迷失的老美

Not much happened today before around 4:30. Sophie, as promised, called around 8am to go to the hospital, but she sounded so tired, so I let her sleep… keeping her out so late last night was bad enough. I slept too, nothing else to do when you have pneumonia, well, sleep, drink water, and cough. At about 4:30 we headed off, IV bags, penicillin, and Chinese magic medicine in hand, to the school hospital. Sur-fucking-prise! The cunts at the place were determined to deny us. The bitch there acted as if us coming in was a horrible disturbance in an otherwise patient-free hospital. She claimed that she didn’t know how to mix the ingredients, she claimed the prescription wasn’t a prescription, and then yelled about how we should have come earlier and should go somewhere else. We did just that, we went back to Haidian Hospital.

I really appreciate this hospital, it is clean, convenient, not too crowded, and the doctors are competent and friendly.

Anywho… Sophie had to prepare for her presentation this week, and I am eating up too much of her time already, so I didn’t make a fuss when she had to leave at 6. I wasted the next 2 hour and 45 minutes watching TVs and SMSing my bosses to explain this whole thing to them so they don’t hate me. I finished up at 8:45 instead of 9:45, packed up, and came back to the dorm. I now notice, as I am typing this, that the vein they stuck has a nice bump on it.. with my luck, I probably blew this vein by cranking up the drip-rate, or moving around too much and bruising the poor thing.

Ah well, we go back tomorrow at 10 or 11 to take care of the last IV. As it is right now, the cough is very mild, I am still sore from all the coughing, and it is very hard to find anything to cough up. Also, I really need to get a humidifier for this room… the dry air is not good for this at all.

And　小猪猫，我更爱你。第二个月快乐！You make me the happiest man alive

So, I was stupid and got sick. I tried to get over it on my own because this is what I do, and I am stubborn. Due to this, I got bacterial pneumonia, or the beginning stages of it anyways. I finally called on Sophie’s offer/suggestion/demand that she she take me to a hospital.

Before I go any further into the story, I am going to take the time to say that I have the best girlfriend in the world and I love her more than anything. After this experience, on top of everything else we have shared together, there is no doubt left in me that we are meant to be together

Anyways, back to the story. We take a taxi to 海淀医院 and stand in line to pay the first fee, there is a lot of fee paying. To get in, it costs 4.5 kuai to see a doctor. The doctor takes one listen to my breathing and sends me for chest xrays and a blood test. Chinese hospitals do not trust their patients, everything must be paid up front. The xray was 186.1 kuai and the blood test was 15. The xray was a different experience, same basic equipment as in the US, without the digital imaging, so the prints have to be developed to see the result. However, the shock was when they positioned me, and then gave me no lead apron to protect the fellas down below before they ran behind their lead-shielded wall. Oh well, I get more radiation from a flight, no harm. The blood test was weirder. We went to the counter, and there was a stool and a window. I start to roll up my sleeve, but they stop me. Alcohol is swabbed on my finger and then I am stabbed before the squeezing and dripping process begins. Maybe 5-6 drops of blood are squeezed into a plastic vile for analysis. I am in semi-shock over how they did that, but, this is China, and they do it the same way for everyone else. The blood test results showed high levels of bacterial toxins at a count of 10.4 when it should be between 2.0 and 7.2. To show that my immune system is not a piece of shit, my white blood cell count was sitting at a nice 13.9 when it should be between 4.0 and 10.0. More or less everything else was normal. The chest xray was marked off as “normal”, but the doctor took one glace at it and said onset of pneumonia, and it is pretty visible.

A fun side note. I went to work on Saturday, albeit late and feeling like shit, but had to cancel for Sunday seeing as I value staying alive. I woke up before 8, I was due in at 8:30 and would be teaching until 9 in the evening. I explained to Maggie that I simply could not come in because I didn’t want to die. I had just suffered chills, night sweats, a fever of at least 39C, and was throwing up all over everything. She sounded like it didn’t matter, and said that I had to do it… I said there was no way in hell and left it at that. I ran into Fangfang just before seeing the doctor while standing in line, I might be able to get some sympathy at work

So, the doc gave me 2 choices at this point, anti-biotics which would cost less than 200 kuai, last for 6 days, and may or may not work. Or, a penicillin IV for the next 3 days which will work immediately and is more or less guaranteed to work, for over 400 kuai though. Sophie liked the idea of me getting stabbed more, and I liked the idea of getting better quickly, so IV it was. Before they would let me go at it for the IV, they had to test me for penicillin allergies, so they stuck me under the skin in the wrist and made this horribly painful bubble to see if there was a reaction after 20 minutes… there was none, and I was good to go, but seeing as I had not eaten all day, we needed dinner first.

终于找到了地道的四川菜！
Yes, REAL Sichuan food that Sophie felt great in giving her seal of approval. Spicy peppers, great 汤圆, our standard fried 4-veggie dish, and mixed in with the peppers was the best rabbit I have had in a long time. We will definitely be coming back to this place in the future, often.

The treatment:
3 and a half hours of IV dripping by is boring unless you have the best girl in the world by your side to pass the time with. I really am unsure of how to thank her properly other than just getting better as she said. Haha, if it wouldn’t make our lives too complicated at this time, I would marry her tomorrow if she let me
The series was a bag of penicillin, followed by a bag of NaCl and chinese cure-all medicine, finished up with another bag of penicillin. The cure-all was the best stuff. It does such things as “clear heat, detoxification, eliminate phlegm, remove obstruction in the meridians, restore consciousness and induce resusitation.” In short, it will get rid of your sore throat or bring you back to life. All it did for me as act as a cruel spacer that “stimulated” my blood vessels and caused them to get a nice dull painful ache. It took over 3 hours, although they claimed it would only be 2. Either way, we got done and Sophie was able to get back to the dorm before she was locked out.

