As an American child an illness like the flu or a stomach ache often didn’t seem dire to me at all, in fact if I missed school the illness would sometimes be welcomed and enjoyed. In those times I knew I was young and healthy and that my parent’s health insurance would allow competent and well paid doctors to solve whatever problem I had. I can’t ever remember feeling terribly scared about being sick when I was a kid. Now I’m older, though certainly young enough to be slightly cocky in the way I live, and illness is at the least a big annoyance and at worse a fearful and unknown hell. In China illness takes on new dimensions of worry what with the less than perfect medical system. Though believe me when I say that the Chinese medical system is very good and has been good to me, this story was an anomoly in almost every way. I got to go down the hellish unknown road of an illness this Spring and it is without a doubt one of the most intense experiences of my time as a teacher in Hunan.
I don’t want to give away what I had just yet, the path to figuring that out is what made this long drawn out adventure so absolutely interesting and scary. In March the American woman who had taught at my school here in Huaihua last year visited for a week. It was 6 days and nights of non-stop banquets and jovial drinking with friends. On top of that I was teaching 16 lessons that week. She left on a Friday and that morning I woke up feeling miserable. I reasoned that I had blown my immune system over the course of the hectic week of partying and figured I could cure myself with a weekend of sleep, relaxation, and lots of water and Tylenol. I found myself completely exhausted to a degree I wasn’t used to that weekend, I was acting like an old who needs to stop every few steps. All of that didn’t bother me too much since I am young and figured whatever the bug I had was it was nothing that I couldn’t fix. Monday rolled around and I still felt horrible, maybe even worse than before. I had an easy lesson for my students that week, having them prep question for my sister’s visit the following week, but nonetheess teaching was an unbearable chore that left me wasted.
After my first class Tuesday my body was noticeably giving away, everything took too much energy. Even walking out of the school to eat was a massive chore and left me in bed for hours between trips anywhere. Tuesday morning was the last time I would teach for two weeks. On Wednesday I went to the local hospital, the Number Five People’s Hospital. On the way there I learned that the teachers at my school never use that hospital, it has a crummy reputation. The doctor there told me I was fine and would be okay after some rest. He gave me vitamin C tablets.
I spent the rest of that week trying to recover, my mind focused on getting better for my sister Becky’s visit. I downed an obscene amount of Tylenol, ate basically nothing (really), stayed in bed all day watching movies and went through a full water cooler’s worth of water in 7 days. On Friday I went to Changsha to pick up my sister. I was still sick but determined to make her visit as I had imagined it. I still wasn’t eating more than a few bits. Nausea and a sore throat were added to my list of symptoms. On Sunday we took a bus back to Huaihua and I still felt horrible.
That first night back home I realized I needed to go to the hospital. Next day spent all day in the Huaihua No. One hospital. Nothing was discovered until they sent me to the infectious diseases building. There they told me that I had a serious infection “in some organ” (they didn’t know which) and needed to stay in the hospital over night. I called my field director told him I wanted to come to Changsha, Hunan’s capital, for better care. My sister’s visit was unraveling at the seams. I packed enough clothes and contacts for two days in Changsha. I was hopeful of a quick diagnosis and recovery, a foolhardy belief looking back on it. My throat by this point was becoming increasingly out of whack and talking or eating (not that I did that) became a very painful experience.
We took the early bus back to Changsha, I was out of it in every way. Arriving in Changsha at noon we hiked around the busy metropolis in the mid-day sun while we searched for a hotel that hadn’t opened yet. I sat down every chance I had. Got a room at my old hotel from last summer and taxied to the Provincial People’s Hospital, my home for the next 5 days.
The first day was pretty easy, just got some antibiotics and saline solution injected into me in the emergency ward. The nurses like my plump veins. Only took 5 and a half hours too, with ample time waiting in lines to first pay and then pick up my prescriptions. Got dinner while in a lucid feverish state, but I was hopeful and glad Becky was able to see more than the inside of Chinese hospitals.
Over the next couple of days my doctors (they changed almost daily) kept changing my prescription, apparently nothing was working (Hmmmm. A warning sign, no?). Started getting daily blood tests, watched as my white blood cell count skyrocketed. Every single test they ever gave me came back with a sad looking doctor and bad news, it was almost comical. By day three the doctors were showing signs of worry and didn’t understand why the antibiotics weren’t working. My family back home was worried as well while they tryed to figure out exactly what my medicine was. My field director began to show signs of fatigue and I slept all day on my rock hard bed while my sister read books. McDonalds milk shakes became my best friend and I watched the swarms of sick people around me.
New crazy diagonisises became a daily occurrence. Strep throat became tonsillitis, and then infected lungs, which became an infected heart and then TB, finally ending in a scrapping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel HIV diagnosis (no, I don’t have that). I bought new glasses because my insufficient supply of contacts ran out and I wore the same filthy/smelly/sweat soaked clothes day after day. Two fellow American teachers, Tara and Maria, visited me sometime during the week and were a Godsend. They brought instant chicken soup and hot chocolate, filling a void I had due to complete lack of American comfort food.
Thursday night (after 3 days at the hospital) was the high tide of my misery. The hospital refused to let me take any pain killer whatever, it would affect my fever and they enjoyed watching it climb – seemingly just to see how high it would get. I couldn’t swallow water anymore because of the pain. So that night with frozen water bottles in my armpits (to lower the fever) and IV tubes stuck into my Heroin-addict-hands I slept at the hospital. At that point I was fully nuts and deeply worried about what would happen to me. Crazy scenarios popped into my head about being quarantined with Bird Flu or being evacuated to America. At that moment of sadness while my doctor thought I was asleep she talked to my field director behind the curtain saying in a serious tone that it was very possible that I had Tuberculosis. I lied staring at my IV dripping, full of despair.
On Friday with a high tide fever of 102 I flew to fly to Beijing to seek better care. The hospital was American run and, to me, was like a 5 start hotel (with prices to match). I started feeling better the minute I learned I had Mononucleosis. Yes, I have Mono. It only took the Beijing hospital an hour or so to figure that out. I kept thinking: “What the hell had they been doing in Changsha??” I flew back to Changsha the next day and took a bus to Huaihua. I was still sick, though thankfully out of my life as a patient with an unknown disease and rare bacterial infection.
The writer Katherine Ann Porter said in a 1965 interview regarding her bout of Spanish influenza, which she got while recovering from Tuberculosis in Texas in 1919, “I just simply divided my life, cut across it like that.” Now, I was never close to death but the long nature of my illness and the fact that I stayed bed ridden and insular after returning from Beijing for weeks and weeks brought a clean break from my life before my illness. Truthfully, before I was sick I had been lost. Life in Huaihua was annoying me and my job teaching at my school lacked the enjoyment it had before. My goals to learn Chinese, live in the present, and enjoy life alone in a far-off Chinese city were thrown aside and I wasted my days away. Mono gave me plenty of time to think and realize how little time I have left here. Right now I’m trying to act on those realizations. At least I have a good story to tell.
Photograph from eyeofstanley on Flickr.
