Sick in China

It had to happen at some point. 

And it happened in the form of a sinus infection that Sarah and I had been passing back and forth for a bit...and then to two of the other English teachers here...and probably to countless numbers of our students.  But that's neither here nor there.  It's my blog...soooo...let's focus on me!

I first tried to deal with it myself.  I looked up the Chinese word for Amoxicillin...which turned out to be:

阿莫西林 -  āmòxīlín     (pronounced  ah-moe-she-lean)

So yeah...pretty much a complete cognate.  But you can never be too safe, so I typed it out in my phone and headed off to the pharmacy.  And much to my suprise...it was a complete success.  I got the amoxicillin, took it for two weeks, and pretty much felt better.

Except this wasn't the end...and I started to feel a bit of a tickle in the back of my throat after a few days of feeling completely better.  And I knew it was back.  Fuck.

It was then that Sarah and I decided to kill it once and for all and took the first step to doing pretty much anything of this sorts in China.  In Anna we trust.  And she did not disappoint.  She met us at the hospital, conveyed our problems to the doctor, got us the drugs necessary, and paid for everything.  We were left with some antibiotics, some nose drops, and a bit of traditional Chinese medicinal tea.

Upon asking what was in the nose-drops, Anna responded "Army medicine! No side effects!"  I received a similar response to when I asked what was in the tea.

Anna added some helpful English directions.

Both the tea and the nose drops were making me feel gooooodddd.  The tea tasted awful, but it cleared out my sinuses like nothing ever has.  Since it was traditional Chinese medicine, I knew it had to be made of entirely natural ingredients.  I had to check it out, what was this wonder plant that was working about as well as Sudafed.

I looked up the name on the package and found a handful of websites with the following ingredients list:

"Magnolia, Xanthium (fried), ephedra, Angelica, Peppermint, Ligusticum, Scutellaria, Forsythia, wild chrysanthemum, TCS, to yellow, red sage root, Poria, licorice."

I wasn't aware of this, but the ephedra plant contains both ephedrine, the popular weight-loss drug, and pseudoephedrine, the most incredible cure for stuffy noses known to man kind.  Both of them being relatively difficult to procure in the United States due to fat people dropping dead and methamphetamine production, respectively.  I don't know what the problem is, it's all natural.  Nothing natural has every hurt anyone, that's a scientific fact.

Things cleared up after a week or so, and I fully utilized the secret teacher power of playing movies in class when you're not feeling well enough to lecture for 100 minutes straight.  And if my students weren't already too perfect/cute/wonderful...they go ahead and pull something like this.

And then upon hearing that I had a bit of a cough...they told me to delay eating the orange until it cleared up.

I tell them that I'm not feeling very well, and by the time I'm done checking everyone's homework, I have a little collection of goodies on my desk.  Keep your shiny apples.  I'll take candy and little french breads.