...news

There's good news and there's bad news and it's one in the same: the scans didn't turn up anything. Good news is that if there is something wrong, it's very deep and pretty small. Bad news is that there is something quite wrong, and it's been extremely stubborn. But that means that the doc is ready to address the symptoms directly, which she hadn't been doing while trying to find the problem (if the symptomatic treatments are successful, how can you tell what's causing them in the first place?).

So now it's time to address the symptoms directly and see what it takes to get some mass back on me.
Here's hopin'

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!!REJOICE!!

I should not say anything for fear of a jinx, but I speak (or write, as it were) out of joy that I think others might share--I received a job offer from my #2 choice for future employment!
I had to decline based on a start date of no later than the first week of September, but what a relief:
-There IS another job out there, in an economy with a lucrative exchange rate
-The TEFL certificate helped open the doorway to tertiary teaching in the said economy
-Presumably, other doors will be opened, especially if I'm applying for second semester and able to start in a hurry, which has the facet implication of easing the worries about a trip home to recoup.

The trick now is to find a global/traveler insurance policy that will take me now, cover me at home, and not disappear in the next gig, and spend the next month doing my utmost to outweigh a fully-loaded tuba case.

And the news on that front is that the doc has been leaning increasingly toward treating symptoms and just trying to get me better, so maybe now, after the full-system followthrough scans, if she doesn't say "here's what it is" she'll put forward the metaphoric cork and (maybe not so metaphoric) steroids.

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On the Thai mind

I called my doc to see if it would be possible to get in to see her before Friday, assuming the prescribed bed rest to continue until there's improvement.
"And how about your symptoms?"
I told her.
"And your weight?"
I told her, adding, "So a little loss of ground since I went to the hospital."
"Okay, well, I think maybe you're ready to go back to work and I'll see you Friday."
And that's where things stand.

Huh?

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A plea

Dear friends, loved ones, and well-wishers:

I know it's time to come home. Believe me, I am well aware of the superiority of a very great many things, of the warmth and comfort, of the desirability and predictability and ease of home. I would hazard to say that I might be somewhat more aware of these benefits than a great many stateside folks. And while I cannot pretend to understand a parent's worry and fretting, I would put for examination my carefully cultivated guilty conscience coupled with the more-tangible physical distress. I know it's hard to see someone sick and far from home. It's also hard, frequently frustrating, and generally terrifying to BE alone and sick and miserable on the far side of the world.

Here's the thing: here, I have a job I know how to do and am still capable of doing, a job that covers the basics, my debts are relatively static, and, with family help, the extravagancies of farang medicine. Maybe there's something different from the home turf, but from all I've seen and heard, and all the inquiries and applications I've sent, it's not necessarily an easy time to get a job, let alone one that pays for insurance.
But that's what family's all about: live with and on them until one of the applications bears fruit or at least until I look hale enough to hold regular employment.

Fantastic!

Here's the thing: when I came to Thailand, though I was careful to avoid raw food and drank only a little boiled water in addition to soda and seltzer, the alien lifeforms derailed my systems and knocked my relatively-stout self flat, literally. Coupled with the bike wrecks, it set me back in a big, bad way.
Now, even though not a week goes by that I don't dream of a steak and fried potatoes, drinking water straight from the tap, hot chocolate and real coffee, eating a real salad and--oh how glorious it would be!--Hispanic food, it now constitutes alien life.
Granted, I LOVE the idea that coming home is a relief and would ease all systems. TRUST ME, the idea of home presenting succor and tonic does not decrease from the far side of the world.
But if, on multiple daily handfuls of exorbitantly expensive medications, here where I have a predictable diet I've been on for the past year-n-change, I'm still on the squatter pot enough to prevent me rom getting anything from the squats, what happens when I throw my systems into the existential stress of greatly reduced oxygen and the metabolic challenges of producing heat, coupled with a gut load of alien life?
Here's honesty: a bad illness would hospitalize me, and American treatment would bankrupt me and anyone else. Without a robust HMO/insurance plan in place, I have to accept that running home would flatten my electronic/financial/credit/intangible self as thoroughly as my body's been reduced, without any guarantee of a direct line, passing go and collecting $200, to physical wellbeng.

Consider the obverse: say I was significantly unwell and had spent five months working with a doctor at a reputable university med center and was considering moving around the globe to an alien food culture and a medical establishment I could in no way afford--is this a good idea?

Trust me. It's not that I don't want to come home. It's not that I'm unaware of what I'm missing. It's not that I'm a callus cad reveling in the propagation of ulcers and sleepless nights. It's not that I'm still enchanted by the people and landscape and job and religion and culture here--I'm very, very, very, extremely done and over with all of it. It's that after running away into maybe not the smartest decision I've ever made, maybe running into an equally uncertain decision from a significantly worse place is not something I should be doing.
And as much as I appreciate the thoughts behind the pleas and orders to come home, they don't make it easier to pass the day.

Say it ain't so!

A deluxe, clean, elevated squatter pot

Doctor, meet computer....

Of course, we can all sympathize with the tribulations of a new computer. It's just harder to do when the computer is the center of a medical system and you, the (im)patient have been off food and drink since yesterday at noon....
And even if they haven't worked out bugs associatd with, say turning it on, they could at least let the skinny guy off the cold, hard, table.
But things just work differently here.

