Email Fridays

THE DENGUE FILES - Bye Bye China

Read Part Four here. 

WEDNESDAY

Alex’s oxygen tube was removed and the EKG monitor was taken away. The little Christmas card still remained tied to his bed; however, I think now its purpose was more decorative vs. cautionary. 

I also noticed that I lost about 5 pounds so silver lining!  Possibly half of the weight loss came out from my eyes but I’ll take what I can get.

FRIDAY

After two weeks in the hospital, Alex was finally released to go home.  The IV’s were replaced with a bag full of pills of which he’s taking about 20 a day but when it comes to pills vs. needles, I think pills win out any day.  Now you know both what type of patient (wimpy) and what type of drug addict (stomach pump) I would be.

My bags have been packed and I’ve left China for good after living here the majority of my young adult life. It was a crazy stressful 14 days but Alex has recovered and joined me in New York, our Shanghai friends proved to be absolutely amazing, our families came through in the way that families always do during the darkest times and so, in that respect, what was possibly my worst Christmas ended up quite reaffirming in a warm and fuzzy Hallmark card way. 

We found out what we were made of, realized what we both had and now we both have a crazy China tale that trumps most others, so watch out social gatherings – Alex and I have total story swagger for 2013.  Ultimately though, if you think about it, what’s the point of living in China for so long really if you can’t have at least one near death experience?  

THE DENGUE FILES - Christmas at the Hospital

Read Part Three Here

FRIDAY-MONDAY

The dads came in on Friday and for the first time in 72 hours, I was able to go home where I found a very lonely cat and a very messy apartment. Everything in a state of half organization, which is to say everything was a total disaster. On Sunday a troupe of friends came over to help me decide what to keep and what to throw away. It was a real life version of Hoarders but minus the mouse feces and plus a lot of mini food erasers.  

By the time the movers came on Monday, I was already picking out items in the Throw Away pile and moving them to the Keep pile now that my friends from Sunday, i.e. voices of reason, were not there to stop me and the friend who had come to help me was very lovely and enabling. Look out 2013 - Hoarders: NYC Edition!

By Monday, Alex’s oxygen had been reduced and he downgraded from oxygen mask to breathing tube.  His platelet count was back to normal as were his kidneys.  He wanted to “neaten up” his beard in bed. As I stood there holding a water basin for him like a butler as he carefully shaved, it struck me that the sheer vanity of the request was really the true indicator of him feeling better.  The thought was an uplifting one for a multitude of reasons including the realization that I probably didn’t need to be so cheery all the time anymore.  All that niceness was wearing me out.   

CHRISTMAS

Christmas Day was spent in a 5-hour ordeal at Bank of China, which involved 3 trips back to my apartment to retrieve various official documents.   Lesson learned – never, never, never misplace your bank booklet right before you plan to leave China forever.  At one point, I asked the teller why he needed my work permit when he already had two passports to which he answered, “There are too many people who look alike so we have to be sure.” 

Even to Chinese people, Chinese people all look the same.  

That evening I rushed to my favorite chicken woman on Wulumuqi Lu – the one on the corner near Fuxing where she dunks whole roasted chickens into vat of sizzling oil - pure deliciousness for only RMB30 and my dad rushed home and made the Ouyang Christmas favorites – Chinese food. With both in tow, we rushed back to the hospital in time for a Christmas dinner.

Alex’s x-rays had come back much better and his vitals were stable. That night, my dad, Alex’s dad and I sat around Alex’s bed ate our holiday meal with paper plates and plastic utensils.  It was a weird and sentimental at the same time.  

Dengue Fever - bringing people together for the holidays.

THE DENGUE FILES - Reinforcements

Read Part Two Here

WED-THURS 

Alex didn’t sleep at all that night. The fever had seeped throughout his body into his joints, muscles and insides.  He didn’t sleep so I didn’t sleep but at least he was alive and complaining the next morning so I took that as a good sign.

Ruijin for all its superficial lackings, sprung into action with assigning a slew of specialists to Alex’s case. He had a lung doctor, a generalist doctor, an internal doctor, a respiratory doctor, a contagious diseases doctor, the list went on and on. The medicine was working and while he was still on oxygen, his fever had broken and remained so.

Then the emails came in - Alex's and my dad would be flying in on Friday.

It was both a relief and a blow to my pride that my dad was coming out.  It's a humbling revelation that after over a decade of living independently, major crisises still sent me running straight for my parents.

