Category Archives: Health

The times when tough love is necessary: when you make the same mistakes during your workout twice

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As long as I’ve been living in our current building, I’ve had a friendly relationship with our building gym trainer. He’s a trainer who works at multiple sites under the same building management company and also has his own personal training business. We have gotten along and had some interesting conversations over the years. Sometimes, when he has a free moment and sees I am struggling with something or could improve my form, he will stop and help me. He’s not officially my trainer; I’ve never paid him (though I did give him a Christmas tip this last year), but he’s given me endless good advice and is just an overall fun, smart, good person to have around when you’re exercising.

Currently, I’m wrapping up a strength training program via my Alo Moves app, and yesterday, the session had some kettle bell-like movements. About five years ago, I injured my lower back using kettle bells. After that incident, I decided to swear them off, and I haven’t used them since. I told our trainer about this then, and he told me it was most definitely a form issue. He showed me the movement and the parts to focus on. But I shook it off and just avoided them like the plague. Then this week, I figured since it had been a while that I could revisit the kettle bell motion. Well, I messed up once again, even after five years: I woke up this morning with a back that just… did not feel aligned, and I knew immediately what the culprit was. I wasn’t in pain, and there was no clear tweak or pinch, but I definitely felt like I was walking around with something crooked in my lower back. I did lots of stretching and twisting to try to get my back in line.

I walked into the gym this morning and told him, “I’m never using kettle bells ever again.” He gave me a concerned look, but he was in a training session with a trainee at the time. I got on a treadmill for my cardio session. Once he was done and I was near the end of my cardio session, he walked over to me and stared me dead in the eye. He snapped his fingers and motioned for me to get off the treadmill, stat.

With that fierce look in his eyes, I knew that shit was getting real. And I had a feeling that if I didn’t get off that treadmill in that instant, he would have probably stopped my machine and pulled me off.

First, he told me he knew what I was doing wrong. And when I did the kettle bell (or, well, what I thought was the kettle bell) motion, he confirmed what his suspicion was: my form was wrong. And when he observed more and touched my abs, he declared that not only was my form wrong, but I wasn’t engaging my core enough. “A kettle bell swing is a hinge, NOT a squat!” I tried again. “What did I say about the squat? No squat. HINGE. Too much bend in the knees. You need to feel this in your hamstrings. Squeeze that core. SQUEEZE. IT. I NEED THOSE HIPS MORE SOLID!” And then, if that wasn’t bad enough to identify two things I was doing wrong, he said he could tell from my hips that I was neglecting my pre-exercise glute-strengthening exercises he taught me that he insisted I had to do as a warm-up before any, any exercise moving forward. Geez, he’s like my mom; I can’t hide anything from him…

“This is not just to address an injury: this is to warm your body up so that you have a strong foundation,” he admonished me as I sheepishly admitted I hadn’t done the pre-exercises in a month. “As we approach 40, different things in our bodies just get a little weaker, and we have to give them extra love to prevent injury. You have to focus, focus, focus, engage your core, and do the pre-warm up before all else. This is for your health, your wellness. Don’t just mindlessly exercise without thought. You need to focus!”

He said we’re all guilty of mindlessly exercising, of not engaging our core, of getting lazy with warming up. But we needed to do this things even more as we get older. He’s totally right. I probably needed this scolding, this “tough love” wake-up call to call out that even if I am working out 5-6 days a week, none of that really matters if my focus is off or if my form is incorrect or if my stability is a bit wobbly. Sometimes, we really need to get back to basics to get to where we want to be. And it’s really easy to forget the basics when you’ve been exercising so regularly for decades.

Differing approaches to parenting regarding choking hazards

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Today, Kaia and I met up with a friend and his daughter, who is about eight months younger than Kaia, for lunch and an outing to Central Park. As we were getting settled in and after we ordered our food, Kaia asked for a snack. So I whipped out a bag of unsalted peanuts that I packed for her. I laid some out on her plate, and she started grabbing them and stuffing them in her mouth.

As soon as my friend saw the nuts on Kaia’s plate, his eyes widened, an apparent frown showed up on his face, and he raised his voice. “Wait, you’re giving her peanuts?” he exclaimed. “Really?”

Initially, I wasn’t sure what he was reacting to. Did he object to peanuts or legumes as a snack? Did he think it was unhealthy? Or did he perceive it to be a choking hazard?