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Another Tahoe Souvenir

To go with the Caltrans orange "Lake Tahoe Outdoor Paradise" shirt...

PFEW

It took until today, but things started happening. Mainly, the left and right hands were miscommunicating, and I was hearing different stories from each side--"I will appoint you today" or tomorrow or next week, and then a social worker showed up to explain that everything was on hold to talk with the embassy about financial assistance, and then some students came through to ask me about the colonoscopy I had--tracking my computer trail would be a thrilling venture, methinks.

On Thursday, the soonest they could do anything, I come back for an abdominal CT scan and a consult, then on Friday a barium screening. Meantime, I'm on bed rest. And after seeing what I've been seeing, I'm extremely happy to take the doc's advice.

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communication

It's always interesting to compare what I'm saying, what I mean by it, and how it seems to be perceived.
To whit:
Me: I'll be going to the hospital for about a week. They wanted me for three, but I think I can get out in only one week.
Supervisor: Oh, that's good because tomorrow I have a seminar at the university.

Nurse: You lose weight, need try to eat more.
Me: If there was more to eat, I would. I am still hungry.
Nurse: yes but you need gain more weight. Try hard to eat more.
Me: Okay, but I need more food.
Nurse: Yes, more food.

Nurse: you are happy here?
Me: I find this place horrible and want nothing more than to leave.
Nurse: because you look so happy.
Me: It is a smile so I don't scream
Nurse: oh, smile, very good, very good!

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Hunger is the best seasoning, huh?

Breakfast: Jok. Leftover rice boiled to mush and spiked with chicken soup powder

On nurses

The beautiful Thai nurses with the little headpieces and crisp uniforms of terribly uncomfortable looking polyester generally flit about like a flock of sparrows patrolling a city sidewalk, happily chirruping from bed to bed, duty to duty. But rather than the flitting transience of a little bird, they almost universally move with the cocksure swagger of an athlete returning to the bench after a good play, always with the happy chirruping and swirls of laughter.
It's where the American starts to have a problem--the Thai work ethic is simply tuned to a different calibre, and where I would expect a quiet, somber atmosphere, there's the steady background of giggles and wheedling and needling. It's not that they're slacking or accomplishing less, it's just the Thai manner.

From what I can tell, the common practice is for a whole gaggle of family to be present when someone is admitted to the hospital, and for the first while, one of the prim and crisp nurses whips milling herd of cats into an organized team of caregivers. Rather than flitting from bed to bed, hands and attention lighting on whatever happens to be of present interest, she plants herself at the scene of greatest action and calls orders to the swirl of relatives. In this manner, the team of half a dozen nurses provides excellent care for 40 patients--whip the concerned family into shape while taking care of other matters.
And that's when the display turns truly impressive.

Every once in a while, a hard patient comes in--the one screaming and thrashing, or dead still while monitors do the screaming. That's when the full flock descends on the gurney in an amazingly silent display.
We have our medical dramas on TV and glorify the intense, barked commands of the ER--a situation antithetical to anything in Thailand.
But when a serious case comes in, the swaggers snap into piston steps, the hands move with robotic precision, and the chirruping ceases. The team moves with the intensity, grace, and communication of passionate tango dancers, every reach or grab, need or request, every motion or thought met halfway through by its fulfillment or counterpart. And the silence lasts as long as it needs to, even as one of the nurses breaks from the flock to attend to other matters, immediately back in the chirrupy smile mode.
Then the patient stabilizes and flock disperses and immediately returns to flitting about with happy chirrups, the intensity completely dissolved and the world back to play.

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Looking ahead

Now it's a matter of what next--after I'm running again, in all senses. Especially after this stint, prolonged illness is not an option. But then what?
Right now, simply feeling okay, the ability to negotiate a full day with a minimum of discomfort, to have enough spare energy to experience joy, these are the goals.
But then what?
My goal, hope, idea, prayer is that once one of the systems starts going again, the others will kickstart with it. And then what?
Part of me wants to finish the school year--after so much time and energy spent learning to live and function here, wouldn't it be nice to have the opportunity to do so without the world grayed out by illness?
At the same time, I would be only to happy to squirt out a comet of the nastiest discharge I've faced over here all the way out of Thai airspace. How wonderful would be the succor of home!
But to move home, to run away from the job here, to leave without another gig lined up, it feels like defeat, and after working so long and hard to make it this far, after discovering how wonderful it can be to live abroad.
Given the job market, how much weight would that lacuna carry? Given that I've discovered not just a way to live but a life with great potential for enjoyment, why come back if I'm getting a leg up?
Then again, what employer would hold leaving against me? And would I want to work for them?
It's a matter of that initial screening--what level of competition is there, and how selective can the screeners be?

And how to reconcile feet that itch for the adventure and challenge, excitement and discovery of being abroad with a deep yen for the mountains back home?
Here's where Buddhism and I differ, and my unenlightened state becomes painfully obvious: there's the idea that what is simply is. Nothing is inherently good or bad, and anything has the potential to be as happy or tragic as the perceiver is willing to let it be.
A big part of me knows that I am in a good position: I love the kids, it's great living in town just a few minutes from work, it's fun having the frogger-crossing in the morning and the vendor carts in the evening. There is challenge and payoff all over, and a job I've learned to do. Why leave that?
Because it is not enough.

