The Fieldhouses... join us on our journey: Jet Lag, Speechies, Aggie, and Dr. Lou

Jet Lag, Speechies, Aggie, and Dr. Lou - Day 4

They say on the third day it gets ya. Oh boy, did it get us. We thought, being the professional travelers we are, that we were just too good for jet lag. We spoke too soon. We had big plans to go out to the night market Sunday night, but when we went back to our hotel for a little siesta, it quickly turned into a slumber party. Hence, we completely missed the night market and we woke up at around 1-3 in the morning. Fantastic. We laid around for about 6.5 hours, during which we watched some more golf and I took a freezing cold shower because the hot water wasn’t working (somehow my dad, who showered after I did, got tons of it. It’s definitely a conspiracy), before heading up to breakfast (once again toast, coffee, oranges, watermelon, and hard-boiled eggs).

After breakfast, we headed back up to our room to clean and pack up our suitcases for checkout at 11. We dragged our suitcases all the way to the metro, where we took a train to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital. Don’t let the name fool you into thinking that that’s where we were going… there are about a dozen Chang Gung hospitals in Taiwan. So, you have to be very careful which one you type into the search bar on Google Maps.

Once we got to the new city, we quickly realized that it was much, much nicer than the one we had previously been staying in. The food actually looked and smelled delicious instead of looking and smelling oily. We also finally found a boba shop that sold Thai tea, which dad was stoked about. I don’t think he realized that Thai tea came from Thailand and not Taiwan. When I informed him of this shocking piece of information, he said that both countries should sell it because it’s practically the same name.

After the delicious boba and walking around a little bit, we hailed an Uber for the second time in our lives and moseyed our way over to the Real Chang Gung Hospital. We only almost died once on the way here. As I’ve mentioned before, Taiwanese people are very aggressive, especially when encased in 4,000 pounds of armor.

The photo we sent Aggie to let her know her two new favorite people had arrived. Crazy Americans.

Eventually, we made it there safely and met with our point person, Aggie (pronounced “baggie” without the B). She has been our point

person for the past few months doing a lot of the coordinating behind the scenes. She brought us to our first of many stops of the day: the speech pathology office. There, we met two wonderful, bubbly ladies who spoke very good English and didn’t get mad when I accidentally squirted them with saline water (long story). Dad says that "Speechies" always have the best personalities in the medical field. They stuck a camera up my nose and had me do some speech and articulation tests, which I passed with flying colors (JK if I did I wouldn’t be there in the first place). They said, using some very fancy speechy terms, that my throat closure is 20-50% whenever I talk, when it should be 100%. We next talked about a plan to propose to Dr. Lou and were off to the next stop. They were very impressed with how much I’m able to compensate for my lack of soft palate and said that my speech is surprisingly understandable. Guess all those years in speech therapy did pay off.

While making conversation with the Speechies, they inquired where we had stayed before coming here. Upon hearing where our hotel had been, they went wide-eyed and quickly informed us that we had been staying in the ghetto part of Taiwan, which explains the questionable quality of food and interesting experience at the night market (they actually both gasped when we mentioned this, confirming that our perceptions of where we had stayed weren’t too far off).

The following stops our BFF Aggie brought us to were the blood drawing department (quick note: I hate, abhor, despise needles and seeing my blood, which is less than ideal). Fortunately, the nurse who took my blood was the most experienced nurse I’ve ever had, and she only had to poke me once!! It was an answered prayer for sure), the chest x-ray department (where the changing room smelled like donuts), the anesthesiologist’s office (who had the personality of a potato), and a meeting with Dr. Lou and his 3 apprentices. We talked about what the surgery would hold, recovery, and what I’m going to be allowed to eat for the next few weeks (apparently not much). I hadn’t given a lot of thought to recovery because I was mainly focused on not starving to death after my surgery, but apparently there’s going to be a lot more involved than all of my previous surgeries. We are on our own for food when staying in the hospital so fortunately my dad packed a blender to make short work of the mystery 7/11 food. We will see how this goes.

