Well, I had an absolutely horrible night last night. As mentioned yesterday, I seem to have come down with a cold. Turns out the cold symptoms (cloudy head, general miserablness) were just a hangover, but some little germ stuck in my throat and now it feels like I’m downing big chunks of glass every time I swallow. As might be imagined, this makes it difficult to sleep, especially after napping all day.
So, what I can only guess was about 2 a.m., I got the good sense not to subject Maggie to my tossing, turning and near tears and I went out to the couch to watch T.V., figuring that if anything could put me to sleep it was CCTV9, the only English channel on Chinese TV.
After finally beginning to doze off at about 5:30, I jumped back into bed and drifted off for about 30 minutes before Maggie’s alarm went off to get her up to go get a health licence (more on that in a minute). I asked her to grab me some medicine on her way home because there was no way I wanted to endure another night of this (she, oddly, seemed to feel the same).
She came back a few hours later with a box of Azithromycin. I love how most prescription drugs are just over the counter here. I mean, I’m not one for self-medicating and it all makes me a bit ansy to be honest, but I trust Chinese doctors as much as I trust Chinese police. I’ve heard horror stories of an English teacher that broke his arm here and went to the doctor and the doctor calmly explained to him that it just has to come off. He promptly got a second opinion and cast in Korea.
Fortunately after a quick search of the Internet I discovered that Azithromycin is exactly what I need to cure my throat as well as to cure my foot. Yeah, so yesterday also brought with it a soft-tissue infection in my foot. To be honest, I wasn’t (am not) certain that’s what it is, as Maggie has informed me that in the walk up the steps to my apartment I took a tumble the night before (I did mention I had consumed far too much alcohol right?) and it could have been a sprain (they feel the same). But today there’s no swelling, and just a lot more pain… I’m pretty sure that it’s exactly what it is.
Let this be a lesson to you, should you finally find a pair of new shoes for your average (in the West) but huge (in the East) feet, and said shoes give you blisters… don’t forget you have a band-aid on it for several days.
So yeah, damnit, the summer made me forget how sickly I get in China. It was nice having a bit of a holiday from always feeling like crap.
Well, not being able to sleep last night did afford me loads of time to consider a topic for my novel. Perhaps it’s the toxicity in my foot, the blinding pain in my throat or the late hour at which I was putting my mind to it… but it looks like it’s going to be a harrowing tale involving pirates and aliens. Yeah!
