succeeded in beating the odds of survival and went on to conquer the Kona Ironman Race, swim the English Channel and do so much more than what any other person could even dream of achieving. His story, as mentioned above, did make me feel a whole lot better about my teeny weeny procedure but more importantly, it made me sit up and reevaluate my life thus far. It made me want to make a change in my life. I realized that more often than not, it usually takes a disastrous tragedy/incident before people start going "Oh... if only I had this... If only I had that..." Why wait till then?

So with that thought in mind, I did manage to put aside some time to really think through about what I would like to achieve by the end of this year. Now that I've got the health pertaining issues out of the way, I have got more important goals to achieve and targets to meet. This year too marks the start of my tertiary education and despite the rather anti-climatic final decision I made with regards to where I intend on pursuing my education, I would like to do well enough to either a.) transfer to the course of my desire OR b.) transfer to the university with the course I desire. I must say I have learnt a rather important lesson about time management and the importance of staying the course and keeping focus at an extremely great price 3 years ago and I doubt I'll be forgetting the cost of that lesson anytime soon. I successfully completed the inaugural Singapore Half Ironman in September 2007 and I am looking to do the same or improve on my timing at this year's Singapore 70.3 too. (Just submitted the application form:)) Should all things go according to plan this year and should I be feeling all motivated and all by the completion of this year's Half Ironman then I'll most probably be kicking off my plans to participate in next year's full Ironman in WA. Kudos to me if I even get that far I guess, but hey, it is always nice to have a plan right? Now all I've got to do is make it work :)

“Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” 

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)


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