(This article is a continuation of the story “Brutal Asian beginning. . . my first trip an Asian hospital”.  If you have not read it, you might want to do so first by clicking here.)

Have you ever spent the night in an East Asian hospital in a shared room with five other men, none of whom speak English?  I did.  I would not recommend it.  Remember that this was my seventh day in this country.  I knew how to say “hello” and “thank you” at that point.

One thing I learned about Asian hospitals that night is that everything is self-service.  If you want food, someone has to bring it to you from outside the hospital.  If you need to use the bathroom, you either have a friend help or you drag your IV drip and do the best you can.

Oh yeah, the toilets are squatties.  Not an easy proposition given that you have an IV bottle holder that you have to drag along everywhere you go.  I still didn’t have command of the whole squatty thing just yet.  Hospital policy also ensured that all visitors left by 9pm.  So, I would have to brave the long night in the hospital with no one who spoke English.

If a nurse gave you a thermometer where would you put it?  Well, that happened to me right before Pat and Drew left the hospital at 9pm.  I did what any American would have done.  I put the thermometer in my mouth.  As soon as I did, the nurse looked horrified and began running at me yelling something I couldn’t understand.  It was pretty obvious I was not supposed to put it in my mouth.

I looked around at all the patients in my room and realized that they had all placed their thermometers under their arm pits.  They were all laughing at me.  The nurse was a little grossed out.  She gave me a new thermometer.  I did it right this time.

The story doesn’t end there. [Read more…]

Way back in August 1999, I arrived in East Asia.  I didn’t know how long I would be here, but I did know it would be a while.  Two years minimum, but I had already felt I was supposed to be here “long-term”. Just didn’t know what “long-term” meant quite yet.

I arrived with a group of five others from Atlanta.  We were the first ever foreign students at this university.  As you might imagine, that first week was packed with wildly variant emotions.  Looking back, it really was dream like.  However, one event seemed to wake me from this dream and force me to embrace the reality that I now lived in East Asia.

On my seventh day in this gargantuan Asian city, I suddenly began to feel very ill.  It was different than anything I had ever experienced.  I thought at first I was just suffering from a bad stomach virus. After all, it was East Asia.  It usually takes a while for stomachs to adjust to new foods, environments, etc.

No big deal.  Just needed to drink some red Gatorade and lay down for a spell.

There was no relief.  As a matter of fact, the pain in my stomach was becoming unbearable.  Worry started to set in for the first time.

After a while, I sat up on the corner of my bed to see if that position would feel better.  It was then that I realized I was sweating profusely. Much worse than I did when I played basketball.  Given the fact that I am not normally a “sweater”, this was highly unusual.

As I leaned forward while still sitting on the corner of my bed, a small pool of sweat formed on the ground below me.  Not normal.  I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but at this point I did begin to think this might be a little more than a stomach virus.

By this time the pain was beyond awful.  Unfortunately, [Read more…]