Pollution Throat

    45 minutes after I got off the plane from the Philippines, my throat began to ache, a dry scratchy pain. As a teacher of young children, my speaking is never halted.
"Sit down please!"
      "Quiet please!"
               "Look at me!"
                        "Walk please!"
                                "Sit down!"
                                        "SIT SIT SIT SIT"
                                                "Listen please"
                                                        "SHHHHHHHHH, QUIET, LISTEN"
    So, over the weeks, my throat has gotten more and more agitated, it is not like the air has gotten cleaner. Beijing has 58 days of blue sky a year, even less than the previous year. One day, I awoke with the feeling that I had a hunk of food in the back of my mouth that I could spit out. It would not come out, of course. So, at work the nurse gave me a mirror and a flash light and what I saw scared me. The back of my mouth had swelled into the form of a cave, or female genitalia, whichever image you prefer. I went to the hospital immediately after work.

    Moving through the conveyor-belt system of a Chinese hospital; buy a ticket, go to the doctor and talk, take blood, wait, get blood results, go back to the doctor, get a prescription, ask the nurse directions and finally get medicine. The medication; take 2 different kinds of pills 3 times a day and drink a tea 2 times a day. After consuming all this medication, the problem came back. WONDERFUL!!!!
    So, the nurse took me to a hospital near our school. Actually, it was the hospital that fixed my toe.  They wanted to give me more pills, I told them I wanted injections of violent medicine to kill that whatever quick, fast and in a hurry. As I waited for the doctor to check the availability of medicine, a woman and her son came in to talk to the  other doctor about a problem.  Thank goodness for my Chinese listening, cause this was an interesting story.
    This woman, who was about 26 and decent looking, had brought her child to the doctor because he was having a stomach ache, a common issue. The reason is not so common in my experience; Her whole family had some sort of stomach worms. After realizing this, they got some medicine for the worms and her and her husband had no problem with it, but it was giving the little boy stomach problems, she was confused why. The doctor was rather curt with her merely saying, "It is almost finished killing the worms so his stomach hurts."
    Later, I got my first of three shots in the rump. The next day I came in and got another. And the third day, I got one more. My throat feels a lot better, and I have been trying to put more emphasis on student centered activity to keep them from making me talk; silent reading, summaries and writing.
    The last time I went to the hospital, I had to wait a bit for my shot. As I waited, I noticed the drain had the caps of syringes hanging about inside, not comforting and not surprising. But, this creature was a shocker.

This was the biggest spider I have ever seen in the wild. I could almost feel it's footsteps shake the floor. Is that a centipede it is eating or a freaking BOA. That day, I learned the Chinese word for poison (du) as the nurse and I discussed the spider. Maybe just a normal wolf spider, I was not willing to stick my hand near it to find out later it was a brown recluse. As my grandma would say, "You'll wish you hadn't."

Comments

hi

[Billy]

In case you're wondering, a brown recluse spider is completely harmless. It does not kill. :)

[Narration]

Jake, got me smiling a bit - your grandmother is wise ;).

Glad to see you posting again, on daily happenstances.

Hope your throat gets its full wellness back soon.

Stress can be part of these things, imagine you know, and the main cure for that is to let yourself get enough real relaxation.

Kind regards,
Clive (Narration)

[pj]

welcome back

[Lucy]

In case you're wondering, Billy is wrong. :)

Jake, thanks for sharing about Shawn. I enjoyed his writing. From what I've read, it sounds like you may be responsible for extended his life by inviting him to China, being his friend and helping him out during his previous dark time. Sounds like you were a very good friend and did everything you could for him. So sorry for your loss.

[Sorry]

####SORRY### For ?ing U

[mom2twoboys]

Jake--in late summer, come down to HK--I'll show you some truly scary spiders! These are big black and yellow ones that build huge webs outside our flat. With their legs spread out they are as big as my palm. You can see their 1/2 cm long mandibles. However, ya gotta figure they eat lots of something to get that big, so I let them stay. After all, we have plenty of centipedes, cockroaches, ants, and other critters that sneak in through the vents and under the doors--the spiders are probably keeping that number down!

Hang in there and keep well. A trick I learned from a singer friend is this: When your voice is getting scratchy or hoarse, drink hot lemon water with honey (can you get lemon juice up there? Or lemons? I assume you can, but I might be wrong). That helps a lot. Actually, I've found that a spoonful of honey really helps to soothe a scratchy throat.

Good to hear from you again.

M

[mom2twoboys]

Oh, yeah, a brown recluse won't KILL you, just turn all your flesh necrotic and rotting.

M

[Jacob]

I drink a big spoon of honey with my coffee. Helps the throat and regularity. EWE

[Jacobian]

Jake,

Do you know the whereabouts of "Jon" from Gangnam? Does he have a blog?

[Jacob]

Do not know his location, never actually met him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jake, keep the posts coming, bro. By linking to your blog, Shawn Matthews has effectively "willed" you a bunch of readers.

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, on another blog some guy posted that he has salvaged some of CLB off his HDD:

http://members.aol.com/shawnschinalife