Hospital or Hot Zone?
The sore throat is back and this time it’s angry. The real trouble is that I turn my entire mind and body over to its strangling grip of death. All I seem to want to do about is cry. Cry that I am in pain, cry that nothing helps, cry that I can’t decide whether or not I should miss work, cry that I feel guilty if I do. Enough already!
Last night something gave me hope. Josh and I had dinner with our friends Willa and Harmony. Willa is from Guangzhou and Harmony is from San Diego. They have lived together in Jinan for a few years now. Harmony is blonde with blue eyes and she speaks impeccable Chinese. Not only that, but the woman drives a seriously hard bargain. The standard price for eggs around here is 1.5 RMB/500g and when Harmony was quoted 1.7 RMB, she raised hell! I love to be with her in times like these, just to see the looks on people’s faces. We stroll around appearing to be the dopey foreigners, and then Harmony opens her mouth and jaws drop. I like to imagine that onlookers presume me to be just as savvy.
At dinner last night, after I mentioned my throat pain, Willa told me that there was too much heat in my body from over consumption of “hot foods”. Together Willa and Harmony went on to explain which foods were “hot”, which foods were “cold” and why it was so important to keep the yin (cold) and yang (hot) in balance.
Too many hot foods (chicken, onion, garlic, ginger, oats, apples, sweets) will give you a sore throat, a mild fever and night sweats, so many Chinese are careful to balance their diet with cold foods (lightly cooked vegetables, many fruits, tofu). There seems to be a little bit of debate over which category some foods fall under.
Indeed, the symptoms of too much yang in my diet fit me to a T, but just where did all that yang come from?
Up until last night, my knowledge of that black and white circle was pretty limited. In the sixth grade, Lizzy Brown and I bought a necklace set and each wore a half of the symbol.
In the seventh grade, when Pogs swept through Albuquerque, it was the yin yang symbol that decorated the top of my “slammer”. Other than that, I hadn’t ever given yin or yang much thought.
At last we discovered the source of heat. A couple of weeks ago, the city streets saw a small change: the baked sweet potatoes vendors disappeared and pineapple vendors took their places. Now, you can’t walk two blocks around here without passing a glass case full of pineapples peeled, quartered and skewered onto sticks. And I haven’t gone a single day without a slice of pineapple since they arrived. As soon as I said “pineapple”, Harmony and Willa smiled at each other. Together they looked across the table at me, and shared, “pineapple is very hot.”
I became an instant believer and felt a whole new world of knowledge had laid itself before me. It would become my mission to master the balance and release myself from an inflamed throat, among other ailments, once and for all.
Last night, I went to sleep hopeful and dreamt of cold foods.
At 4am, I woke up in agony. There was no chance of getting back to sleep and I desperately needed the kind of distraction that only the Internet can provide. I started with one of my favorite blogs, and followed one link to another to another and next thing I know, I’m reading about the sink in Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s “crack den”.
To get me through my morning class, I devoured two packages of lozenges. Seconds after the last one had disappeared in my mouth; I knew the tears weren’t too far off. Once home, I lunched on cold foods and continued to fight off the tears.
It wasn’t until Josh suggested that I go for a run to get my mind off the pain that the floodgates came unlatched. I nearly bit the poor man’s head off and then gave in to the tears of my mounting self-pity.
At last, with the urging of my Mom via MSN chatting, I decided to go to the hospital and have a Strep test. So quickly I had given up on the healing power of cold foods and yearned for my familiar antibiotic drugs. I roused a Chinese-speaking friend and hailed a cab to the hospital.
The hospital was a real run-around. In amidst the crowds of people, many of which, to my horror, were smoking, we ran up and down flights of stairs. We paid at one window, collected forms from another, and turned in forms at still a different window on a different floor.
At last, in a long crowded hallway, I hopped up into a dentist type chair and, with an oversized Popsicle stick restraining my tongue, and said “Ahhh”. Comfortingly, all tools were sterilized for a few moments over an “antifog machine” before they entered my mouth. The doctor pulled some matter out of my throat with long tweezers and declared that I had an infection. The specifics of which were lost in translation.
After her conclusion, I produced an enormous bottle of Amoxicillin from my pocket, wondering if she might tell me that’s what I need to be taking. But she was unable to recognize the name on the label and wrote me a new prescription. After standing in a new line in front of a new window, I collected my medicine. In amidst all the Chinese characters, it read “Amoxicillin Capsules”.
