Bocah Nakal!

I was surprised this morning by the appearance of the maid at my place--not that she jumped out of closet and shrieked "Surprise" or anything, but because I was 100 percent certain that this was Friday rather than Saturday.  She, of course, assured me, somewhat apologetically, that I was 100 percent wrong and that this was in fact Saturday, her usual day to come for the weekly cleaning. So I had to pack up and get out of the way quickly, although I had not anticipated dragging myself out today, given the oppressive headache, nausea, and fatigue I've been suffering. But Oh well. Maybe it's good that I got forced out, rather than spend another day of contemplating how rotten I feel. I could have gone back to the communal patio in the rear of the villa, but that's kind of boring, so I've gone out for coffee instead (which, technically, I'm not supposed to have because of its irritating effects on the gastritis situation). But hell, I've never been one to deny myself of simple comforts for very long, gastritis be damned. 

So, taking myself and my laptop case out to our little parking bay, I found the usual gang of boys at play. I had yelled at them last night because they were bucking up and down on my motorbike as if it were a broncing bucko. I don't mind if they sit on the bike, which seems a fairly common thing here with any parked bike, but of course I don't want them wearing out the shocks on the thing. 

"Hey!" I  shouted, "Jangan! Jangan main kuda dengan motor saya!" (Don't play horsey on my bike). 

"Oh, sorry, sorry, Mister."

This morning, they're back on the bike, but at least they're not playing rodeo horse. So far. And I tell them again not to do so. 

"Okay, okay, Mister, we  not."

Just then another friend of theirs showed up on his own motorbike. Or someone's. The boy is about the size of a 7-year-old, comically dwarfed by the vehicle. I asked how old he is and he tells me he's 12. 

Hard to believe. Poor boy must be undernourished. 

Well, I myself am undernourished, because all I've been eating, twice a day, is a boiled egg on toast. According to my research, anything and everything else makes the gastritis worse. Then again, it doesn't seem to be getting any better with this starvation diet, despite the medicines. What's a fella to do? 

Second Visit With Wibawa

Follow-up visit with the man of few words, Dr. Wibawa, was not as momentous as I thought it might be. This is good, I suppose, in the sense that nothing as portentious as I had expected might be present was found. On blood exams and endoscopy and biopsy, there was nothing earth-shaking. I myself was pretty sure that a Helicobacter pylori infection would be discovered, but not so. On the other hand, I am still sick after a week or the medications he prescribed on the previous visit, with no end in sight. One hopes that something critical, a causation that had heretofore escaped notice, would be identified--an Ah ha! moment when the critical element behind the illness is at last unmasked, exposed, such that it may be specifically targeted. There was no such moment. The doctor merely prescribed more of the medicine he had prescribed last week. 

Again, as on the last visit, Dr. Wibawa seemed quietly aloof, almost disinterested, except when it came to the mysterious whereabouts of the endoscopy report. 

"Can I see the endoscopy?" he said, holding out his hand without looking up from his papers. 

"What? Endoscopy? I don't have it."

He looks up, brow furrowed, as if he had misunderstood me. 

"Who has it?" 

"Why, you have it!" 

He holds out both hands, palms up, glances about the desktop illustratively. 

A long discussion ensues about where the endoscopy could possibly be, my own sense of clarity mitigated by a westerner's automatic faith that the doctor is in control, that he has the records, the paperwork, the computer files, all the pertinent documents that have been collected. 

In Indonesia, this is not so, and after eight years here I should know that. I do know it. Still, fifty-five years in America has acclimated me to a system and practice that actually works. I'm thinking, My God, doesn't he have all this documentation on the computer right in front of him? Or doesn't he at least have a paper copy in the office or in some clerical filing system up front? But wait, this is not his office per se. It is an office, to be sure, but likely serves as such for any number of people during various hours of the day and night. And what sort of clerical filing room can I be imagining when the entire building is about the size of a studio apartment, and the only thing behind the front desk is a wall? 

I have no recollection of having been given the endoscopy report, and therefore I am certain that I do not have it. It is only later, on the way home, that I remember that there are many things about which I have no recollection. I begin to wonder whether I have the report after all? Could it be? 

