Sickness in Asia

Hey there, I don't know what I gotta say but I need to stay committed to my little blogueing effort and so I must write a little something something here. Let's see, things have been ok. Life has been a series of minor ups and downs but nothing outrageously exciting. I guess that is how normal life becomes wherever you live.

Probably the most amazing thing that I have witnessed since I have been here has been the wild effects of the Chinese medicine. I was battling with some serious ear ache problems and it was really messing with my professional judgement. I mean when your ears really hurt it doesn't really screw with any part of your body except the two small holes that go straight through to your brain. It was like the sickness made everything I heard or witnessed turn into some sort of irritating babble. Imagine having to go to class with a bunch of crazy loud ass Chinese lookin' kids with the feeling that your brain is going to explode. It was like that except that it was real and it was real sucky. I tried to be an ok guy but I was one cranky son of a bitch.

But hey I got off the subject of the medicine. I had another fantastic "what the hell am I doing" experience when I went to a "Medical clinic" (or so I thought) to talk to a doctor and/or get doped up on some feel good pills. I first gave it a shot and walked in to a sterile bright white room covered in shelves piled with different bottles of mysterious pills. I went up to the lady who was already looking at me like "please don't talk to me and ruin my whole day. I am just about to get off." I asked her as physically as I could, hands all in the air and whatnot, "can you help me? My ears are so hurt and I want to see a doctor. I don't know what to do." Normally I have to yell at Taiwanese people because somehow I think that screaming a foreign language into someones ear can make them understand this unknown language better. However, you add the fact that at this point my ears are so backed up with sickness that I can barely hear anything, and I am practically screaming at this poor woman.

She brings out someone else who makes me feel a little better because at least she has snappy glasses and a white lab coat. I go through the same awkward and loud description of my misery and she simply replies, "you no want heeya. We heeya makeah Chinee medcin. You wan go to oddah doctah." She continues with this to the best of her abilities. I mean I can't complain because all I could do was prepare about fifty cheh chehs (thank yous) upon my departure. She then wrote a bunch of hieroglyphics onto a piece of paper indicating some place. Who knows.

I continued to wonder around almost deaf at this point with no luck. At one point I thought I might have arrived into something right but it turned out to be some sort of third rate dentist on the forth four of a dilapidated building. I can honestly say that I just peeked in and saw a guy writhing in a chair with some sort of dentist over his face. It was scary and lets just say that I have added a third brushing to my daily schedule just to avoid any encounter like that in the future. I think that guy might have been involved in the inspiration for the hostel movie.

In the end I gave up for the night and spent the night pissed off on my couch feeling crappy and deaf.

The next day I tried to call off work because I felt even worse and what do you think my boss says? "How about you come to your first class (which is the worst and the loudest) and then I will take you to the doctor." Ok, sort of unfair trade but I guess I really did need some sort of interpreter.

Basically my boss, who is hot and young and I want her to get a divorce and run away with me, took me to another craptown clinic with coughing and wastebasket vomiting gallor. In Asia things like that are no problem to preform in public. You often hear loud burps and farts all over while on the busses here. Wonderful. I waited about 30 minutes before I was finally taken into a room that really did look like a torture chamber just with more lighting. My boss had left at this point because I kept saying how stupid I felt and how I really needed to grow up and figure shit out for myself. The doctor was hopefully a qualified doctor but in no way an English prof. He did a little "inspection" of my ear holes and then made his diagnosis; "Well, I see some information in there."
"Excuse me?" I replied.
"Yeah, I can rearry see some information there," he insisted.
"Well what kind of information?" I was really wondering what sort of information this man had found. Had someone placed some microfilm in my ear in the night only to be discovered by this mask wearing doctor of misinterpretation?
"Yeah, redness and information," he says.
"Oooohhhhhhh," I say, keeping off the upcoming laughter, "you see some inflamation do you?"
"Yeah, inframation," he said so wonderfully coherently.

Half of the appointment was us going through difficult and funny conversations like that one. In the end he sent me the wrong way towards a pharmacy.

I found the place and was given a wild "cocktail" of pills that the Asians are known to prescribe. All sorts of stuff and even some eye drops that I was instructed to drop in my ear.

In the end, the funniest part was that after only 30 minutes of dropping my crazy concoction of pills I needed to take a quick pee. I peed and almost fell over in shock at the sight of what had just been polluted out of my body. My pee was school bus yellow. No that doesn't even do it justice. Have you ever had that orange Gatorade? Well I was pissing that out and it scared the hell out of me. I couldn't believe it. I thought if I were to cut myself my blood would be a solid bright green goo as if I truly was turning into some sort of monster. It was crazy and I made sure that over the next four days, while taking this bizarre medicine, everyone I knew here had either seen the magical pee or at least heard about it. I was truly fantastic and I hope that it will never part from my memory.