“Yes… What’s wrong with peanuts?” I said, confused, handing Kaia more when she asked for more. “They’re unsalted, and they’re a healthy source of protein and a whole food. What’s wrong with peanuts?”

“All right, then,” he said. After I pushed him for his objection, he said he thought nuts were a choking hazard up until age 5, so even though most of the peanuts were halved, he still didn’t trust giving them to his daughter. I offered to share some with his daughter, and he vigorously waved his hand to indicate he didn’t want her to eat them. I tried to tell him that every child is different, and obviously you need to know your own child and what they are capable of…. plus, you also have to be comfortable feeding your child of a young age whatever it is they are eating. He waved me off, clearly not wanting to talk about this. He told me he knew of a kid in another classmate’s previous class who had choked to death on a whole nut. He cited another article he read about another kid choking on other similarly sized foods. And he said he’d only allow his child to eat a peanut if I broke it into a sixth of a piece. I think at this point, we were nearing the point of insanity, but I refrained from making this comment. His daughter is almost three years old, and I’d seen her eat far larger things in my presence. I think this level of overprotection was just too much, but again, I said nothing to contest it.

“I didn’t realize you were this cautious with her eating,” I said, still confused. “I have offered nuts to her before when (your wife) was around, and she was happy to let her eat them. In fact, she ate them back then! I think they were cashew halves.”

He shrugged. “Well, I’m not having any more kids, so this is all I’ve got!” I looked at him with a slight eye roll; yeah, because I’m planning to have boat loads more kids after Kaia!

In general, I’ve never really said anything with friends who have young kids when I don’t agree with their approaches or what they do with parenting or feeding. I never said anything when I’d seen him or his wife previously spoon feeding their daughter purees even though I strongly believe in baby-led weaning; granted, I am biased, though, because Kaia ultimately decided on that path. I offered her miniature versions of our food and purees at the same time when she was sixth months of age; she categorically refused the purees and leapt right into hand held foods and never looked back. I never said anything when I saw their pouch consumption be pretty frequent, or when they refused to let even a grain of refined sugar into her diet (at least, to their knowledge).

Parents have to make their own choices for their kids, and I totally respect that; but what I get confused about is when people think that I am in some way being reckless or irresponsible in my own parenting choices, or as though I am trying to put my kid at risk of choking and dying. I started preparing for introducing my child to solid foods before I was even pregnant! I did so much research, and I read so many studies. I coached my own child through eating solids from day 1 and watched and observed her like a hawk. Frankly, I am the reason she is the great little eater she is today. I know my child better than anyone else when it comes to food preferences and eating abilities. Kaia was hand feeding herself at age 6 months. She was eating hot spices at age 7 months. She was eating chicken off the bone at 7-8 months and navigating all the bones and cartilage at age 1-1.5. She was devouring pretty much every vegetable in her baby months. She was eating whole grapes at age 2; she started picking around a cherry pit at age 2.5. With eating, she has always been advanced for her age both in skill and in wide preferences for what she will eat. Food has for obvious reasons been a huge priority in my parenting with her, as I want her to flourish in her tastes and abilities with eating. So I think I’d be the best person to make the call on whether she can eat whole or half peanuts or not. I also think you kind of have to put your kid in somewhat challenging situations so they can learn and figure it out. When Kaia started picking out cartilage and bone pieces from bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks, that’s when I knew that she could handle more “questionable” foods. Plus, it’s always with our supervision.

I am not a fan of helicopter parenting and strongly dislike overly cautious approaches to parenting in any form — food or non food. But hey, I’ll let my friends do whatever the hell they want — as long as they let me do what I want with my own kid.

“This is what it’s like to live”

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Unlike most Mondays, today I went to my SoHo coworking space. I was thinking about doing it anyway since I realized I had one March credit I had to use (I get four credits per month; it’s use-it-or-lose-it), and I want to use whatever perks I can get value out of from work as much as possible. But when a Brooklyn friend said she was taking Monday off and suggested we have lunch together, I decided it would be a good idea to meet semi-half way and meet up in Chinatown. We met up at one of my favorite Malaysian spots, Kopitiam, which she’d never been to before but loved (it’s an easy place to love; I have not brought a single person here who did not like it). Since my work schedule was relatively light, we enjoyed char kway teow, pandan chicken, fried duck tongues, Malaysian style French toast, lychee bandung, and iced Milo over two hours worth of chatter.

