Away and Under the Weather: Part 2

My roommate completely lost her voice the other day and I got to take her to the doctor's office. That and some stern emails from family and friends have reminded me that I really need to write again. (Plus, who doesn't need free therapy now and again?!)

#3 They're coming to take you away...
I remember when I was younger and heard ambulance sirens, my dad always did the exact same thing. He would break out in a chorus of "They're coming to take you away! Ha ha, ho ho, hee, hee,..." Fortunately, that has never happened to me through the years. I have never been taken away to the hospital (or "funny farm") by ambulance and have never NEEDED such urgent care that I've had to be attended to by paramedics. But that may have happened in Buenos Aires...I'm not sure.

Back in 2005, the spring semester (fall for Argentina) of my Junior Year at Purdue, I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina! This is where I first got the itch to travel (despite the following two stories). I lived with a middle-aged couple, Norberto and Luisa, whom I loved. Luisa spoke three languages (none of them English) and Norberto only spoke Spanish (and a few English words that he would yell out on occasion when he thought of them like "jacket!" or "fifteen!"). So I was able to practice my Spanish a lot which, as it turned out, was worse than I thought. I had more than a few language barriers. This was also the first time I was learning how to be a foreigner! (I really hope I've gotten better at it.) And the thing you learn as a foreigner (and I've said this before) it's called culture SHOCK for a reason: you never know where and when cultural differences will strike.

My semester didn't end until July but Purdue's ended in May, so I was blessed to have my sister and one of my best friends come down to visit me! Unfortunately, I got sick during a few days of their two weeks there so I didn't go with them to visit Iguazu Falls up north. I had a sore throat with white dots and a sinus infection. This is not a life or death ailment. I broke out my "common sense" treatment that I learned from home and was going to get better so I could hang out with my sister and friend when they got back. I took some over-the-counter meds, drank lots of warm liquids and went home as soon as classes were done to take a nap at 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Pills, fluids, rest...right?

The problem with "common sense" is that when you leave your own country, YOUR "common sense" is not so common anymore. It becomes "foreign sense" and the locals will need to use THEIR "common sense" to help you. I got home and Luisa noticed I was not well. (Of course she noticed right away, I loved her, such a mom!) I had been there for a few months so I was able to stumble through an explanation of my symptoms and told her I was going to rest. She mentioned something about the doctor's but I told her I was too tired to go and that I would rest first and maybe go later if I was still sick. If this were happening to me NOW, I would know to go into a little more details about my American-style plans to get better. But I was tired and went to my room to pass out. And all Luisa heard me say was that I was too tired and sick to go to the doctor's office.

I woke up two hours later to Luisa knocking on my door followed by what looked like two EMTs rushing into my room with their emergency kit. I sat up a little too dumbstruck to speak in English, let alone Spanish, and they started to examine me. Out came scopes and flashlights, they lifted my shirt to check my lungs, asked me questions about my symptoms (most of this was answered by Luisa faster than I could comprehend the question), wrote something down on a prescription pad and then left.

Luisa was about halfway through describing how much it cost and what medicine I had to take when I burst into tears. Luisa stared at me absolutely confused as I tried to explain in sobbing Spanish that I wasn't dying and didn't understand why she called for an ambulance! (Of course, I hadn't actually seen an ambulance but I just assumed that one had shown up, sirens blaring, while I was sleeping.) It was common sense! You don't call for an emergency unless there is an ACTUAL emergency. When I was a kid, I was taught that you weren't supposed to call 911 unless you were dying, unconscious (or on your way), or at least had some your insides on the outside.

But no, my "foreign sense" was getting in the way. After lots of tears and slow Spanish (on both ends, thank you Luisa), I finally understood that paramedics had NOT been called for my sinus infection and sore throat. In Buenos Aires, there are private medically trained people (I still have no idea if they were doctors or nurses or something else) who make house calls. It took me a while to get this since my idea of a doctor who makes house calls only comes from the movies, as well as my idea of paramedics rushing in to give medical attention. Since there were two young people in jumpsuits and not an old man with a leather satchel, in my eyes I was about to get into trouble for dialing 911 with no actual emergency. So then I explained to Luisa why I was acting like a blubbering five-year-old and things started to get better.

