Reminiscent of the time I plucked my teeth at the dentist during the braces process.

Kind nurses assuaged my fears

Dawdled my time waiting, waiting, waiting... (and thinking of how I'm going to write my compo out T.T)

All these while I was sated with a melange of emotions.

I'm suffering from a bout of flu/cough, was fearing if it would interfere with the operation process.

I thought this surgery would be too trifling a matter to announce to everyone, so I kept it to a few close friends.

There were times I was disoriented from the unfamiliarity of my surroundings.

The surgery went without a hitch!

Pardon me while I get my thoughts back into some semblance of order and describe every infinitesimal detail of whatever that happened just 3 hours ago.

I sussed that I didn't like being treated as a patient, although all the nurses treated me with utmost care.

Is it me, or does time seem to elapse so quickly in Operation Theatre 5 throughout the surgery? Maybe it was just a simple and straightforward process. It was the waiting time that carried my train of thought ricocheting my mind.

For as long as I can remember, this is one unprecedented event.

I'm extremely grateful to Dad and Mum for being there with me all the while, not leaving my sight, not even as I was being pushed into the room.

Was listening to the machine grunting with rapt attention, trying to figure out what they were doing since the local anesthesia(LA) was working so well on me that I couldn't feel a thing( thank goodness LAs exists!).

I fervently wish all the burning and laser and cutting of my skin tissues can annihilate the cyst completely and never appear again. I heard Doctor murmuring "skin tissues", "salivary glands", "it's a cyst".

When it was over the nurse (whose daughter is Jacqueline from 4J) who attended to me the whole operation process showed me what Doctor cut out. I don't think I can ever forget the shape of the cyst, the pinkish tissue, the red blood vessels within it, the faint white spots, the brown, seemingly burnt sides, rolling in the container. It's in a cylindrical shape (I marvel the doctor for being able to cut out such an even shape).

Do I dare say I have a high-enough threshold of pain? But right now the LA hasn't worn off. I'm afraid of the pain that comes after.

Do you know? The 3 stitches that is on my lip are black in colour. It is supposed to dissolve and be invisible in a couple of weeks time. I'm supposed to refrain from hot food as that area might bleed.

I must really thank the doctor (young and promising [x) and nurses that tended to me with care. I noticed that the nurses there came from all over the world (well, not really x]) from China to India and Philippines.

Bottom line is, I prefer older female nurses & I am not comfortable with being treated like a patient.

I initially thought it was going to be so small a process that the doctor would just pop into a room and cut it off and say bye. But everything just turned out different from what I expected. I met nurses who would ask for my name and ID whenever I was in a different department, asking me to change out of my clothes and into the gown/robe, wearing a band with my name and address on it, being asked to lie on the bed (the most palpable form of being treated like a patient), rolled into Operating Theatre 5, measured my blood pressure and heart rate on several accounts, being pushed in a wheelchair after I'm done with the surgery (to what do i owe this honour?), be treated to ice milo.

As I sit in front of the computer trying to recover the warmth being robbed by the hospital while Mum went to buy porridge for me, I recall the prevalent events that occured from 8.30 to 11.30 in the morning.

I foresee I wouldn't want to be a surgeon when I grow up...

All i want to do today is to cut myself a little slack, but another voice warns me the consequences of doing that.

"Nobody wants to admit this, but bad things will keep on happening. Maybe it's all a chain, and a long time ago someone did a bad thing, and that led someone else to do another bad thing, and so on... But then again, bad things happen because it's the only way we can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like." Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult

This girl wants to be a rock star tonight!

;Bel