I told Chris what we ate, and in his usual snark, he made comments about what a busy work day I had and, “That sounds like a very luxurious Monday lunch!” If there is one thing I can never complain about with my current job, it’s the level of ownership I have over my schedule, as well as the flexibility I have to work wherever I want. I’ve had three managers now over the last almost five years, and every single one of them has agreed on the philosophy of: just get your work done, and no one will bother you about when/whether you are online.

It made me think about my neighbor I saw yesterday, who works as a doctor and is originally from Turkey. Her husband is French from France, and they both sound like they have very intense jobs. After their toddler goes to sleep at night, they both have to be back on their computers doing work and emails. She lamented how grueling it is, especially when she has to prepare all of her son’s school meals. It gets really tiring since she’s in the office five days a week, and her husband is in the office at least three days a week. So when she’s doing food prep for the week on Sunday, it’s almost like battling for time because it’s either she makes food OR she spends time with her son. He’s only engaged in the cooking if they’re making cookies, she said with a smile. The few weeks they go back to France or Amsterdam or somewhere where they have family, her parents will come up from Turkey and siblings will come from other European countries, and they will spend quality time together, 100 percent away from work. The kids will play and have fun together, and they will actually relax. She mentioned how it felt like, “All we seem to do here in America as foreigners is work, work, work. It’s so expensive here, so we don’t have a choice but to work around the clock. And so it almost feels like the only time we really get to enjoy life is when we take these trips together and spend quality time as a (wider) family. These are the times when it’s like a reminder to us: this is what it’s like to really live.”

Sometimes, I wonder if the last 17 years of working has really brought me any actual meaning into my life. I haven’t worked to increase equality in the world. I don’t save lives. I’m not researching cures for cancer or Alzheimer’s. I’m not trying to eradicate fake news and educate the masses. I basically have worked for a bunch of for-profit companies where at the end of the day, I’ve worked hard (well, most of the time) to make rich, mostly White people even richer. But then I realize… I have it really, really good. I met my life partner, husband, and father to my Kaia Pookie through work. I’ve met so many good friends and genuinely good hearted people across all the companies I’ve worked at. And I’ve also had a level of work flexibility that most people I know completely envy and wish they had. Life, I suppose, is all about give and take.

Wisdom teeth removal and a liquid diet

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In the U.S., it’s pretty normal to have your wisdom teeth removed when you’re a teenager or in your early 20s. The logic the dentist tells you (and has you believe is true…) is that your mouth will be overcrowded, that the wisdom teeth growing in later will start pushing up against all your other teeth, and thus they will ruin any orthodontic work (read: braces) that your parents (and their dental insurance) so heavily invested money in. They tell you that wisdom teeth serve no purpose other than to be a nuisance, so they must be removed! However, it seems like wisdom teeth removal is likely a reason why our mouths have gotten smaller over time, which have led to issues such as teeth grinding (bruxism), breathing problems, and a plethora of other issues that only the modern human seems to have experience with.

Chris never had orthodontic work, nor did he have his wisdom teeth removed as a young adult. But alas, this past week, he’s been having a lot of pain back there, so he went to a dental specialist yesterday to get this checked out. He ultimately made the decision to have all four of them removed. Let’s be clear here: removing adult teeth or wisdom teeth is no small feat. It’s not like when you’re a kid, and you’re pulling out a teeny tiny baby tooth with zero roots. Adult tooth roots, and especially wisdom teeth roots, GO DEEP. It’s a surgery, not a simple extraction. They are large, deep, and leave huge holes in your mouth. Those holes can trap food, and they need to be flushed out.

So when Chris came back with four holes in his mouth, plus a little post-surgery care kit, Kaia immediately noticed something was wrong with Daddy. “Daddy, what happen to your mouth?” Kaia said. “Are you hurt? You can’t talk?”

Chris’s mouth was stuffed with gauze getting soaked with blood gradually. He was coming off of numbing medication, and he was very understandably lethargic and slow moving. After procedures like this, it makes sense to have soft or liquid foods, so I suggested he have some oat porridge. I made some, but he said it was too “grainy,” so he had one bowl, and I left the other bowl for myself today. Then, he suggested that I could get him some “thick” soup at Whole Foods. I ended up going to the hot bar and picking up a large container of wild seafood chowder. Unfortunately, he was so uncomfortable eating the solid food pieces that he ended up picking out almost all the salmon and potatoes. Today, he seems a bit better. I made some vegan white bean soup and pureed it for him. But he’s getting cabin fever given he hasn’t been able to go anywhere. Plus, outside of soup, soup, oats, tea, and yogurt with jam, he hasn’t really had much else to eat.