For some people, sitting on a whitesand tropical beach is enough. They can listen to the gentle lap of wavelets and be at indefinite peace. It is enough.
I've learned that, for me, the tropics are not enough. It's not enough to have the job and livelihood--I itch and glance and glimpse around, now paranoid of the next bump in the sidewalk, the next disease, a snake falling from the trees, a spider about to jump and bite, a scratch that turns septic. To me, the tropics are a scary place.
And I'm now a very different person than I was before, but even then, to sit in the mountains was enough. When I needed a break and escape, it was enough to dip just a toe into an alpine lake. It's hard to imagine that it would have decreased in the elapsed time.

And then there's the question of what I CAN do if I came home--the rote lift-op option is hardly possible, and really I'm after a temporary and part time gig to cover gas money to visit friends and family while getting my feet back under me. And then I'd love to be out adventuring again. But how to find a job that will pay California gas prices without over-taxing my body?

There's one thing for sure: no more foreign hospitals. No more illness. It's time to be alive and well.

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From the inside

It's Thailand, and things just work differently here. What else is there to say?
At the beginning of each shift, someone sweeps with a whisk broom, then someone follows with a wet (I tell myself disinfected) towel, and there are still hairballs and toothpicks alongside my bed. There's a blood pressure check at 5:00 AM, noon, 1700, and 2200. Food arrives at 700, 1100, and 1600. Visiting families usually bring plastic bags full of smaller plastic bags and wax-paper wrapped packets of food, and the gurney becomes a picnic table.
Westerners need chairs for such things, but three Thais can comfortably fit on one gurney, sitting cross-legged around a spread of lunch. And just as you can tell an aging skier by the knee brace, you can tell a Buddhist by the bowlegged shuffle--if it hasn't been done already, there's plenty of apparent distinction to justify a study of Asian vs Western hip joints.
Next to the bed is a little bed stand for leftovers and a measured water pitcher. Patients are to drink the water under observation and record the urine output. (Mine is extraordinary because the only amusement they've provided is the pitcher and cup, so of course I'm going to sit and drink.) For the most part, these are overflowing with boxes of juice or milk, snack packets, rolls of toilet paper, plastic cups from tea stands; alternatively, for those whose three-course meal consists of a taupe, orangish, and pink syringe, the cabinet is usually buried under monitoring equipment.
The bathrooms, as mentioned, are androgynous. And why not? I'll admit a good degree of amusement the couple of times I've been in the school's executive bathroom (which has plastic curtain doors and 2 meter dividing walls between stalls and genders) to hear remarkable noises from sweet little things, or to listen to grunts and wrinkling newspapers--that was a good one. I will say that hot water would be nice, but at least there's a shower.
As for soap, shampoo, paper towels, toilet paper, well, I don't know what I would do if I ever came across them in a restroom. And a line from Jeff Foxworthy comes to mind: a hotel maid left a cart in the hall, and his kin "were on that thing like a pack of wild dogs on a three legged cat." I guess it's the state of things here, as I'm just as predatory: show me a loose stack of napkins and they'll be in my pocket or stashed in my bag.
And there are gestures at sterility--a sink with soap next to the nurse station, a pump of sanitizer on my bed. They take temperatures via a little job by they stick in your ear, and it appears that each person has their own earpiece for it. You just don't think about when the box to hold the inserts was cleaned, when the blood pressure cuff was sterilized, when the cabinet was cleaned, whether the profusion of hairs on the sheets harbors anything, whether the pile of dust and hair is carrying anything, where the stringers of ants might have gone, when the

okay I need to stop writing about that
The funny point where I was hoping to take that is that the doctor in charge of this unit said I should stay here because it's a sterile environment. And all things considered, he's right, in Thai terms. Which really makes me wonder.

The other bizarre part is the food. As mentioned, this is Thailand and food is very, very important. When I first signed in, with each round of students, with the lead doc, with my doc, with the nurses on each shift, I've been asked if I can eat (which has a new significance in this place), followed by whether or not I can eat Thai food. Each time I've said that I love food, especially Thai food, and I'll eat anything but jok or kao tom--rice stewed to a starchy mush (kao tom) and overloaded with Knorr chicken soup mix (jok). And at each point, there is a note made in the computer, and frequently the kindly nurse tells me she'll change it from [American, Soft Food, Soft Food Low Fat, American Soft, Low Protein, Low Fat] to Thai.
The doctors okayed Thai, and I'm happy with it, but somehow a white person not eating a hotdog is unnatural, so I've ended up with jok for breakfast, boiled rice with mushy gourd and macerated chicken for lunch (and a fried chicken wing I can't reconcile with ever being edible, even fresh from the oyster-scented vat of low-temp oil), and pork with peppers and cabbage/chicken ball soup for dinner. And I've been hungry since lunch yesterday.