And with two of those capsules down the hatch, I just know the end is in sight.
Last night something gave me hope. Josh and I had dinner with our friends Willa and Harmony. Willa is from Guangzhou and Harmony is from San Diego. They have lived together in Jinan for a few years now. Harmony is blonde with blue eyes and she speaks impeccable Chinese. Not only that, but the woman drives a seriously hard bargain. The standard price for eggs around here is 1.5 RMB/500g and when Harmony was quoted 1.7 RMB, she raised hell! I love to be with her in times like these, just to see the looks on people’s faces. We stroll around appearing to be the dopey foreigners, and then Harmony opens her mouth and jaws drop. I like to imagine that onlookers presume me to be just as savvy.
At dinner last night, after I mentioned my throat pain, Willa told me that there was too much heat in my body from over consumption of “hot foods”. Together Willa and Harmony went on to explain which foods were “hot”, which foods were “cold” and why it was so important to keep the yin (cold) and yang (hot) in balance.
Too many hot foods (chicken, onion, garlic, ginger, oats, apples, sweets) will give you a sore throat, a mild fever and night sweats, so many Chinese are careful to balance their diet with cold foods (lightly cooked vegetables, many fruits, tofu). There seems to be a little bit of debate over which category some foods fall under.
Indeed, the symptoms of too much yang in my diet fit me to a T, but just where did all that yang come from?
Up until last night, my knowledge of that black and white circle was pretty limited. In the sixth grade, Lizzy Brown and I bought a necklace set and each wore a half of the symbol.
In the seventh grade, when Pogs swept through Albuquerque, it was the yin yang symbol that decorated the top of my “slammer”. Other than that, I hadn’t ever given yin or yang much thought.
At last we discovered the source of heat. A couple of weeks ago, the city streets saw a small change: the baked sweet potatoes vendors disappeared and pineapple vendors took their places. Now, you can’t walk two blocks around here without passing a glass case full of pineapples peeled, quartered and skewered onto sticks. And I haven’t gone a single day without a slice of pineapple since they arrived. As soon as I said “pineapple”, Harmony and Willa smiled at each other. Together they looked across the table at me, and shared, “pineapple is very hot.”
I became an instant believer and felt a whole new world of knowledge had laid itself before me. It would become my mission to master the balance and release myself from an inflamed throat, among other ailments, once and for all.
Last night, I went to sleep hopeful and dreamt of cold foods.
At 4am, I woke up in agony. There was no chance of getting back to sleep and I desperately needed the kind of distraction that only the Internet can provide. I started with one of my favorite blogs, and followed one link to another to another and next thing I know, I’m reading about the sink in Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s “crack den”.
To get me through my morning class, I devoured two packages of lozenges. Seconds after the last one had disappeared in my mouth; I knew the tears weren’t too far off. Once home, I lunched on cold foods and continued to fight off the tears.
It wasn’t until Josh suggested that I go for a run to get my mind off the pain that the floodgates came unlatched. I nearly bit the poor man’s head off and then gave in to the tears of my mounting self-pity.
At last, with the urging of my Mom via MSN chatting, I decided to go to the hospital and have a Strep test. So quickly I had given up on the healing power of cold foods and yearned for my familiar antibiotic drugs. I roused a Chinese-speaking friend and hailed a cab to the hospital.
The hospital was a real run-around. In amidst the crowds of people, many of which, to my horror, were smoking, we ran up and down flights of stairs. We paid at one window, collected forms from another, and turned in forms at still a different window on a different floor.
At last, in a long crowded hallway, I hopped up into a dentist type chair and, with an oversized Popsicle stick restraining my tongue, and said “Ahhh”. Comfortingly, all tools were sterilized for a few moments over an “antifog machine” before they entered my mouth. The doctor pulled some matter out of my throat with long tweezers and declared that I had an infection. The specifics of which were lost in translation.
After her conclusion, I produced an enormous bottle of Amoxicillin from my pocket, wondering if she might tell me that’s what I need to be taking. But she was unable to recognize the name on the label and wrote me a new prescription. After standing in a new line in front of a new window, I collected my medicine. In amidst all the Chinese characters, it read “Amoxicillin Capsules”.
And with two of those capsules down the hatch, I just know the end is in sight.
posted by B | 5:25 AM
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