These are the times you really realize how important food is to you (okay, well, us). It’s not only a source of sustenance, but it’s also a source of joy given how lucky we are to have such a vast variety of food available to us. We had ordered Filipino food from a nearby spot on Friday, yet he’s not going to be able to eat any of it given the texture, so Pookster and I will have to eat the rest. Adult wisdom teeth surgery stinks, even if it is necessary.

Tweaked neck

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Since my mid-twenties, every now and then I’ve had some kind of an annoying tweak, spasm, or pain during or after exercise. It hasn’t occurred that often, maybe less than once a year, but the fact that it occurs is always annoying. The worst time was back in 2018-2019 when I tweaked something in my lower back, and I couldn’t do much cardio for over a week without “feeling” it in my lower back. I try to do all the right things and stretch before, during, and after exercise. I try to warm up and do a proper cool down. But the tweaks still occasionally happen.

Yesterday morning, I was doing a strength training class via my Alo Moves app and was using light weights overhead when suddenly, I moved the weights above my head and TWEAK! I could feel something feel tight and uncomfortable on the right side of my neck. I tried to massage it out and stretch it, but nothing helped. Later that evening, I asked Chris to massage the area with some tiger balm. After a night’s rest, it does feel better, but it definitely isn’t 100 percent yet.

They always say to keep active and to keep up your strength training as you get older. I’m lucky that I haven’t gotten injured very often, especially compared to some of the horror stories I’ve heard. But these are the moments when I think…. Great. I try to do the right thing, and wham! Then, there’s pain.

Packing for Las Vegas – the dress I almost forgot about

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This morning, I packed my bag for a four-day work trip to Las Vegas this week. My company’s annual kickoff is being held there this year. This Thursday, we have a party where we’re expected to dress up. While a lot of my female colleagues obsessed over Slack about what dress or outfit they’d buy, I opted out of the conversation immediately. I had no desire to go shopping or buy any new glitzy outfit that I’d wear once and then shove in the back of my closet, never to be worn or seen again. After all the spending on gifts around Christmas time, plus the money spent on travel, I really did not want to buy more disposable clothing for myself.

So instead, I went to the back of my closet to find dresses I haven’t worn in years, as in… since 2015-2016, way before Kaia was born. I found one navy-blue, backless Kookai dress that I loved and decided to try it on to see if it still fit. Yes, it definitely still fits. And if I remember correctly, I think I actually have more back definition this time than I did back in 2015 when I last remember wearing this thing! I felt a little self satisfied as I rolled it and packed it into my packing pod.

I might be older now, and I might be a mom, but I can still wear fitted, body hugging clothing. I’m happy I dragged this thing out.

“Are you an old lady?!” The candle tunneling saga takes a turn.

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One of the things I looked forward to upon our return home this month was my nightly winter ritual of lighting a scented candle and reading for about an hour before bedtime. I hate the cold weather, and I strongly dislike short days, but I do enjoy cozying up in bed to a good book with the heat on, my covers over me, and a flickering and beautifully fragrant candle to soothe my senses.

Unfortunately, all of that sensual, soothing “me time” came to a halt one night last week when I realized that my semi new Voluspa Saijo Persimmon candle was starting to tunnel. How was this possible? Candle tunneling is the candle lover’s worst nightmare. I did all the right things: I made sure there was no draft in the room. I burned it for a minimum amount of time to allow the wax to melt evenly. I had the wick trimmed to the right length. What the heck was I doing wrong? So I immediately did a search on my phone to see what the culprit could be.

Unfortunately, it seems that candles do not like cold temperatures, either. A high quality scented candle prefers an ambient room temperature of somewhere between 65-75 F. What this means is: if a candle is lit while sitting in a temperature far below that (and yes, the thermostat in our rooms say that without the heat on, it’s somewhere between 40-50 F; we don’t keep the heat on in rooms we’re not using!), the candle fails to generate enough heat to melt the wax evenly. The heat then primarily melts the wax closest to the wick, leaving the edges of the candle solid and not burning properly. This uneven burning results in tunneling.

So what was I supposed to do, then, to prevent this from happening again — was I expected to turn the heat on in the room where I wanted to burn the candle and “prepare” the candle for lighting? That seemed so ridiculous. I get it when you want to turn the heat on in a room that you are preparing to enter, or for your spouse or even your dog or cat. But now I have to turn the heat on to prep the room.. for my CANDLE?