Were I a local, there'd be a string of people bringing through goodie bags and supplemental snacks. When I asked about it this morning, I was given the impression I could run to the 7-11 in the basement no problem.
Heh.
Those nice, sweet nurses in the starchy crisp uniforms? No starch on earth would even stand up to a sidelong glance, let alone the lunging collar grab I got.
So tomorrow I'll see about wheedling a ten minute foray out of the doc. And if that doesn't work, maybe I can convince them to give me the American meal with supplemental Thai food.

At the bottom of things, the good news is that the latest round of stuff seems to be having an effect. All my numbers are still quite low, but instead of being in the 45-55% range, they're running 55-60% of what they should be. What's great about that is that they're not putting me on an IV line, so I stand to be discharged and stay here local on bed rest until all the testing is done and the doc says I can go back to work.

Again, it's Thailand and things work differently around here, but my doc even admitted that maybe this ward isn't the best place to stay.

On expectations

I can't really say what I was expecting. I was fervently avoiding the prospect of an open hallway, sitting on a gurney shoved into a nearly-out-of-the-way hallway open to the world while flies and mosquitoes buzz and swarm. When I asked the doc, she told me to bring a razor and shampoo, otherwise pack like for a hotel. Otherwise, what's it like to stay in a university hospital? What can I expect in terms of cleanliness, privacy, accessibility?
I packed a couple of undershirts, three pairs of underwear, shampoo and a comb and toothbrush. The doc wanted me to be present and ready in case a room opened up, so I left straight from work still wearing a tie. I doffed my long-serving Danskos, though, and on arrival to wait for a place to open up, I went shoe shopping.
It's exceedingly odd to be a small giant here--I'm skinnier than a local but they don't generally display clothes or shoes in my size. I'd planned on treating myself to a pair of Crocs, but they were 2000 TB and didn't come in my size. Funny enough, the knockoffs just around the corner--which came in sizes up to 13--fit great for 150 TB. Especially for someone considered small back stateside, how bizarre to buy large clothes or be larger than the shelf offerings.

Nothing the first evening or the next morning. Nothing the second day, Thursday. Sit tight and wait. And talk down the unease and nerves, the fear and worry and uncertainty. Easy to do, when it's still an indistinct possibility--the hard part is letting go of the teaching, letting go of working and keeping up the happy healthy appearance. The worry isn't about going into the hospital, the worry comes on the far side--after letting the mask fall, how to pick it back up and reassemble? That's the time to worry.
Now it's just waiting--make sure the phone is charged and close at hand, and pretend to kick back into what might pass for relaxation.


And then the phone call came and I was to show up Friday around 4:00.
It's amazing how scary it is to go into a hospital in a foreign country without knowing when or how you'll get back out.

Just in case, after I realized I'd already worn half my clean clothes, I went to the department store and bought a couple pairs of boxers, which turn out to be remarkably expensive this culture--premium foreign fashions, evidently. I meant to buy a new tee shirt, too, but I just couldn't justify the expense.

So I checked in with snacks and flip flops and knockoff crocks, dirty clothes and clean underwear, soap and my workaday backpack, bolstered by a comb and chargers.

It turns out, there's a phenomenal linen closet in the back of the ward--they have shirts, pants, sarongs, hand towels, sheets, and robes stacked ceiling high in crisp white folds. So much for the new boxers. And the presence of general discharge is explosively unpleasant enough to surpres any risings of appetite. The good news is that there's an outlet next to the bed, so the gadgets will have lifeblood and I'll feel like my umbilicus to the world is intact. And there's a steady cavalcade of med students who all want to practice taking a case history, some of whom are interested in practicing English. And while nobody's yet understood how terrifying this venture is, at least they speak English.


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bon a petit

Nothing says appetizing like a compartmentalized aluminum tray of hospital food accompanied by the bleeps, groans, and gurgles of a 40 bed hospital ward overflowing with patients, families, and medical students. And here's me, Bed ต19, Nursing Team 2, tucked into the corner where only the neighboring 8 patients, their families, and anyone leaving the ward can catch a second gawk. To say nothing of the medical students, whose chill-out tables are between this and the next bank of gurneys.
It's a 40 bed ward in the university hospital with a central nursing station and wings of eight beds each running along either side. Each bed has a battered polyboard cabinet and most have battered plastic chairs. In the back, two androgynous tile bathrooms offer three toilets and a shower each--it's hard to imagine anyone but the students and nurses making much use of them--and a linen cabinet with more towels, sheets, and patient jumpers. The ceiling is dotted with fans that rotate above the drop-down curtain rails, and fluorescent lights flash and flicker. And rolling carts topped with electronics--screens to input patient information, electronic thermometers and blood pressure monitors, blood extraction and injection kits, and a few cleanup kits--scurry like ants guided by nurses in crisp blue.
Somehow, I manage to feel embarrassed and exposed, despite being in the corner, away from any television or general seating--something about being the only person with blond hair, skin especially pasty white, wearing a front-tie shirt large enough to wrap around and tuck into the back of pants large enough to accommodate one of me in each leg, and at a glance the youngest patient and about the only one able or allowed to feed myself. And beyond me being here for fattening up, the place food holds in Thai culture makes the metal tray especially significant.
"Can you eat Thai food?" was the third question the nurse asked, the second question from the doctor. And with the arrival of the metal tray, it is unasked on each of the dozen student faces turned owlishly in my direction.
Actually, the food isn't that bad. Were it fresh and hot, it would be something worth paying for (save for the rice, the blandness of which I resent): tom yam gai (boiled spicy chicken), gaang pak (a green curry of something like a plantain), and little chicken and corn balls deep fried in wok oil that's recently seen shrimp and garlic. They're rather less than palatable and threaten to sit as happily as a fast-food burger back stateside, but the curry and soup are surprisingly flavorful--whether it's the nature of Thai food or the unwillingness of the Thai cooks to kill all the flavor, I'll take it.
It's the stares that I'm not so big on, and the constant hocking/wretching I could do without. The guy across from me had a nurse inject a horse-grade syringe of paste into a tube running down his nose, and before the syringe emptied, he was wrenching the contents back up. Next to him was a man just brought back from a procedure and noisily hacking and gurgling through a tube. In the far corner there was a man whose steady screams were broken by gurgling wretches. Also over there is someone whose crying and screaming has gone beyond normal human sounds to a high pitched wheeze.
Bon a petit.

