Enjoy
“I may become the first Lotus du Coeur patient who needs to go on diet!”
Seated in the wheelchair, Chong-Lan rolled out of Lotus du Coeur with her eldest sister pushing behind. Passing by the temple, the prayer room, and the Linden Residence, she was heading for Café Taiwan on the third floor. This is the second time she checked in at Lotus du Coeur. Chong-Lan was probably the most loyal customer of this café. Most of the time, she would ask for afternoon tea and snacks to be served in her hospital chamber. Although it was a little chilly today, she felt cheerful with the sunshine. “Usually I take a Garden Sandwich, but coming down here today, I feel like a change. Since it’s quite chilly, hotpot will be an awesome choice!”
A boiling hotpot was served at her table. Chong-Lan asked her sister to send back the bowl of rice which was served along and to ask for an empty bowl back. She said that nothing would be wasted in this way. Then, one by one, Chong-Lan placed every kind of vegetable into the pot. With chopsticks in one hand and a spoon in the other, she savored the delicacy with great pleasure. There were carrots, tofu, broccolis, pumpkin…… so on and so forth.
“And the patient ends up eating the most!” In order to gain enough strength to maintain a good quality of life, Chong-Lan made efforts to eat sufficiently. She said that she was trying to break the record in Lotus du Coeur – a Lotus du Coeur patient ate so much that she would have to go to the weight losing class!
Undergoing the period of surgery and chemotherapy was the toughest days for Chong-Lan, but thanks to her open-minded personality, she could always spot heart-brightening happiness out of bitterness. In the evening before the surgery, Chong-lan told her eldest sister, “My skin is so fine and scar-free. Since I saw some people got very ugly scars before, maybe I should ask the surgeon to sew my cut better? I should take my eyeliner and write on my belly saying, ‘Please sew me better.’” Worrying that the surgeon might laugh too much while sewing, she decided to ask the surgeon in person. “I was still thinking about my appearance just hours before the surgery,” laughed Chong-Lan at herself.
“The soup is so tasty!” With satisfaction on her face, Chong-Lan was in a good mood to keep on chatting.
Another time was during the surgery to install an artificial vein. She was only partially sedated, so finally she got the chance to show the entire surgical crew how hilarious she could be. Chong-lan told the surgeon that, since it was quite boring in the operation room, she was going to tell them a joke. “I was working in a Chinese medical clinic, and one day there was this patient who walked in for a visit. There are several doctors in our clinic, so the front desk asked him whether he would like to ask for any doctor in particular. The patient looked around, and then he asked for Dr. Po-Ya Chang. Our front desk was just totally baffled! And the patient said, ‘If there is no doctor named as such, how come all the licenses on the wall has this name on them?’” And, it brought endless laughters to the operating room. (Note: Dr. Po-Ya Chang was then the Minister of Health.)
Not only did Chong-Lan enjoy very much from food savoring, but perhaps, she also digested away lots of worries in this process. Last year in August, accompanied by her mother, her second sister and her cousin, Chong-Lan went on her last trip abroad. The destination was her most favorite New Zealand. “I really miss their ice cream! It's delicious and tasted very thick. Although it was the middle of winter, it wasn't cold and I felt really, really comfortable! It's a pity now that I can't eat anything icy, but anyway, I can't get it here and now.” Chong-Lan could always turn herself to the bright side at the next second, while her company was still trying to squeeze out some words of comfort.
There was also a funny incident from that trip. Since her attending physician at Chang Gung was in Australia for an advanced training, Chong-Lan asked the nurse to e-mail him, saying that, to ease his homesickness for local delicacies, she was going to drop two glutinous rice wraps when her plane flew over Australia, and that he must not miss his catch.
“Sometimes when I drove, I'd have the wildest imagination.” Like a fairy holding her magic wand, Chong-Lan would murmur “green, green” when she drove close to traffic lights. When the lights turned out to be really green, she would think that her magic indeed worked that day and there must have been an elf helping her. Every time when she went back to the Tzuchi Hospital in Da-Lin for medical appointments and stopped by the parking entrance for a ticket, she would start to murmur, “Give me a parking spot. Please give me a parking spot. The closer the better!” Chong-Lan said it really worked, about nine out of ten times. In the end, Chong-Lan laughed as if embarrassed and said that sometimes it did not work, and that if it had worked each time, she would have become a billionaire by now. “Forget it. I just wish everything would go well.”
More than ten minutes later, she came to the bottom of her hotpot. Chong-Lan's cheeks became as rosy as if she had put on some make-up. Patting her own cheeks, Chong-Lan said that she was so full from this afternoon snack break that it was almost like she was having dinner. And, she would like to come back on Sunday.
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