I was complaining about this to Chris earlier this week, and he gave me this bewildered look. “What are you, an old lady?” he exclaimed. “You’re researching causes for candle tunneling prevention?!”

He just doesn’t get it. When you have a fancy (read: expensive) and much loved candle which creates just the right room ambiance for you for your nightly bedtime reading ritual, you have to take care of it. You can’t just expect it to fix itself. I didn’t appreciate fancy candles ten years ago. But now, I wholly embrace them and everything they represent. Do I acknowledge this is a #firstworldproblem? Of course. But I have to take care of all my belongings!

Peritonsillar abscess and a fun trip to the Emergency Room

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I couldn’t sleep on Friday night because of the pain. I had my eyes closed while in bed from 8:45pm to 3:30am, wondering when the heck I would fall asleep. In between, I’d take sips of warm water and go to the bathroom to pee. When I woke up at around 7:30am, I knew I was not feeling any better… and in fact, I was feeling worse. I just had this gut feeling that this was far more than just HFM or tonsillitis. I went into the bathroom and shined my phone flashlight on the inside of my throat. The growth on my tonsil had not only gotten redder and bigger, but my uvula (you have one, too! It’s that little hanging ball in the back of your throat!) was completely pushed to the side due to the lopsided growth on my left tonsil. Having a “deviated” or lopsided uvula is very dangerous and is a reason in itself to go to the ER. The health article that outlined what “peritonsillar abscess” was basically gave me a bullet by bullet list of every single symptom I’d had this week, down to the very clear diagram of the abscess and how it creates a deviated uvula, which is how my throat looked! I felt worried and did not want the worst happening to me while traveling abroad. I needed to get this addressed ASAP, as in that morning.

I told Chris I had to make an urgent care visit, so he set me up with an appointment Saturday morning just a few blocks from our apartment. I walked over and was lucky to be the first person seen when they opened. The doctor took a look at me, listened to me discuss my symptoms in a near whisper (it hurt even more to speak that morning), and immediately told me I had to go the ER and explained what I had, which was exactly what I suspected: a peritonsillar abscess. She wrote me a note to get admitted to the ER. I walked over to the hospital’s emergency department and got evaluated right away (in times like this, I’m so grateful I live just one block over from a major hospital!). I did NOT foresee myself going to the ER this week… in fact, other than getting admitted into the Obsetrics department overnight at Lenox Hill in 2021, I’d never gotten admitted into any hospital ever, so this was a bit scary to be told I had to go to the ER right away.

Even though I was the first patient admitted to the emergency room that morning, end to end, it still took 6+ hours before I did all the required tests, blood draws, IVs, medications, treatments, and was finally discharged. Two doctors were assigned to me and attempted to drain my abscess after my cat scan revealed an abscess on the left side of my throat that was about three times the size of a quarter. They were unsuccessful, so they had to page a ENT specialist on the other side of the hospital to assist. It took him almost an hour to come, but I was so thankful when he did. He was really friendly and polite, explained everything very clearly to me, listened to everything I said and treated me with respect. He even insisted I just call him by his first name, Peter (that was very non-American of him; all doctors here always introduce themselves as Dr. “Last Name”!). He gave me two painful numbing shots with huge needles (!!) in the back of my throat, then proceeded to drain the abscess, or at first, attempted and failed, as well. Then he had to keep re-aiming and moving the needle (oh, what joy!) to get into the right spot. Even with the area numbed, it was absolutely miserable. Then, he did a rather large incision and fully drained the last bits. And as if THAT were not enough, with the two major areas where he drew out pus, he had to inject sodium chloride to cleanse the open wounds, and that was truly the cherry (or the scream) on top. The cup that held all the pus was pretty hideous; part of me wishes I took a photo of it just to document all the crap I’ve gone through in my motherhood journey as a way that I can tell Kaia, “See? This is how much Mummy loves you! Look at what I had to deal with because of you!” The entire process with the ENT, end to end, was over 30 minutes. Thirty miserable, intense, awful minutes. I wish this experience on no one, even all the people in my life who have knowingly wronged me.

