Ears to the nights we felt alive...

Its been 5 days now since I flew from Kunming to Beijing, and due to the perils of mixing altitude changes and flu-like symptons, I landed in considerable pain and had to cancel my plans to return home to the U.S. It was a shame, a pity, unfortunate, and ultimately, the only choice if I wanted to maintain my hearing. A whole bevy of medical supplies were prescribed to me, which I have been dutifully swallowing, dripping, and swigging. Hey it could be worse- I could be like this poor cat and not have any idea why I was being put through such an ear-deal.
















In any event, my right ear is almost entirely open, but my left one is still waiting to "pop", so to speak, even though sometimes I feel it will at any second. Its funny, every time I've taken an airplane, whether its your garden variety Southwest Airlines Chicago Midway-Ft. Lauderdale, Floride or your extraordinary LAX-Beijing, every time my ears have acted up, only to clear a few minutes after landing. So I guess that's just one of those signs that my body just isn't very good at dealing with altitude changes, and all it took was a weeklong trip to high-but-not-nearly-as-high-as-Lhasa-high to send shockwaves through my skull and render me inert for close to a week now. Alas, I am now banned (by an ashen-faced and somber Iris) from ever travelling to Tibet ever in my entire life. Oh well, there are the things one does if one wants to remain a member of the hearing club. Not that I think there's anything wrong with being deaf, that is; I just don't think anyone would likely choose such a course if they had a way to avoid it. The doctors have said this kind of illness ususally takes about 2 weeks to cure, so I'm riding merrily along, and my terrible cough has subsided considerably. Many of that is thanks to the delicious cough medicine prescribed by Dr. Iris seen below floating in front of my head:















Its a sweet syrup from Hong Kong that not only tastes like the most spectacular honey but also has reduced my cough from the point where I was nearly unable at eat to a mere hem hem that would give Dolores Umbridge herself pause.

The other day, perhaps a day or two after arriving in Beijing I went out for a tuna fish sandwich. Seems harmless enough, right? Well it made me feel sick, and made Iris annoyed, since I violated two of the "envelope rules" of recovery that were crafted for me: exercise and seafood














(That list reminds me of "Clerks": Its not every girl who brings you lasagna into work/ scribbles a list of things to do and not do to take care of yourself better.) I replied with a sorrowful and remorseful tone (at least as sorrowful and remorseful as can be managed in a 60 character text message) that I had to go out to eat, and that I couldn't avoid riding my bike if I had to get something to eat from any nearby restaurant. Well-played by me, as it turns out. The very next day she turned up with a delicious eggplant-and-beef meal cooked up by her own mother. Mouth-watering and free! Of course, as I hunted around for a microwave, I realized I didn't have one! (I've only lived here over 10 months, and this is the first time I've ever needed one.) So I stuck a deal with a nearby breakfast stand that I could make use of their microwave in exchange for buying a couple of things and idle chit-chat. Today as my eggplant was warming, an elderly gentlemen came up and bought some stringy stuff, and looked a bit curiously at me. As if he's never seen a foreigner waiting at the neighborhood bread stand for his meat dish to finish cooking in their microwave. He was so surprised to see I spoke passable Chinese that he dropped his cane- which I then picked up for him. I thought later that his hearing was most likely just as bad as mine (I tend to think I'm operating at 65-70% of hearing capacity until my other pops). Made me think how glad I am that this altitude-shift scare happened to me while I'm young and fresh and able to get over such things that might be devastating if it happened while I was elderly. Better to find out now I'm never going to Tibet.