There's no real moral to this story or lesson learned that I "won't do again". It's just one of those events that help make all future culture shocks a little less shocking.

#2 Left with a Temperature, Came Back with a Sling

It's always funny in cartoons when someone gets hurt because usually multiple things will happen at once. Homer hits himself in the eye with a hammer and then falls through the roof, probably landing on the only cactus in the house. It's less funny when it happens in real life and to you.

Bless her, I had the sweetest host-mom you could get. I was often sick in Buenos Aires and not always adjusting well being abroad for the first time. She always made sure I was ok and helped me with what I needed. So she was a little worried when I woke up to go on a weekend trip organized by my program with a fever. It was at 38 which didn't seem bad to me (I was told normal was 37). I was still getting used to Celsius and didn't realize that one degree put me up over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Anyway, I really wanted to go on this trip, six hours out of the city, on a bus, to the country... We were going to stay in cabins in the woods, go horseback riding, biking, and see some rock that turns around on its own. I got on the bus kind of proud that I was going to just push through my little bug and not let it spoil my weekend.

On the bus, I started to realize that I wasn't really feeling better. We got to the campsite and settled into cabins with our friends. I probably looked about as good as I felt so it was recommended to me that I rest a bit once we got there. The rock doesn't even turn by itself anymore so I wasn't missing much. For the next activity, we had a choice of which day to participate. The group was big so half would ride bikes that day and horseback ride the next, and vice versa. I loved both but hadn't been horseback riding for about 10 years and was really excited about going again! I didn't want to let my illness spoil that one so I put it off until the next day and went biking. Spoiler alert: I didn't go horseback riding.

Thanks to an energetic and adventurous grandfather, I've been cycling long distance since I was 12. But I was always on roads, on a road bike, with tires so skinny that you had to be careful not to hit a pebble, let alone a pothole. The bikes we went on this time were mountain bikes. Big tires. I was a little wobbly at first, not used to it, but then I really got into it! It was fun to hit the bumps and climb over rocks. I had a lot of friends back in the Purdue cycling club that I watched for years do cool things on mountain bikes and I wanted to try a few! So when I got to the top of a hill, I wanted to fly down. And I did. Really.

I don't completely remember the sequence of events because it was a while ago and happened kind of fast. Basically, I told everyone to go ahead of me so I could go fast down without hitting anyone. (Safety first.) I hit a rock or a log, a hole, or any combination thereof; the handlebars made a sharp turn, the bike stopped, and I didn't. I remember sitting up and actually smiling (thank you adrenaline) while someone picked rocks out of my elbow and washed it off with their water bottle. Someone got a towel and then I was riding back to town in a truck with a make-shift sling.

Let me emphasize that I was going back to town, not city, town. It was six hours away from the big city; there was no hospital, just a local clinic. Fortunately, the director of the program, Andrea, was with me by now and had taken so much pity on me that I was allowed to speak to her in English. It wasn't until he was examining me that I even remembered that I had temperature. So he cleaned me up but really making me better took a little more work. Apparently, I had a temperature because I had an infection! (I can't remember if it was in my nose or my throat. Like I said, I was sick a LOT in Buenos Aires.) I needed antibiotics. First of all, the clinic didn't carry antibiotics so he had to write me a prescription. Second, when I got the prescription filled across town (just a few stores down), it was not a bottle of pills but something taped in Styrofoam. Andrea explained that we had to take it back to the clinic so the doctor could give me the antibiotics. Yep, penicillin shot in the ass, after which Andrea had to help me pull my pants back up since I only had one working arm. It wasn't one of my high moments as a study abroad student or representative of my country. He told me to rest when I got back to the cabins. So that took care of the illness, on to the injury!