Questions raised by the prospect of hospitalization

What does one pack to go to a hospital in Thailand?
For most Americans (it's a generalization, I know, but one I'm comfortable with) the answer is a set of clothes to accommodate a new appearance. No such luck for me.
The doc told me to pack a razor--good advice if I shaved (they take care of the fuzzy sideburns when I get a haircut, and the errant whiskers are easily plucked).
So I'm looking at an indefinite stay in a Thai hospital: how likely is it I'll be parked in a hallway or dormer-style room? Or would it be a private room with a TV and aircon?
Wouldn't it be nice to know.
What does one pack? A notebook, two pens, Brutus and his plug, the cell phone and its charger, three pairs of underwear, two shirts, a toothbrush, and a comb.

How long does one have to live in Thailand before it's home?
That one's easy. Thailand will never, ever be home to a farang. It might be a place to live, it might be paradise on earth, it might be one's adopted residence, one's long-term domicile, the site of one's marriage and children, but Thailand is an ethnic and cultural island proud of the fact that it's been so throughout its history. Thais are proud of their utterly distinct written and printed language, made up by a great king of yore, and they are so fiercely devoted to their cultural independence that a move to make English an officially recognized language was vetoed in the highest level of government for fear that recognizing another language, especially English, might imply that Thailand had once been colonized. Good luck sneaking your white face past that.

The kicker: why do I feel such relief?
It's a kicker because it's so multi-faceted.

Why is there such relief after hearing that I'll have a job?
Why is there such relief at admitting I feel horrible?
Why is there such relief at an indefinite stretch of time in unknown conditions in a university hospital?
Why does the point of my relief seem to be such anxiety for others?

The relief/anxiety is an easy matter of perspective. For anyone who hasn't been living the grind and relying on a happy teacher mask to keep going, the hospital is a scary place. From my perspective, letting go of the appearance/pretense/practice of wellbeing to admit to significant illness is the scary part.

The middle two are the same answer: to recognize how I feel is to be willing to roll belly up, and to roll belly up is to relinquish control and direction. In either case, it's a matter of giving the controls to someone else. And after a year of fighting to keep the course, the relief at relaxation is tremendous.

The surprising thing is my relief at hearing I'll have a job even if I have to go home to recoup. I guess I would say it emphasizes the benefits and perks of things here: despite all that I bitch about, I have a relatively easy gig in a decent place to live, and even as I rail against parts of it, I know the overall situation isn't that bad.
The tricky part is, "would you go back?"
And the best I can say is that it's been so long since I felt good, since I was able to simply live, I can't give an answer. At this point, the most I want is to get my feet back under me. Once my awareness and functioning is not dominated by the avoidance of a miserable illness, I'll be able to reevaluate. In the meantime, I know it's cool living a 5 minute walk from a job teaching G4, and I enjoy that I've learned how to move through this culture. Now it's time to enjoy moving, period.

On hospitals and residency

I'm in Had Yai again, waiting for a room to open in the hospital. I'll be checking in and staying until the doc tells me to go home. It's been quite a process for the past couple of days. And nothing has happened yet.

Backtrack to Friday: the doc said I should check in for about three weeks and I laughed--EV 3 is next week, and by the second week of September I need to be prepping the kids for finals. No way can I take that much time off work, but maybe I can stay at the local hospital overnight and teach during the day--they offered that with the first staph infection. She wrote a letter explaining the situation and her intentions, and sent me back with instructions to keep her updated.

The thing is, after pretty well all of the diagnostic procedures, she's started to address symptoms instead of rooting out causes, so I've just started feeling some oomph again. Which makes it especially hard to let go of teaching, even for a short time: getting in front of the class means putting the happy game face on, and after enough time pasting on a smile, your body starts to believe it. Sing a few rounds of "If you're happy and you know it" and it starts to rub off.
And when the rest of the world is a painful, illness-wracked place, having that excuse to get up and going, not having the option to slip into feeling miserable, is extremely important.