Well, yes, it could, and is. At home, I find the endoscopy report and images in a closet I don't remember putting it in. Kind of embarrassing, actually--but, sadly, par for the course. 

Following the kerfuffle regarding the endoscopy report, Dr. Wibawa performes the perfunctory exam--listening to bowel sounds with a stethoscope, tapping out a little drumbeat on my stomach with two fingers--and we're back to the desk, where he scribbles several prescriptions, and then I'm out of there. Anti-climax. 

Well, I'll take the medicines, try to watch my diet, continue to avoid coffee as much as possible, continue at failing to stop smoking, and likely see the doctor again whenever the medicines run out.

Next time, I'll remember to bring my endoscopy. Maybe. 

Baseball Will Never Feel the Same

Yes I'm still here. I've just been put out of action for a number of days by a new episode in the next chapter of the epic tale known as The Lurking Plague--If You Didn't Believe it Could Get Worse, You Were Dead Wrong. 

Day by day, I began to develop a strange feeling, at first just at night, of having something stuck in my throat. This symptom expanded to include a need to constantly swallow, and the swallowing then began to cause intense and relentless nausea.

I called Dr. Tutwuri, the ENT I had been seeing for some months now, and she suggested that I see a gastrohepatologist. This was not something I wanted to do, but she stuck by her guns and gave me no choice, really, but to shut up and suffer or see the gastrohepatologist. 

(I am thankful, by the way, for the help of Louis and Wayne in this regard, as I truly felt too ill to make it on my own to the office, especially riding a motorbike and at nighttime when I can't see well anyway. They were very kind to convey me to the clinic and to stay for the examination and discussion with the doctor). 

Beforehand, I had written down a summary of my  history with the plague so far, which Dr. Wibawa, a soft-spoken, straight-faced gentleman, read dispassionately, and I thought, somehow, a bit doubtfully. I don't know, perhaps one corner of his mouth twitched upward toward the hint of a smile, or a smirk, toward the end of his reading. He then proceeded with a short examination, returned to his desk, and as Louis and I rambled through various elaborations, he wrote prescriptions on a pad, occasionally glancing up or muttering "Mm hm." One tends to think that one's own case of an illness is outstanding, particular, in need of careful explication, but I suppose that to a doctor they all look pretty much the same. He sees such-and-such symptoms over and over and treats them over-and-over with such and such meds. 

"Fill these prescriptions," Dr. Wibawa drones, "give two lab samples before you go, and then get an upper endoscopy tomorrow."

His nurse hands me the envelop containing the 'invitation' to get an endoscopy.

So while Louis arranges things at the pharmacy counter, I am ushered into a separate room for the lab tests. First a tube of blood is taken (of which, I would mention, I have very little remaining in my veins after four months of intermittent lab tests, and then the young man who has drawn the blood hands me a little plastic tube with a little plastic spoon in it. 

"What am I to do with this?"

"Poop," the young man says. 

"Excuse me?"

"For da poop," he says. 

"Now?"

"Yes." 

"But I don't have to go now."

"Tomorrow. You poop. Bring da poop to da clinic. Open at 8 o'clock." 


"You mean I have to poop at exactly 8 or get the poop to the clinic at exactly 8."

"Clinic open at 8. You poop when you want. But not more than 2 hours." 

"Two hours for …?"

"For to bring da poop to da clinic." 

I'm feeling a bit stressed at this. I'm picturing speeding to the clinic, being stopped by the police, and trying to explain I am transporting an important cargo of poop to the clinic and that it, like a carton of yogurt, has a pressing expiration time. 

Well, upon finally arriving home, going on 11 now, I take the two pills, pop a piece of bread in the toaster for the required meal after taking the pills, and then, having eaten, crash on the bed. I had slept only a very few hours in the last few days and I am totally exhausted. And--wonders never cease--I fell asleep immediately. Heaven. 

The next day, I am able to produce and deliver da poop, and moreover, what I produce seems conveniently custom-made for the little plastic tube! By 1 o'clock, I am on my way to the hospital for the endoscopy. 