I have 2 more days of IV funtime. The hospital just gave me the IV bags that I paid for so I can get it done at the school hospital in the morning tomorrow with Sophie staying with me

All in all, not a bad experience for pneumonia. And Chinese hospitals are pretty damn good, regardless of the bad mouthing they get in the states.

Update from Red China

On the 30th, me and Sophie had our 1-month anniversary, it seems like it has been forever and yet so short at the same time. Really hard to describe it well. I had to work that day, and she made me go, hehe. I took her out to eat, and we went shopping for some stuff that we needed at Carrefour. Amazing really, this is the first time I have gone shopping with a girl and it didn’t suck, it was actually kind of fun. We ran across some oddball who was gurgling/speaking something in “Chinese” to us that neither of us understood. It was for some reason amusing, she spoke French, I spoke Japanese, and we confused him. It wasn’t as good as our 2-week, but it would be hard to top that, and we didn’t have all day like we did then, so, we were kind of limited in our options.

Anyways, I am on top for the money again. Her student went off to work on a project and is out of town, so she found another tutoring job for a bigshot in Shangdi at the IBM Research Center there. She had never been to Shangdi before, so I went with her and gave her some advice about how to strike a good deal for pay. Got her 150 an hour, which beats what the guy’s previous teachers got by quite a bit. Also, according to her new student, I am her bodyguard now
To celebrate, we went to Nina’s. Mmm tex-mex, how I sortof still miss you. It was a good thing we went, I think. Nina’s is holding a Thanksgiving buffet, and we bought tickets. I GET TURKEY! Dear god, TURKEY!

Other fun stuff:
I am currently fighting with Beiwai to let me enter graduate school here (and skip the BA requirement due to my current transcript of doom).
I just started work today at 北阳电子, and wow, it is great. My bosses and me are more like friends than anything else. Their Japanese teacher is from Beiwai. I was able to get them to compensate me for the taxi rides there (big chunk of money to me) without so much as an argument or negotiation. I mentioned the issue to my recruiter and he just sort of mentioned it over lunch to the guy in charge of corporate training, who said no problem. They were originally going to have me sign a 4-month contract, but that changed rapidly after class. I signed to a 1-year deal, and it’s all good. I feel secure with this job now, and they are already talking about adding more classes for me to teach. This is a great job and I love the environment. My students are smart and fast learners, and I was actually able to get them to say the dark /l/ correctly on the first day! Damn, good stuff. Now I need to pick out a book and develop some course material. As well as start making class notes. My problem with teaching is that I HATE to give the same class twice. My classes are always different, no real routine, I like to keep on my toes and have fun with it all.

XinDongFang also moved to the new building and I feel great just going there now. The building itself is amazing, and I feel more honored to be a part of it than I did before. The hours and pay are staying pretty good too. And the experience I have and am gaining from it is worth far more than the money is. I have had classes lasting 2.5hours with over 200 students, and I have kept their attention the entire time, no fear, no nervousness at all. And the best part is that I did this without just “entertaining” the crowd. I actually can teach, and that is far better than entertainment. I would like to thank Jon Stewart for his comedy, and Captain Morgan for his sweet sweet nectar.

We also went to dinner tonight with Yangfei and her classmate as a thank you for editing his paper (thanks mom!). It was enjoyable. It’s been a long time since I have had huoguo with Yangfei, and it brought me back. Also, vinegar tastes like a fine red wine that has gone horribly horribly bad. I now have an item on my x-mas list. I want a fillet knife. I will teach these crazy people how to slice up a fish and NOT have it full of bones (the reason I had to drink vinegar).

My laptop: The LCD is starting to go bad it seems. The Red Tinge of Death is making an appearance, and it’s pissing me off. Fortunately, IBM is cool and willing to let me service it here in China instead of messing around with a month of shipping, repairs, customs forms, etc. IBM is like a personal Jesus to me.

To Sophie: Every day I am with her, I love her more, I find more things that I love about her. We rushed into the relationship, I know, and we missed out on a lot of the emo/drama stuff that everyone hates at the time but looks back at with fondness. I am so happy that we are as comfortable as we are now with each other, and I hope that it can continue to progress in time. The tempo has slowed to a momentum that is much more sane than it was before, and I am glad for that. I want to enjoy this time while we still have it and not rush too fast to the next step. I care about her so much, more than I thought I could care for someone else. After the whole Yanying fiasco, I was more or less content being alone, I planned to just bury my sorrows and frustration in work and study. Then she came into my life and changed it onto a new path that I intend to follow as long as she will allow me to. I want to succeed where I have failed before, I want to provide, and I want to be happy together. Just stay true and honest to me, and I will try to do one better. I honestly cannot recall a time in my life when I have felt so in control (yet out of control) of my life. Coming to China really has been the best thing that has ever happened to me, and the best part about it was that it was 100% random. The best things in life are the randoms things, the unexpected, and the accidental. Life has too many variables to try and control them all, it seems best to leave yourself to the four winds and exert some guiding pressure to attain the few things that truly matter to you. Expect nothing, it seems, that is the way to live life. Just let things happen, and enjoy them while you can. Good friends, good food, a good job, and a good companion to share it with, this is all one really needs. The first three in that list are easy by comparison. I think that I may have finally found the final piece to the puzzle, and it makes me feel like I’m walking on air. I love you Sophie.