But I should also be honest here and admit that I've been feeling pretty bad, and it's been hitting my teaching, especially grade 7: I go into the classroom defeated and too disheartened to try to shout them down and conduct a "normal" class. G4 is so inherently enthused that they keep going, but it's been ugly.
And admitting it is a fast route to a slippery downslide--as long as I'm great and happy and well enough to keep going, there's no reason to stop, no need to fall into the lurking, looming sickness.
I'll say only one other thing about how I'm looking/feeling/doing: walking down the street, I caught a reflection of someone and thought, "that poor bastard has some serious problems." And it was me.

Wanting to keep working looks absurd to read, I know, but when it's keeping you up and moving and functioning, and the alternative is a very deep and dark place, it's hard to let go.
It's the whole wing walker thing: don't let go of what you have until you have something else.

I spoke with my boss on Tuesday, ostensibly to give him a heads up that I'd probably be spending nights in the hospital, but still teach days.
"Dude, if the doctor is telling you to go to the hospital, go to the hospital. Or, I don't know what your stateside options are, but go the f' home if you want. That's what I'd do, just for the better medical care. But don't worry about things here, don't worry about your job. If you need time to get healthy, take it. If you need to go home and want to come back, there's a job here for you. Don't worry about that, get yourself healthy."

In retrospect, that gave permission to feel bad, permission to let the body be heard.
Hearing, "take care of yourself, don't worry about the job" from my boss was enough relief to let go, so I called the doc to say that I could come down with the idea that I'd spend a week with her and then return to do the outpatient option. I'd miss a week of school/testing, but it'd be possible to catch up fairly easily.
The only compounding factor is that it's extremely difficult to get a room in the hospital down here. It's the best hospital south of BKK and offers subsidized care to locals, so facilities are under absurd demand. The doc asked me to come down and be ready to move in on Thursday, and she would do her best to get the room and book facilities for next week.

So here I am.
It's been a long haul, and the relief at admitting I'm damn sick and miserable is tremendous. The prospect of spending a week-plus flat on my back is actually appealing, and now that I've let go of keeping up the teacher mask, the drive to get back to work is less pressing.

Too many odd parts to isolate just one, but there are some notables:
Why is it such a relief to know I have a job here?
What does one pack to go to a hospital in a foreign country?
How long does one need to be living in a foreign country before it's home?
Finally, if it's such a relief to know that I have a job here, what's next? What is it I'm after?

On retirement, well earned

I think it may be time to hang up the beloved Danskos.

On working very, very, VERY hard to keep to the middle path

My head is still up and my feet are still on the loose and level and there wasn't even any screaming.
The return of the fingernail fungus is unsurprising. I was frankly not expecting it to go away in the first place.
And in that vein, after watching the burly head nurse remove the empty Japanese takeout containers and scrub the table with a 1 ply napkin before throwing a handful of cotton balls and syringes on it, then brushing her hands over the garbage, (another) staph infection maybe isn't the worst thing.
And there's little point in getting angry at the doc after having to push that the inflamed veins were not just due to being skinny--self-direction around trained pros is a big loss of face in these parts, so I'm real challenging already. But it is extremely difficult to maintain a happy, or at least quiet place while someone who has just increased my regimin of immunosupressives while sesame seeds from the lunch meeting that never quite left the table on which rested the syringe that entered my bloodstream, the cotton balls that stemmed the flow of two superfluous attempts to install a large-gauge IV catheter for the trip home (in case I might have to check into the hospital and they don't have any that size--or maybe we can wait at least for the test results from a draw at another vein to see if I actually need the inpatient time [not really] *rupture* or maybe let them try), while this doctor who was chatting with a colleague across the room about a consultation with some lady who was also in the room while navigating a remote camera through my colon, explains that the infection is because the malabsorption has weakened my skin and veins so much that I have essentially no strength in my natural barriers. And while I wouldn't argue with that, I would point out that my job teaching just over a thousand snot faced kids on a campus without soap or bathroom sinks in a culture that doesnt believe in sanitizer would tax even a robust immune system, let alone one on drugs designed to suppress the reactions that lead to irritation, and maybe it would be good for the nurse to at least wash her hands between cleanup and playing with intravenous needles. Just a thought.

So it's just staph, nothing big. Let them deal with it back up north.

Just imagine: I could be someplace not known for its medical care.

Sent from Brutus the iPad

Really, are we supposed to be surprised that a group of guys who spend their days dressed as gladiators and tromping around tourist traps is 1) running a buddy-buddy system and 2) fleecing tourists?
How cool would it be to watch a team of street sweepers headlock, handcuff, and haul off a group of gladiators?

http://gu.com/p/3x6n6

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And then....

Even after the time I've spent here, I still manage to be floored by some of the things I see.
Maybe I just need to say "mu" to all that Buddhist stuff. I thought I was nice and middle road, not attached to notions or expectations of other people, certainly inured from surprise at the bizarre sights. Yes, there's an elephant mooching customers from a guy selling deep fried chicken whatnots and my laundry lady is driving by on a scooter with her daughter who irons my boxers and cannot pass my class and what's notable in the scene is that I have a clear spot to walk home.

And then I walked into the men's room and there was a lady in janitorial galoshes and apron.
Even with the khatooeys, I'm not used to this. But this individual was too butch to be a guy.
She was cleaning the urinals.
With a shop vac.

uh

um

ok

Really didn't think that one through.