As it turns out, the hospital is located in the dim recesses of outer Denpasar, like Pluto in our solar system, and so I decided to take GrabCar. I can't imagine driving the scooter that far in my present condition. 

As with all local hospitals (as opposed to international hospitals suited to wealthy ex-pat customers), BaliMed looks more like a warehouse than a hospital, although on the inside the quality improves to the level of an inner-city bus station.

Take a number, have a seat. And so I am sitting there, wondering whether they really do endoscopies in bus stations. 

At last, after a slow-motion clerical flurry of papers, I am ushered into a closet which will serve as the endoscopy suite. A nurse lies me down on my side, places a towel under my chin, and calls the doctor over. 

"You have opted for local anesthesia only, correct?" 

We interrupt this broadcast for a test of the cognitive function system.

You see, when I registered at the front test, I was given the option of choosing local anesthetic or general anesthetic. I did recall having had an general anesthesia in the past-- twice, fact--once for wisdom tooth removal and once for insertion of a kidney stone catheter--but I did not recall general anesthesia in connection with a previous endoscopy. In fact, I barely remember the endoscopy from many years ago. Additionally, I noted that the procedure performed with general anesthesia was significantly more expensive than with local, and that I, after multiple doctor visits over the last few months, was significantly poorer than usual.

We now return you to the examination room

"Yes," I said, "that's correct." 

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." 

"Okay. Ready?"

"Proceed."

The nurse turns my head to the side, firmly holds my chin down, and the doctor proceeds. 

Oh. My. God. 

Who knew that an aluminum baseball bat could be shoved down the throat of a human being, slid in and out and back and forth, wiggled around? Every time I thought he had inserted the instrument as far as it could go, he inserted it further.

"Okay?" the doctor said, 

"Gluck," I said. 

"Relax," the nurse said, wiping snot and saliva from my chin.

Further again, and further yet.

"Okay?"

"Gluck!"

"Relax."

And then it was over. Praise God. I live. 

Again, we interrupt this broadcast for a test of the cognitive function system. 

I had been concerned from the start of my hospital visit--fixated, really--about who was to send the results of this study to the clinic, which was far away in the center of Denpasar. I did not want to have to pick it up and deliver it myself, and yet this is what the folks at the front desk had seemed to suggest. So I questioned the doctor as he studied the results from the endoscopy on his computer screen. Am I to pick this up, or will it be delivered to the clinic. I mean, do I have to return here and pick up the results? Or will they be sent to Dr. Wibawa's clinic? 

By this point in my one-sided quandary, the doctor had begun to tap at a little plate pinned to his chest, eventually drawing my attention to it. The plate reads: Dr. Wibawa.

"Oh! It's you. You are Dr  Wibawa!

This, I reckon, is either proof that all Asians do look the same, or that my brain is more deeply fried than I have realized. The latter, I think. 

The doctor--Dr. Wibawa, actually, whom I met with in the first place at the clinic--finishes by asking why Dr. Tutwuri thought I had a fungal infection. 

"Well, she did a throat swab, and the swab showed a fungal infection."

"That's strange," the doctor says, raising an eyebrow, and then two. "I see no evidence whatsoever of a fungal infection. None at all. It's a very specific thing. You can't miss it."

What does he mean by this. Can he possibly mean that Dr. Tutwuri has been treating me three months for a condition that I do not have? 

Who can say? Anything is possible in Indonesia. 

Now it's time to pay the bill and get the hell out of here. I rush down to the first floor, but cannot find the front desk. A helpful clerk tells me that it is on the second floor, where I had registered less than an hour ago. Remember? 

So okay, back to the second floor. Come to think of it, this does look familiar. I find the cashier and wait my turn and pay my bill, and then I'm out of there. 

Except that I cannot find the elevator. 

It turns out, as is pointed out by another helpful clerk, that I am standing directly in front of the elevator, which, if I turn around, I will see. 

As I ride home in the Grab Car I feel unusually well, despite having had the baseball ball inserted into my throat. Or is it because of this? Could this, after all, be the cure? If so, I hope that only a single treatment will be needed. 

