Typhoon Fever

(I apologize for missing a blog post last week.  The following post with explain.)


I am writing this blog post to you not from my school computer room, where I usually write these - not from my apartment, where I sometimes write them - but from a hospital room.  I am in a hospital room because last week I became very sick.  I don't remember becoming sick, though, because the sickness caused me to lose my memory.  All that I remember of my time at home sick is boiling water on the stove because I had run out of drinking water. I don't have any recollection of being at school on Thursday when Alisa tells me I couldn't remember something that happened five seconds before. And when I lost my memory, Alisa and my co-workers decided to send me to the hospital.

If there are a lot of details missing in this story so far that's because they are missing in my head as well.  Hopefully, eventually it will become much clearer to me.  When I did start holding onto my memories, I was in a hospital room with six other men of various ages and levels of functioning.   The man beside me just seemed to suffer from grumpiness and an inibility to keep his dentures in his mouth.  The man beside him slept all day, so I don't know much about him.  The man in the far corner was the least functioning of us all.  His wife, a dedicated and brave lady, takes care of him at all times and does everything for him, which includes holding the pee bottle for him.  The man beside him was younger, but balder.  He was a happy guy.  But the man beside him, almost across the room from me, was my favourite.  Think of Morgan Freeman.  Then make the face a bit korean...  take away an ear (he'd lost one)... add the speech of the character Brick in "Anchorman"... and then add a malfuctioning hearing aid - that's who this guy is.  He might be the funniest guy I've ever observed before.  His hearing aid would always be making those funny high-piched squeels that seem to be coming from somewhere else in the room.  So he'd take it out of his ear, look at it confoundedly, turn a knob and talk to himself in the funniest voice (I can't imagine anyone understanding him), and then look up and give a goofy smile and go back to watching TV, only for it to happen again 2 minutes later.  I swear, if I could just take him with me everywhere I go, I'd never have a dull moment.  Anyway, the last guy in the room, directly across from me, was a guy about my age, and not Korean.  I'm quite sure he is Vietnamese, but I never got to ask him.  He's a smily guy who's in here because of something he did to his finger.  It's pretty bandaged up.  One more thing about these men: they could have won any snoring contest hands-down.  They've clearly practiced hard to get to the level they're at.  It was quite a chorus to fall asleep to most nights.

But many of these sentences, you may notice, are in the past tense.  That's because I am no longer in that hospital room, sadly.  Today, the doctors decided that I'm contagious and so they moved me to an isolated room of my own on the same floor.  From this room, I have the nicest view of Pohang that anyone can have - overlooking the harbor and all the boats going out and coming in.  And I have my own bathroom.  These things are great, but they aren't people.  I'm lonely.  I want to laugh at Morgan Freeman some more.  I want the smiling nurses to bustle in and out of my room and sometimes stop to see how I am.  Sometimes the nurses visit me here, but not very often.  Oh well.

But wait.  You don't even know what's wrong with me yet!  (Unless you're one of the family or friends who does already know what's wrong with me - in fact, knew what was wrong with me before I even knew it). (But if you're not one of these people, let me tell you what's wrong with me).  I have Typhoid Fever.  The doctor says it is due to the bacteria Salmonella Para Typhi.  I got it from something in Cambodia and the fever had been hibernating inside my body for three weeks.  Then, when it decided to show itself and mess up my physical health, it chose to mess up my memory as well.  To me, Typhoid Fever feels more like Typhoon Fever because it feels like a typhoon just ripped through my brain.

My doctor tells me that I'll probably be here until February the 3rd - that's in a week and 2 days.  The nurses need to give me antibiotics everyday for that time.  They do this through the introvenous tube that is hooked up to my arm at all times.  Before this experience I would see Koreans walking around with IVs and wonder how they could be helpful to them.  But now I see that it's much easier to insert a liquid medicine into a tube that's already connected to you than to give you a new needle every day.
A week and 2 days seems like a long time, and it probably will be, but I've had a lot of good friends come and visit me already and I have lots of books to read, movies to watch, news to catch up on, and memories to recal.
Actually this experience has been somewhat beneficial to me so far.  It has made me give up control of myself to the doctors, nurses, family, and friends.  And most importantly, it has helped me realize that God is ultimately in control.  I'll have plently of time to do the daily devotions that I have such a hard time finding time for during my 'regular life', because I'm always doing much more 'important' things.

I appreciate your thoughts and prayers for me.
Thanks for reading,
Michael