At one time in life, I couldnt read Muir because he inspired me to excessive risk.
Still, in many of my favorite places of the world, people would understand being moved to tears by Muir. And nowhere is it more appropriate than sucking fumes and byproducts on an urban street in Thailand. And it's hard to think of a more awkward place for an already conspicuous individual to be making a public scene.

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On The iPad

Once they figure out how to make the protective cover a tactile keyboard, the laptop will be on it's way out.
I would guess at something that's a palm sized touchpad from which a keyboard and screen unfold/emerge, the option to broadcast onto a wall with the screen being adjustable from text/instant message size to large TV size and a central storage space maybe still based on a hard drive at home but more likely decentralized to a server somewhere in the ether.
The touch pad will be your cell phone, calendar, address book, and entertainment center, and of course it will be ruined by an afternoon in a pocket that's too tight or loose, a few drops of water, or a fall of more than 8 inches.

What a fantastic time to be alive and witnessing history.

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Greasy spoon, Thai style

No white, no blue, every plate is rice.  With dollops of what's good today:

Shrimp and chantrelles in a sauce more savory than sweet

Roe from a filter-feeding riverfish in a curry strong enough you won't notice

Calamari in a sauce more sweet than savory

On the left: Gaang soom blah: spicy/sour broth with slices of heart of palm and segments of  catfish; it's easy to tell gaang soom day in the cafeteria: all the locals smile and the farangs look like they would four hours after eating a big bowl of it.
On the right: I don't know what this is called.  It's made with fish that's spent a day or two in the sun and is saltier than soy sauce.  And it burns hotter and longer than a habanero.  But there's still something alluring about it--it has enough kick to render rice almost palatable.  But when you ask a Thai what it is, they just laugh at the poor, tender farang.  

Rest stop, Thai style

One of the nicer, privately/family run places.

exploring new depths

It's hard to go here--in retrospect, what's to say? There's nothing to cushion or soften any bit of it.
So I'm in the botiquey, farang-friendly market, which is attached to a food court in the basement of the mall. This is where you run into half a dozen students and parents if you're sneaking out on a Tuesday afternoon; Saturday is a solid wall of students and their out of town relatives. Which is to say, one must shop carefully, and stopping to eat is an invitation to a string of awkward introductions or hand-fluttering "OHMYGODTHERE'STEACHER!"

There was a sale: half off on Campbell's Pork and Beans. I'd seen them before, but always at a greatly inflated price. I guess I was pretty hungry because I bought them out. And how do you argue with half off?
And then there was a new product, also mysteriously on half-price clearance (or maybe not so mysteriously, as it's something I've never seen before, here or there): SPAM.
lite

I bought three cans.

After checkout, I went to the cafeteria side and grabbed a spoon.

I ate a can of each right in the middle of things.

It was some of the best food I've had since I got here.

I just hope none of the after-school crowd of mothers was too embarrassed.

On learning

There came an instance when Brutus would've been a legit educational tool, translating rhyme and rose and violet and poem on the fly. But on seeing the technology, the students boggled. Completely.
It's easy to forget that these kids have never been in a classroom equipped with as much as a black and white tv or VCR. And computers over here are much more slipshod than could be imagined by someone who hasn't seen a tinker assembling a pile of scrap parts on a grungy sidewalk.
And even in a computer shop, the internal workings are not nearly as important as having flashing lights and strobes on the box.
How easy to forget that substance is subsumed by style.
So I would in fact be better off sitting in front of the class and playing Angry Birds than making mothers day cards, which was the planned sellout activity.

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On being 10

I thought it would be fun to make mother's day cards, cute to fill in "Mom is ________." I demonstrated with "beautiful" and "happy" and "great."
Give ten answers.
Poll the class:
Mom is.... "Old" "Fat" "Short" "Un-pretty"
....and then I stopped calling for volunteers.

What you never expected yourself to say....

What do I miss about teaching in an American university? Students who know how to learn from my teaching style. Students who care about taking notes. A wired classroom. Climate control. Not being the one authority figure not equipped with a belt or bamboo cane. Small enough classes to give every student who wants to a chance to practice the target language. Electricity, come to mention it.

More on being twelve

It's interesting to see how I react to the negativity and obnoxiousness of the M1 kids. They occupy a disproportionately large place in my mind because the minority that wants simply to be disruptive and derail anything, no matter what topic or how it's being presented, the handful of kids who just need to be noticed no matter what and have honed being obnoxiously disruptive to a lustre I would never have imagined before coming to Thailand, are much better at being assholes than I am at being a teacher. MUCH better. Which really is the bane of my teacherly existence, and the inaccessibility of these students gets into my head and makes them seem much older than 12. Really, who wants to be bested by a kid who was barely alive to experience Y2K? So I give the M1 kids a lot of credit for cognition above and beyond their years. And then I'll stumble into a lesson that reminds me just how young they really are, not to mention how divorced from critical thinking.

This week's target language was, "above, below, next to, across from, in front of, behind." I showed them an animated powerpoint (more on that later) and then asked them to demonstrate.
So the lesson started with demonstrating: hold your notebook above your head. Hold your notebook below your head. &c. But when I asked them to switch and put their head below the notebook, they flatlined. After a few minutes and many pictures, one of the brighter kids might get it--X above Y=Y below X. And in every class, it was an absolute revelation. If it got through.
Then, as someone explained that "X is above means Y is below" the lightbulbs would flash on, and I would marvel at just how young they are. And somewhere, some part of me wonders when such connections are typically made. Shouldn't this be done in elementary school? If not then, if not yet in 7th grade, when?