The next two days passed by in moments:
1. Friends bringing us food and supplies (at a Chinese hospital, they provide you with the meds, you provide everything else including food, towels, soap and toilet paper) DIY Hospital!

2. A fight that ended in me yelling, “Do you think I enjoy helping you pee?!” – a ridiculous statement when reviewed in hindsight because neither the helper or the helpee enjoys the experience. It’s the gift that gives to nobody.

3. The panic feeling of realizing that I forgot to call the nurses when an IV drip ran dry.

4. Feeling guilty for not being more watchful.

5. Nurses coming in, doctors coming in, nurses going out, doctors going out

6. Listening to mechanic bleeps and breathing in a silent room

7. Watching the numbers move up and down on the EKG machine

8. Repeat 1 and 3-7

There were some high points during that time including when I realized I could hire a hospital ayi to do many of the things hospital staff in the West would do – change bed pans, sheets, keeping track of the drips, nighttime patient monitoring, straightening the room, etc. I had a China problem, I threw money at it, instant solve. Thank you wallet!

Fan Ayi was a thin woman with a ruddy face and crooked front teeth. She looked after Alex with a dogged determination that I appreciated especially as I was still having trouble controlling my crying. There's really nothing more unattractive than someone holding a bedpan with tears silently cascading down.

Towards the end of the week, the doctors were making headway in getting to Alex’s diagnoses. In the slew of visitors coming in and asking the doctors about Alex, the doctors let it slip that they narrowed it down to Alex having Dengue. In China, it takes a village to get to a diagnosis and everyone’s invited to participate.  Hopefully no one catches anything embarrassing here because the whole world will know.

Dengue is known as "breakbone fever" which precisely describes how it feels.  This shed a whole new light on the aches that Alex had complained of during the last few days.  Apparently it's actually very painful so all the while I secretly thought Alex was just experiencing "man pain" he was probably in quite real pain.  Ops!

Read Part Four - Dengue for the Holidays

THE DENGUE FILES - The Deadliest Catch

Read Part One HERE

TUESDAY

It’s 6am and my phone is ringing. I’m needed at the hospital. Alex is on an oxygen tube. His mild cough has obviously become much more serious. 

As I rushed over, questions swarmed in my mind – What if Alex couldn’t get into a local hospital? What if he wasn’t admitted in time? What if he passed out? What if he died? Then less altruistic thoughts – What about the move?  What about my good-bye lunch plans with my friends?  What if I caught whatever he had and I died just like in the hypothetical nursing scenario Anne posed to Diana during the infamous red currant wine episode in Anne of Green Gables (a classic novel that all North American girls – and bizarrely my Singaporean friend Shu – grew up to).

I get to the hospital to find a sheepish looking boyfriend with a tube up each nostril watching episodes of Homeland but I had already worked myself up into a mild hypochondriac paranoia and was sure my lungs felt alarmingly unwell the closer I stood to his hospital bed. I spent the morning trying to be supportive from the far corner of the room. After all, if airplane safety videos has taught us anything, its that you need to help yourself before you help others right?

It’s 1pm. We are still at Parkway and no news about Ruijing. Alex is looking less sheepish and more unwell.  My double paranoia over my and my boyfriends well being ratchets up to silent hysteria mode (we're talking Ruby Gillis level for the Green Gables fans out there). "I'm going to get some water," I say a bit too brightly to Alex.  I stepped outside the room and promptly had a melt down.

I always wanted to be one of those elegant, stoic heroines you read about in Jane Austin novels, gracefully weeping into the crook of her arm. As with many things in my life that happened after the age of 2, I didn't get what I wanted. My face turned splotchy and smushed up in a very unflattering manner while various fluids ran simultaneously from my nose, eyes and face.  Really gross.

Just as I would get a grip and stop sweating/crying/snotting, my phone would ring and that would set me off all over again. I cried to my friends, I cried to Alex’s friends, I even cried to Ferasse, the SAE relocation guy who called up to see if we would use his company to move (we did not in fact pick them due to cost reasons but if we could choose based on niceness and most well dressed, he would have gotten the job in a heartbeat).  After my rather awkward phone call with him, Ferasse sent me some very nice and supportive emails and texts – to which I cried while reading them. Good ol' Waterworks Ouyang.

It’s 4pm and Ruijin finally called to say a room opened up.  My glee at getting admitted quickly turned into horror when Alex promptly had a panic attack that left him gasping for air through blue lips upon admission to the local hospital.  His was a reaction that I would have normally ridiculed as bourgeois had I not been so scared. Your brain can only process so much in times of crisis and class awareness wit is apparently the first thing to go. Later it turned out that he turned blue possibly not due to stress but because his lungs were filling with fluid so it's just as well that I hadn't made those witty remarks as that would have made me seem like a giant bitch in retrospect. Loss of face adverted!