All three doctors marveled over how well I dealt with the abscess draining. One of the attendings chuckled and said that women overall handle it far, far better than any men, but I probably was the best patient when it came to not moving, squirming, or screaming. The ENT doctor insisted that I must have extremely high pain tolerance because I never once asked him to stop or slow down, even when there were more difficult parts. They said that unfortunately, peri-tonsillar abscesses are actually relatively common. They see anywhere from 5-7 cases every week, and occasionally even more. Nothing really puts you more at risk for it (other than being around young kids, ahem). They say that perfectly healthy people just get it, and that it’s really just bad luck. They’re just happy that I came in today as opposed to waiting longer because in the absolute worst cases, the abscess spreads and could cause pneumonia or even SEPSIS.

I always laugh when people talk about high pain tolerance. I went through IVF, pregnancy, pregnancy sciatica, and a completely unmedicated labor and birth. Plus, I survived 14 months of breastfeeding that included pumping as well as two horrible milk clogs, one of which, to this day, still has a remaining scar on the side of my breast to remind me of my breastfeeding woes. If I am not on the top of the pain thresholds for humanity, then I don’t know who the hell is other than those really sad, unfortunate souls who have been tortured and raped in wars or nearly burned/beaten to death and still living.

So I finished my antibiotic IV. They checked my face and throat for swelling. I kept spitting out endless mucus and blood from my drainage and incision. They gave me two prescription painkillers, an antibiotic, and a steroid to take for the next 6-10 days. I got discharged at 4pm yesterday after over six hours in the ER, and I went to to the pharmacy to pick up my meds. And then I finally went home to Chris and Kaia. Chris spent much of the afternoon on hold trying to change our travel itinerary, and I’m sure Kaia was angsty because she had to stay home all day. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for them not knowing what was going to happen next with my ER discharge time constantly changing. They originally told me I’d be out by 2, best case, but I didn’t end up actually walking out until just past 4. We’d never have made our 5:30 flight out of JFK in time.

It’s okay, though. I’m happy I acted on my gut and went to Urgent Care, and then the ER, to get this abscess addressed and drained, plus the medications I needed. It means we’d have one day less in Europe, and we ended up having to cut Luxembourg entirely out of the itinerary. But now, we do have more time in Paris and the same amount of time in Strasbourg. I can’t really complain about having another night at home to rest, or an extra day to explore Paris.

This is yet another grim, painful reminder to me how important health is, and how it really trumps all else. If you don’t have your health, you truly have nothing else.

Massive growth on my left tonsil

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I woke up this morning hoping to feel better, but instead, I woke up to shine a light into my throat to discover that the HFM growth on my tonsil had only gotten larger. I cannot even open my mouth now past a certain extent without it hurting. Pushing my tongue down so that I can properly see the full growth is painful in itself. Talking hurts. Eating everything hurts. Even things you’d think would be soothing like hot liquids and soups just feel irritable. I took some honey and prescription strength ibuprofen, which seem to be helping a bit. Even breathing hurts since there’s wind that goes through your throat every time you breathe (hence… why it’s called a “wind pipe”).

Every time I have gotten sick like this because of little illnesses that Pookster has picked up, I always jokingly tell myself, “It was worth it to have a child, right? This is all making me stronger?”

Third time’s a charm with Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease

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I knew I was coming down with something again earlier this week. I could feel my throat getting sore. But it wasn’t until last night when I suddenly realized my toes and fingers felt painful in certain areas that I wondered if I had contracted hand, foot, mouth disease… for a third time? After dinner, I shined a light into my throat, and there it was: all the spots along my tonsils and back of my throat. I looked closely at my toes in the areas where I felt pain and sensitivity, and there were tiny little red dots that were painful to touch.

Here I am again, for the third time in my child’s life: with hand, foot, and mouth disease. The first time, in early 2023, I had it the worst: I had a fever, massively sore throat, body aches, the works along with all the spots that I somehow failed to notice until a doctor pointed them out to me. That was when Kaia picked up HFM from some kid in the building’s play room. The second time was summer 2023, where I had the spots and a sore throat, yet I was still functional and able to do meetings and calls, go to the gym, and do most things other than socialize in person. This time, the feeling of blades in my throat are the worst. This afternoon when having a quick verbal exchange with Chris, it felt like every word that came out of my mouth was like a cut in my throat. My fingers and toes are very uncomfortable. But the good news is that I don’t have a fever or body aches!

It’s okay, though. I’m resilient. I can get through all this. Pookster’s illnesses, even when she is asymptomatic, make me stronger, too, right? And the good news is that we still have plenty of food to eat so that I don’t have to cook. We have Vietnamese garlic noodles, roast chicken, stir-fried gai lan, as well as leftover rice and dal makhani! Hopefully, they won’t feel like blades going down my throat when I eat it all.