There are 4 parts to this surgery:

Part 1: Since I’m having my final lip revision, they’re going to take some fat from my stomach and not my butt (take that, Molly, now you won’t be able to call me buttface!), mix it with some Botox, and inject it into my upper lip in order to prevent it from moving too much during the healing process to minimize the scarring. Basically, my upper lip will be pretty much numb, if not paralyzed, for about six months.

Part 2: Since I’m having a nose reconstruction/ rhinoplasty, the doctors are possibly going to be taking cartilage from my ear and then re-locate it to the tip of my nose. They showed me about 15 different cases where they had before and after pictures to help describe what they would be doing. He also thought, for some reason, that he would show me pictures of the process with how they do it with actual photos. I immediately looked away and wanted nothing to do with that. They also might graft some skin and put it on the bridge of my nose. I will also have to protect my septum, bridge, and tip of my nose while it heals, so I’m going to have to wear a plastic brace over it for anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months. I’m also going to have to wear these little plastic/rubber stints to shape my nostrils for 6 months for at least 4 hours a day.

Part 3: The doctor also came up with a game plan to hopefully close up the hole in the roof of my mouth that has failed many previous attempts. He is going to grab some fat from my hip and then place it in the roof of my mouth and then try to seal it up. He is not sure if this will be done through my nose or inside of my mouth.

Part 4: The trickiest part, Dr. Lou wants to take a flap from the back of my throat and drape it across to the hard/soft palate to turn the large hole into two smaller holes. The concern he wants enough skin to limit the air from going up into the nose when speaking and not too much so that I get sleep apnea from not enough airway. I trust that he will choose the perfect amount. My biggest concern I expressed was that it would take.

After we finally finished pre-op (which was about 3.5 hours), we headed to our very fancy room, which included a hospital bed, a cot, a couch, a chair, a desk, a bathroom, and a very fancy bidet toilet that allows you to heat up the seat, the water, and do a bunch of other things.

For dinner, we had some microwavable meals from a 7/11 inside the hospital (we finally found a microwave!!). Apparently, the locals are obsessed with 7/11. Thanks to our friend Aggie, we were finally able to figure out what was edible for our not-so-adventurous appetites, so we no longer need to worry about starving to death. We spent about 30 minutes in the store coming up with a game plan for liquid diet and soft food.

It’s a little weird spending the night in the hospital before I’ve even had my surgery, and even more weird staying 1-2 days after. In America, as soon as I wake up from anesthesia and put my clothes on (with lots of assistance), they load me into a wheelchair, push me out to the curb, hand me a barf bag, and send us on our merry way back home.

My surgery tomorrow is only going to be around four hours long. As I’m writing this, I’m not very stressed, which is definitely new for me because I’m usually a nervous wreck the night before. There’s another answered prayer for sure.

A few days ago, my mom told me that she was talking to a friend and told her about this little excursion, and the friend told her that she just had a feeling that God gave her a word to share: ordain. I know what the word means, but I can’t express the exact definition, so I looked up dictionary.com. The definition that fits this situation is “to order (something) officially.” I looked up the biblical version and it’s something like “(of God or someone in authority) to order something to happen”. Something that I’ve been thinking about a lot is if God really wanted me to do this. What if I had been so desperate to be done with everything that I convinced myself that what I wanted was what God wanted? What if He didn’t actually want me to come to Taiwan, and that this surgery isn’t in His plan for me? Am I really walking by faith or am I actually walking by sight and manipulating my circumstances? The reminder that God has ordained everything that I have gone through, am going through, and ever will go through is a huge relief. If this trip wasn’t in God’s plan, He would have made that obvious to me and He would have stopped this process because He has complete control over my life and everyone else’s.

My surgery is scheduled for 10 AM here which is 7 PM in California. Thus concludes day 4 of Taiwan.

P.S. Taiwan is going to get hit by a typhoon starting tomorrow for the next couple of days. That should be interesting.