A Journey

As I was trudging up the steps to Starbucks this morning, a painful, meandering, potentially dangerous exercise, and a rather slow one too, my thoughts went back to olden days when I would walk miles to a lake for a day of fishing, or climb to the 7200 foot level of a towering hill just to see what I could see, and it did not seem a miraculous feat then, or an unusual one. It was normal, hardly worth thinking about in and of itself. What bliss it seems now to imagine trotting up these steps, for instance, and not feeling like I'm going to collapse at the top. How completely outside the realm of the wildest imagination it would have been back then in those olden days to picture myself lightheaded and out of breath at the top of these ten stairs, having to stop and rest my legs before moving on the remaining dozen yards or so to the doorway. I suppose that we all enjoy our youth and our health, but we do not fully know why. How could we? You have to be there, unfortunately. And once you're there, there's no going back. Youth, as the old saying goes, is wasted on the young. I don't know whether that is true. But I do know that it is fully appreciated only in hindsight. 

Docter Lagi

Back to the doctor today--the neurologist, anyway. I don't care about the blood pressure and the borderline diabetes, but I did need those anti-weird-internal-heat pills. I don't know what they are, but they work fairly well. Usually two a day. In the morning I begin to feel very hot, so take a pill. Feel okay until afternoon, when the hot feeling returns, so I take another. They are fairly expensive, unfortunately. My problems always have expensive taste. And this, he says, is a chronic condition. What else, right? It is a bit difficult to communicate with this neurologist, for he speaks very softly and very quickly, forgetting that 1) Indonesian is a second language for me and 2) that I can't hear very well. 

I also finally broke down and sent a message to the ENT doc, as the infection persists, though not as bad as before. The thing is, the only thing that helps is Afrin spray, and one is not supposed to use this over a long period of time, as the spray itself becomes a problem. But what else to do? If I don't use it, my head is soon stuffed, I can't breathe through my nose, and facial pressure and headache starts in. Vicious circle. 

Makan Siang dan Lain

When I went out to the parking bay this morning, three little boys ran up and asked if I could give the money. Poor little tykes definitely got the wrong guy. Not because I wouldn't give them some money if I had it, but because I don't have it. But there is this persistent myth here in Bali that all westerners are rich. Walking ATMs. Just ask, and they shall receive. I certainly wish it were true, but alas ….

Anyway, later on I had lunch with Louis and my stepson, Sasha, as well a couple of unidentified friends of Louis'. Apparently I know them, but I have no recollection of who they are or why I know them. Nothing new there. 

We went to a restaurant that featured it's own little zoo, with exotic birds roaming about (peacocks and swans and such-like) and tropical fish in a half dozen viewing tanks, and some of the worst food for the stupidest prices I've ever seen. Luckily, I wasn't picking up the bill, which must have been crowing a million Rupiah for the five of us. Those small boys ought to camp outside Louis' gate, I reckon. 

I'm topping off the day with a trip out for coffee in the evening rather than, as is usual, in the morning. In the evening here at the Renon Starbucks there is always a bit of a party atmosphere--lots of young people gathering together for chatting or dating.  Oh, and one old man. 

Cricket

A long time ago, I was sitting on a rock on the shore of a lake when I noticed the dried brown body of a cricket clinging to the side of the rock. This is called the exoskeleton. A cricket slips out of it's shell as it grows and emerges as a rubbery new creature. It slips out of itself and becomes itself and leaves itself behind. The shell left behind is like a sample, a display model. It is a perfect cricket, yet no longer a cricket at all. The shell is perfectly preserved, as if the cricket had taken great care when it climbed out of itself. It is like a ship in a bottle, and also the builder of the ship in the bottle. The old cricket is fragile, papery, yet rigid, tenacious, clinging to itself and to the point from whence it departed. People who  have died, if they were beloved, leave this sort of shell as well, not on a rock or on a blade of grass, but on the minds of those who loved them. Here, those who have died, though absent, are prefect, tenacious, urgent, eternal. One flick of my finger would have removed the reminder the cricket had left behind. A gust of wind would do the same. But I  lifted not a finger. I looked out over the swaying grasses in the shallows and to the ripples beyond and to the green where the water was deep and caught the sun on the furrows made by the wind, and I lifted not a finger either to the tear that made its way down my cheek.