Fortunately, I didn't break anything in my arm, but I injured a tendon and it needed to be help up for a week or so. The other thing the clinic didn't have was slings! The doctor cleaned me up then pointed down the road to a clothes shop that sold "pañuelos" (a giant handkerchief that acted as a scarf, very popular in Argentinean fashion) and told me to buy one so I could make a sling.

When I saw my friends again, the adrenaline had worn off, the fever had kicked in, and I was wearing a hot pink sling. I barely sampled some amazing campfire wine that night then went to bed. The next day when I should have been horseback riding, I was sleeping off my fever alone in the cabin. It was cold but I kept having to open the windows due to hot flashes and from being so sick that I actually smelled.

After a 6 hour bus ride home (I felt bad for anyone sitting near me), I went home to see Luisa's, "My poor daughter, what will we do with you?" expression and then went to bed. I wore the sling for a week and nursed a bruise that covered half my left thigh. I still have a scar on my elbow and my right arm doesn't extend completely anymore.

And yet, knowing what I know now, I still would have gotten on the bus.

The final one is coming! I promise not to put it off for as long as I did this one. Then maybe I'll actually write something current!

Away and Under the Weather: Part 1

The end of this month will mark my six months in Hong Kong!! And there is one culture shock that I haven't had to deal with yet here...until now. I finally got sick in Hong Kong. It's just a run-of-the-mill flu, but it's painful and it really sucks when it's in another country. Being sick here, though, is actually not so bad. I am allowed to take sick days if I really need them and if I do need to go to the doctor's I can look up where to go (in English!) on the Internet. I have not always been so lucky though and getting through the last few days I've had to remind myself that this is not the worst I've ever experienced.

I have been very fortunate that I have never contracted any truly foreign disease, broken anything, or fell into a fire pit while drunkenly trying to hurdle it (which happened at least once a summer to someone in Korea). However, I have had plenty of normal mishaps and illnesses that are a little more interesting (in retrospect) since they happened abroad. Here are my top (or maybe bottom) five.

#5 New Year's Resolution: Work Somewhere with Sick Days

This is actually two stories but they're related. My first two New Year's in Korea did not go so well. I learned a lesson from both experiences. Unfortunately, it was the exact same lesson that just didn't stick the first time.

New Year's Eve of 2006-2007, I made it through a nice buffet dinner by the beach but not to the midnight countdown. I could tell I was getting sick and went home. I had been a little sick (mostly from hangovers) before in Korea but nothing I couldn't handle since I didn't have to be at work until about 3:00pm. I loved that part of my job. The downside? No holidays or sick days. And I mean it. I worked every Western Holiday and most Korean Holidays. On the two days of the year we did get off for absolutely mandatory Korean holidays, we made those up on weekends. And as for the sick days, when you are hired from another country (over the phone) mainly for being a native-speaker, it's because they don't have many just hanging around. And I worked for the rare company that didn't have Korean co-teachers in the classroom. For the first year or two in Korea, there was no one to replace us if we got sick. So we were politely told that we don't have sick days. The reality of this didn't really hit me until that first week of 2007.

And it wasn't just me that was sick. Four of our five teachers were sick that week. I was shaking with chills and fever for two or three days, living on pain medication. One of the other teachers was leaving his classroom every few hours to puke. And another teacher seemed to have contracted both our strains of the flu simultaneously. This was the week we realized our lack of time off. We worked December 31st and January 1st...at a school. We all taught sitting in chairs with our winter coats, hats and scarves. We were obviously sick and the kids didn't really bat an eye. It was expected that we would still be there. Oh how I missed the Western work ethic...