Morning Anthem

It's been quite a week: most of campus has been in a real bad way after a teacher was killed in a wreck in front of the school.  Worse for me, she was my classroom assistant for the first half of the term, so I have extra obligations to fulfill in terms of services and memorials.  And yesterday, just before wrapping up, I was told that this morning I would be giving a speech that a student would translate.  Could I please sit down and write it out?  

And that is just how things work.

If this works, it's a video of the school anthem portion of the morning assembly.  It's the elementary side, so grades 1-6; most of the grade 1-3 are out of sight, but the panning ends on my kids.

On bathrooms

The drum is a standard part of the "modern" house. In a "traditional" house, there's not even a sink. It's pretty wild-say you're walking into a bathroom in the back right corner of the house. You'd expect there to be a sink with bar soap and maybe a hand pump, or a toothbrush holder and nail brush in a more intimate display, across from the door, a bath/shower in the furthest left corner, a toilet adjacent to it, TP on the wall, a towel rack in between the shower and sink, and a mat or two to keep tootsies warm.
Welcome to Thailand, right?
When you open the door, you face a mirror hung on a tile wall with various soaps around it--dishwashing fluid, dishwashing powder, a bar of handsoap, and maybe a bottle of shampoo. No sink, but a hose dropping from near the ceiling and capped with anything from a rubber band to an actual valve. There will likely be a towel rack, but this no more symbolizes its intended use than breathing indicates a wide conscientious streak. And even if there were a roll of toilet paper hung on the hanger, it would disintegrate in the humidity.
The far left side will be an elevated dais. Depending on the social status, there will be one or two big tubs with anything from faucets to 2" plastic hoses coming from the gutters. A plastic scoop will float in at least one, within easy reach of the squatter pot, also on the dais. This pot is your water pump, essentially: it turns into the toilet-side sprayer hose, shower head, sink faucet, and rinse nozzle. And aside from the piping (presumably) to the septic tank, there is only one drain in the middle of the floor.

There's a halfway step with a pressurized nozzle next to the toilet and a shower head on the other end of a T junction. During the hot season, or at times of need, locals will strip down, take a quick rinse off, and go back about the day.
And if you don't have hangups about "DIRTY" and "Public Restroom," it makes perfect sense--when you have a buzz cut and wear poly clothes that look and feel the same dripping wet or bone dry, why wouldn't you want the chance to cool off at any given place on any given 110 degree day?

That said, one of the most resounding lessons I have learned is an appreciation for public restrooms as accessible and clean as they are in the US. We're a finicky and persnickety bunch, but at least you know where to go in times of gastrointestinal distress. And cleanliness I can't tackle in the here and now.
Let's say that even in the cleanest of facilities over here, I had ample opportunity to observe, in great detail, the physiology and especially antennae motility of cockroaches.
Kinda like seeing an ant on your food: there's some distant memory that revolts, another part that says, "so? It's protein" and an unconscious reaction to brush it off.

Funny how things change: I caught myself commenting on how much they cleaned up the bathroom for us farangs: now there's running water, the door can be jimmied almost all the way shut, and the squatter pot is mainly white. Granted, the sink isn't attached to the wall, and we won't go into the smell or the sprays of stuff all across the upper reaches of the walls, but they did a good job polishing it up.

An interesting parallel

It's an odd deal, something of a joyous revulsion. And it happened twice in a day but under such vastly divergent conditions it seems worth mentioning.

First was a sick satisfaction at grading a retest. It's a requisite and it's required to give the exact same damn test to the exact same --mm-- buffleheads who move past plain stupid, past unlucky, to ardent and willful numbskullery.
Dumb is getting a 10 out of 20 after spending six weeks on six lines of dialogue that are hashed out in 4-option multiple choice questions. I'll post the test later.
Unlucky is anything from 5-10: at that range, the kids are just guessing. But to get 3 or 4 out of 20 when the entire test is a variation on 1) what is your name 2) how old are you 3) where do you live 4) what do you like? takes a special drive toward underachievement.
Enter the odd sort of joyous revulsion when test after test dropped from 5 or 6 to 4. FOUR out of TWENTY on the retest! And of the few dozen that started from a 4, only 3 improved: a 6, 8, and 18. And of the remainder, at least HALF of the people who scored 20% on an ABCD multiple-choice test dropped.
Think about it. Considering the scope of the language, what does it take to get 2 answers right, especially since these kids have been studying-AND PASSING-English for at least seven years?
I laughed and cheered out loud when I graded a paper worth one point.

The other instance of a horrible joy came while playing my recorder. It's a perverse thrill that I can play the hell out of the thing and get a full, rich sound all through the range. Especially in the stratosphere.
But even as I cringe away from the aural icepicks, I love the feelings and emotions upholding the sounds, love that I'm creating such movement, and don't flinch even as I promise myself to buy the first alto or tenor recorder I see.

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So what's it take to turn heads?

As I was leaving campus....