Just say "Blahhhhh"

The travel, the foreign cultures, the fabulousness of it all.  Not quite so fabulous when you get sick. (I should add a disclaimer here—I have great insurance and get some of the best medical care in the world.  It’s just all very different in another language.)

My first “fun” experience was in China.  I discovered an odd shaped mole growing on me one day that I hadn’t noticed before.  So I went to BJU (Beijing United), a very good “Western” style hospital and saw the dermatologist.  She excised the mole and sent it in to the lab. 

Meanwhile, I got very busy dealing with my very sick cat who was in liver failure. I finally realized she wasn’t going to make it and it would be far kinder to put her out of her misery.  So I plucked up my nerve and went to the third Chinese vet that I had been to during this process and said “goodbye” to Nilufer the Wonder Cat, Turkish street-cat extraordinaire. She was literally dying in my arms when I got the call to come to the hospital for my lab results.

I took a taxi straight from the vet’s to the hospital, sobbing the entire way.  I had regained composure—most auspicious in China--by the time the doctor came into my patient room. She was holding some kind of multi-color cellular looking picture and began explaining it to me in her best English.  Unfortunately her best English sounded like this to me….”blah blah blah blah CANCER blah blah blah blah MELANOMA blah blah blah blah YOU CAN DIE FROM THIS.  (Ok, maybe she didn’t say that last bit, but you can see where my brain was.)  There I was, all alone at a hospital in CHINA for God’s sake, I had just put my cat to sleep, and now this.  What do you do?  Well, I don’t know about you but I just started bawling like a baby.  The doctor was horrified.  “Why you cry?” she asked, very puzzled.  “Because first I had to put my cat to sleep and now I may have cancer,” I wailed.  “No, no,” she said, patting my back.  “I say ‘we get crear edges so NO cancer but part we get could be meranoma if we don’t get.’ But we got.  So no probrem.   So good news!... and I think your sreepy cat wake up!” 

Now I find myself in Russia, with an ear that has been blocked for a solid week after my flight from Istanbul.  After sitting in a meeting today where the entire faculty burst into applause, a telephone began ringing at my table.  You know, the old-fashioned, rotary dial kind of ring. I was looking around for the phone when I finally realized there was no phone--it was my right ear.  Our school almost-doctor took a look at it with his gadget and said I had fluid in the middle ear and I should go to the ENT doc.  So, it was time to venture off to the Euro Med Clinic. 

Again, outstanding medical care.  These top foreign clinics all have the latest medical devices and gadgets that you just never see in the States, unless you go to some kind of specialist (and pay a zillion dollars).  The doctor poked and prodded and stuck all manner of microscopic camera things up my ears and nose, all the while saying, “Do not worry.”  (Hey, if you have ever read Stephen King’s “On Writing”, where he tells about the ear doctor plunging the needles into his eardrum to drain the fluid off, not once but THREE times, you would have been a little tense, too.)  Then the doc began ringing one of those little tuning fork things and sticking it on every bone in my face.  I could hear the ringing very loudly and clearly… from my left ear.  Not a thing from the right, I just felt some vibrations. But I wasn’t too worried—hey, he said not to!  Then we went to his desk and the doc said with a heavy Russian accent, “Blah blah blah fluid blah blah middle and inner ear.”  “Ok,” I said, “Do I just take some medicine for it or something?”  “Well,” he said, “Blah blah blah heavy antibiotics blah blah drops blah blah appointment with specialist blah blah intravenous treatment blah blah blah damaged cochlear nerve.”  “What?  But it can be fixed, right?” I asked, still cool as a cucumber.  “Maybe” he replied.

Did you ever see one of those old cartoons, where the character loses it --their eyes bug out of their head and that little hangy-down thing at the back of their throat actually begins vibrating with the depth of their scream?  “MAYBE?” “MAYBE?” WHAT DO YOU MEAN, ‘MAYBE’?” I asked.  (He only thought I was tense before.) “Blah, blah, blah highly likely blah blah blah must see the specialist.”  So all I know is I’m now taking a course of about a bazillion horse-sized antibiotic pills, some drops up my right nostril (“blah blah don’t put in other nose blah blah cause damage.”)  Huh?  I’m taking drops that could permanently damage my nostril?  Anyway, I’m off to the specialist tomorrow for an intravenous something or other.  I’m hoping she’ll tell me “Blah blah blah be ok.”  Again, not  fun things to do on your own in a foreign land, but I came home and cheered myself up by opening my Amazon package that had just arrived, the present I got with the gift certificate from last year’s class—a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones!  Ah, Irony—and to think your sister Karma gets called a bitch.

Update - one year later.  I have now been permanently deaf in one ear for the past year.  Who knew how important two ears were?  I wear a hearing device that captures the sound from the right side and transmits it electronically to the left side, although I have problems when there is lots of background noise.  I also can't triangulate to figure out where a sound is coming from.  The last time I played "Marco Polo" I was stuck being that damned explorer  for hours.