The room, in actuality, was pretty good. It had three rooms including a living room with a sofa and microwave, a “guest room” with a small bed and a patient room where above the headboard stood a mounted photograph of a forested road leading off into mist.  The image looked like it belonged on a 70’s Hallmark card containing lines taken from a Robert Frost poem. It was calming and unsettling but mostly unsettling when you and the patient are in a troubled state of mind.

That evening, they did an emergency x-ray, which showed that considerable fluid was filling up Alex’s lungs. Lab results also came back showing damage to his kidneys, liver and an extremely low platelet count which meant his blood wouldn’t clot should there be internal bleeding.  And so as with many China moments, the situation had escalated way beyond what we thought could have been logically possible.

It’s 10pm and I’m sitting across from a grim faced doctor in a lab coat. As the words float around me, it feels surreally like an episode out of Grey's Anatomy. "The labs show considerable damage to his organs...You should be prepared...You should notify his family.”  I drifted back to Alex’s room with a fixed smile on my face.

 “You’re going to be fine,” I told him as I sat down on a chair next to his bed. 

“My body is in pain,” he replied. 

“It’s just a Chinese mattress, you’ll get used to it.”
“I doubt it,” he mumbled.

I rolled my eyes because he couldn’t possibly die if I was annoyed at him. That's not how Grey's Anatomy episodes work.

They put an oxygen mask over his face, an IV in his arm and a EKG monitor on his finger.  They tied a small placard around the foot of his bed.  It was a small, rectangular card a childish scrawl of a Christmas tree with presents and ornaments floating around it. 

“How cute,” I thought.

“This means he could die at ANY time,” the nurse told at me in Chinese. “You better monitor him all night and if his stats fall below this number - you come get us, if his saline drip ends - you come get us, if he needs to use the toilet in bed - you do that yourself.” 

And so that was how Alex and I took our relationship to a whole new level.

Read Part Three - Reinforcements

THE DENGUE FILES - My last two weeks in China

MONDAY, 17-Dec

When you touch your boyfriend’s cheek and burn your hand, it’s a bad sign. It’s Day Four of Avis Fever Watch and what was once a bout of comically badly-timed illness had quickly turned into a nagging knot of worry. Alex’s fever had sky rocketed to 105 F (40.5 C) and showed no signs of breaking in spite of the cocktail of medicines given to him by the doctor. Feverish night sweats creeped into intense day time shivers in a never ending cycle of hot and cold.

After a quick consultation at Parkway – at which Alex nearly passed out climbing up the stairs at Shanghai Center - we were sent to United Family in Gubei. There we waited for an hour only to be told they had no beds. We were then told to cab over to Parkway Luwan near Xintiandi. So 4 hours later, we were effectively 5 miles down the road from where we started the day. Brilliant.

The Parkway Luwan in-patient facilities were in a word - gorgeous. Large, airy with a cushy couch, private bathroom, wifi and Element Fresh - even in the grips of impending panic at my increasingly pale and shivering boyfriend, I could process that the room was very, very nice. You have to take time to appreciate the finer things in life you know. We were told that we would wait here until we could get transferred to a local hospital as the doctors were starting to suspect Typhoid or Dengue as the reason behind Alex’s fever and, under Chinese law, the only proper facilities to support that would be at Ruijin or Huashan.

Huashan was contacted and refused entry (who knew hospitals could pick and choose who they help?) They said didn’t want a foreigner at their local facility. Looking back now they probably didn’t want a foreigner dying at their local facility. Dead lao wai’s are such bad press and in this economy a hospital has reputation to protect… So that left Ruijin.

2 hours later, we were told to get ready to leave for Ruijin Hospital. 20 minutes later we were told – never mind, they actually don’t have beds yet – try tomorrow. And so Alex would stay overnight in a ridiculously expensive room that he couldn’t really afford (his company cancelled his insurance without telling him) and couldn’t enjoy due to his body being on fire. Dangerously high fevers are such a drag like that. It would be another 24 hours before anyone could even start diagnosing him. That's the way China rollllllllls.

There was nothing more to do.  Paranoia set in and determined not to inadvertently stumble into my own personal Contagion movie, I went home for the night and slept on the couch (germs obviously can't jump from room to room right?) hoping the next day would be better.

READ PART TWO HERE