The next new year went on much better. I made it through midnight with a good crowd of people at a house party near my own house. I was getting a little drunk but not New-Year's-quality wasted. I was feeling very spirited as well since my friends made some homemade eggnog. Thank you Canadians!! At least, I felt that way until the next morning. I know what a hangover feels like, and I know when it's more than just a hangover. This was more. And I knew exactly what the "more" was: raw eggs. I was so in the spirit and grateful for something that resembled home (I don't even drink eggnog at home!) that I had two glasses. In a usual hangover, my head hurts so much, it tells my stomach what to do. I had that going on a little but my stomach was doing flips all on it's own too, and way more often than any normal hangover I've ever had. And so I had to tell myself again, so maybe it would stick, work somewhere with sick days.

#4 Korean Remedy: Stop Talking So Much

No one really knows why they get TMJ. It could be long term stress or you could have bit an apple wrong once. Any which way it happened, my jaw started popping on one side a few months after being in Korea. I ignored it like an idiot and eventually couldn't open my mouth wide enough to put two fingers in between my teeth. Around the same time that my mouth locked up I had a cold brewing as well with a pretty sore throat. That was enough sick for me to finally bring myself to go to the hospital.

Someone told me about a hospital that had one English speaking nurse for the whole hospital. (It sounds bad but there wasn't a huge demand and it meant that I was guided around the hospital the whole time.) She was a really nice nurse and I got to know her well over the years. I went back many times after that for acupuncture which is cheap and common in Korea. (That leads to whole other stories about med students, needles, and traditional Eastern sludge medicine.) The nurse took me around to all the doctors I needed except the Dentist for my jaw. Apparently, the local expert on TMJ had offices just down the street and I could go there (alone) after I was done at the hospital. First, though, the doctors needed to look at my infected throat and yet I couldn't open my mouth. And so I cursed my stupidity and procrastination as they shoved a scope down my nose and I watched my throat open and close on the video monitor next to my bed. Will I ever learn?

I found the dentist's office, opened the sliding door, and the first thing I notice is the shoe rack next to the door with a nice array of slippers to choose. Oh, Korea. Take your shoes off at home, restaurants, and now the dentist's office. The girls at the counter looked at me like I was the first Waegook (foreigner) they'd seen walk through that door. This may have even been true. But I knew what to do by now in situations like this one. I just handed them my ARC (Alien Registration Card, got to love the honesty) and sat down. They seemed quite pleased about this.

Fortunately, most doctors, most places you will go will have to know some English because some of their textbooks in medical school were in English and/or English proficiently is a requirement to get in since med schools have high standards. I actually got to see one of those textbooks because it was the best way this Dentist could explain what had happened to my jaw. And it didn't look like a med school textbook. It looked like a book written at a high school science level. Between that and some pretty pictures, I sussed out that the cartilage between my jawbones had actually popped out and the two bones were rubbing together. This was just the imagery I needed to forget about the tube down the nose. At this point, his wife, who was the other dentist at the Bubu ChiKwa (literally "Couple Dentist"), was finished with a patient and came over. She spoke much more English than her husband and was actually thrilled to be practicing. What a great day for them.

"You should come when the jaw is popping, the dentist can make a splint to fix it. Now it's bad, maybe you need surgery." Great, thanks for the guilt trip and terrifying possibility in the same breath. "He tries to put back first manual." Manual? Not a splint but not surgery? Exactly how do you pull the jaw apart enough to put the cartilage back "manually"? I figured this one out as it was happening. That piece of cartilage wants to be between the jawbones so if you separate them, hopefully it will just pop back in on its own. How do you separate them? The dentist sticks his thumb into the patients mouth and grabs the lower jaw. Then through a few quick moves in different directions, tries to dislocate the jaw just enough to allow the piece to pop back in there. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't have to go through the anticipation of knowing what he was about to do. The idea would have probably been worse than it actually was.

"The doctor did a good job, no surgery." Did he just dislocate my jaw? "We make you a splint now. You come back every month to adjust the splint." Which all turned out to be over $800. "The doctor gives you a list of foods not to eat." No cuttlefish, no problem there. "And you need to stop talking."

"Um, I'm a teacher, it's my job to talk."

"Stop talking so much."

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More stories to come! My current sickness is catching up with me and I need to sleep.