Chinese Medicine 2: Revenge of Mystery Pills

Word came in the mail: The good news is the results from James' blood work at airport quarantine show he doesn't have Dengue fever. The better news is he didn't die of an aneurysm yesterday, like I thought he would.

A couple days ago James went to the doctor like the folks at quarantine ordered. The doc' told James not to drink any cold liquids. He prescribed a bag of pills that looked pretty much like the ones the Chinese woman gave him in Cambodia.

James took the first set of antibiotics that night and quickly developed a pinching headache behind his right eye. The next morning he awoke at 10 and took another pack of pills which triggered the same headache behind his eye. So he took an Advil and laid down.

We planned on going to the fun and touristy Danshui for the day. But 45 minutes after he lay down, James didn't feel any better. He just slept. Three hours passed. Then four. Five. Six. All he did was sleep while I worried about the blood vessels no doubt bursting in his cranium.

James was going to die. I knew it. He would leave me all alone in Taiwan - me whose Chinese is only good enough to order steamed pork buns. But then at 5 he miraculously awoke, and just in time for happy hour.

"I'm done taking pills," he told me.

Today, James is alive and mostly well. As for our health care: I learned how to make a tourniquet in a sixth-grade babysitting class. If the ailment doesn't require a defibrillator or a catheter, I think we can take care of it at home. We'll be fine, right?

Adventures in Chinese Medicine

Wednesday morning James woke up with a sore throat. By evening he was palpitating feverish misery. We went to the front desk at the Lin Ratanak Angkor Hotel hoping they might have Advil or NyQuil. After a minute of James repeating "medicine," clenching his forehead and faking coughs, the receptionist produced an unrecognizable pack of pills from behind the desk. First we though he said they were for heart attack. Then we thought he said they were for gas. And then he seemed to say something about being too hot. We smiled and declined.

James' mom canvassed the tour group and one woman produced a series of pill packets. The packaging was all in Chinese. And there were five pills in each group, to be taken three times a day. The woman said they were antibiotics, but I couldn't help my skepticism. My antibiotics have always come in orange-brown vials with Rx labels, and never as five pills to take at once. I mean, that's a cocktail. I thought drug cocktails were for AIDS and cancer patients.

You Take! Tina ordered. Well, is it penicillin? James asked. He's allergic. Penicillin isn't antibiotic, she said. Yes it is, we said. No it isn't, she said. Yes it is, we said. Tina went to ask the woman. The woman said no that wasn't what was in the pills.

So James tossed them back. When he didn't start frothing at the mouth, we figured it was fine and went to sleep. He awoke with full-body shivers hours later. My worry was exacerbated because we were in southeast asia - a scary place for diseases - and, dammit, we should've got those Japanese encephalitis vaccines as we were told.

James made it through the night. We surmised his crazy shivers was the sickness and not the Chinese mystery medicine, but he received another painful onslaught of eastern remedies that morning.

James grabbed a plateful of fruit from the buffet line and we sat down to eat with Tina and Nini (his grandmother). Don't eat pineapple! Tina admonished. Pineapple isn't good for fevers, she said. In typical nonchalant defiance, James slapped a ring of the forbidden fruit on his tongue and noshed away.

Before we got on the bus, Tina dug up another helpful Chinese man on our tour who was versed in the powers of, uhh, rubbing. First he gave James an evil noogie behind his ears, and then he jammed his elbow into James' shoulder blades. This was supposed to have a healing effect.

James still had a fever. Chinese people believe that when a person has a fever the thing to do is bundle them up. Despite his protests, Nini and Tina layered him in their shawls and coats once we were on the bus bound for Phnom Penh.

Two hours later, the bus stopped for a bathroom break. Nini and Tina gasped at James' prolific sweating. James is a prolific sweater in general, but he was more drippy than usual. "You're sweating because of the fever!" Tine and Nini clucked. "No I'm sweating because of all these layers!" He retorted. "No, it's the fever," they assured him. Nini peeled James' shirt off and dabbed off his chest. When the bus started again, James slid into the window seat to avoid anymore swaddling. This however did not stop Tina from handing him something small, brown and turd-like - telling James to suck on it to alleviate his sore throat.

When we got back to Taiwan today, James set off the temperature scanners at immigration and a quarantine officer took him aside and drew blood. Then she gave him a face mask and ordered him to go to the doctor within the next few days.


James later told me he was relieved to be headed to a doctor's office, not because he feels that sick, but because a visit to a medical professional will - hopefully - prevent any further elbows being jammed into his back and other assorted folk remedies.




I will have pictures for this entry and more up tomorrow. I loved Cambodia, loved Angkor Wat - and have half a mind to move south after our year in Taiwan...