The Chinese Flu

The Chinese flu is nothing like the American flu. That's a very good place to start with describing it, because that is a very good place to start in describing anything that exists in America for which there is a variation of the same thing in China. Basically, it's just like the flu, but in Chinese form. Picture the American flu in your head and make it Chinese, with slanty little eyes and rice farmer hats and whatever, and there you have it.

The bugs that get inside of you, they're like little microscopic kung-fu masters, totally Trojan-Horse-like in their approach. They enter under cover of darkness, completely invisible, completely undetectable, and they bide their time and they wait, and they build up their numbers, and those numbers get so high by the time your immune system get's word of them, you might as well call it quits before you even begin.

In comparison, they make the American flu look really stupid, lazy, and disorganized. Go figure. I mean, you can see the American flu coming at you weeks before it actually hits you, and when it takes that first blow, it's kind of like a sissy slap. And then it keeps sissy slapping you for a long-ass while, until it gets tired or bored or hungry, or frustrated that you won't die, or just doesn't feel like it anymore, and then it gives up and goes home.

But, before the Chinese flu hit's you, you feel great! Everything is fine and dandy, with pretty rainbows and happy sunshine. And then, for some reason, and totally out of nowhere...you start to feel a little bit sleepy, so you go lie down to take a little nap. And when you wake from your little nap a few hours later, you've got these waves of searing agony so intensely penetrating every molecule of every cell of every fiber of your being, you have to pause to ask yourself, "whoa...have I died and gone to hell?!" And every single muscle and bone and joint in your body is in such unbearable pain, that you might as well be being beaten up from the inside, and effectively, that's exactly what it's doing to you. It kicks you and beats you and throws you all around like a god damn rag doll, with all of its fancy martial-artsy moves.

So you try to sit up, maybe get yourself a glass of water, maybe take a piss, and your head is so dizzy, and your headache is so intense, that you just kind of plop right back down for a while and wait until you get really, really thirsty, and you really, really need to take a piss, before trying that move again. And as these waves of attacks start hitting you, the pain gives way to intense paranoia and confusion because it's fucking with your head now. You look around and shit is changing colors, and things are moving that are not supposed to be moving, and your visual field is really distorted, and it all kind of looks just like a drug trip. Then, later, the real fun begins...

So, yeah, you know you're dying at this point, so you decide to try to relate to another human being about it, and you will say something, and they will say something, and you will loose your train of thought, and ask, "what...what...what," not because you're deaf and can't hear or that you don't understand the words (or maybe you're a little of that, too), but you keep forgetting the meaning of the thing before the last thing that you just heard, and you keep forgetting what you are trying to say, and you kind of loose touch with everything going on around you. And you have to close your eyes, and think really fucking hard, just to form a god damn sentence. And that's if, and only if, your own voice doesn't give out first. And it does.

So then, you know you're probably dying, and you kind of just start to accept that. And you kind of just fade into it, and the pain doesn't really hurt as much anymore. You kind of feel all floaty, and you drift off and fall asleep. Then you wake up again, maybe 13 or so hours later, and you realize you're not dead yet, but you know that you're close. And you start to contemplate your own existence like dying people do, and imagine what the world would be like if you were dead, and what death is going to be like, and it all smells a lot like roses.

And then, you have the inevitable vision of your dad getting a random phone call from someone in China, because you know he's the one you put on your contract as your emergency contact. And when that vision clicks in, of your parents getting that phone call, and their reaction to that reality that seems so pretty and peaceful to you right then, all reality starts flooding back. So you do your damndest to get over your miserable self, because that reality is not so pretty anymore. So you grab onto the side of your bed. And you put all your energy into it and you hurl your ass into a sitting position. And...oh my god...at this point...your head feels just like a hot air balloon that is made out of concrete. It keeps expanding and trying to float away, but then it's too top heavy or whatever and it plops over, and it repeats this shit for a while, but you do what you have to do at this point to get your sorry ass to a hospital because you don't like that reality you just envisioned.

So, whatever. You call that dude from your agency, and insist that he help you go to the hospital. And he comes over, and you get your ass together and dress yourself like a big girl, and you walk, YES, WALK, to the hospital. Good. Fucking. Grief. But you do it. And as you're walking, everything is loud and bright and penetrating, and the fucker is trying to talk to you, and you've lost your voice a long time ago, so what's the point in even trying to talk back? So basically you just watch where he is walking and you follow.

And you get to the Chinese hospital and you are in all this pain, and you can't keep your head up, or focus your eyeballs, and he tells them about your headache, and shit, and they've seen this before, and of course they know what's going on. It's an everyday thing to them. But, as you feel like you are dying, they don't seem to care very much, because to them, this is not that big of a deal.

I will digress at this point to tell you about the Chinese hospital. Just like the Chinese version of the flu, the Chinese version of a hospital is nothing like the American version of a hospital. When you go to a hospital in America, you wait in a room with a bunch of other people for about eight hours. Then you go to a private bed with a curtain around it, like it's your own little room, and you hang out there for about five hours. You meet with nurses and doctors who come to you, and who all speak the same language as you, and you tell them what's wrong, and you get some drugs or whatever, and you leave. Then a few weeks later, if you don't have insurance, a bill arrives in the amount of several thousand dollars, and there are many and varied ways to handle that and get around paying it if you so choose, but that part is an absolute nightmare. In fact, the whole thing is an absolute nightmare, except for the private room. And while the Chinese hospital experience was far from pleasurable, especially when factoring in the condition I was in, it was, by far, less of a nightmare than an American hospital, all things considered.

In my case, since the agent did most of the talking, my experience was not the same experience that a Chinese person would have, and I may have been given proprietary treatment because I am a foreigner. But, basically, for a foreigner, you go in, and you pay the equivalent of $.75 for a consultation with a nurse. Then you pay for each service you receive before you receive it. It's all very cheap, and if you're Chinese, get this...it's free. But still, the whole thing cost me the equivalent of about $25. And as far as time, it took around two hours.

So then, they take your temperature, and while I don't know what mine was, I'm sure it was screaming something very loudly in Celsius. Then, they send you to a different room, and you stand in line to have your throat looked at and your heart listened to. The nurse looked at my throat, there was some dialogue exchanged between the agent and the nurse, and then the agent turns to me and tells me the obvious: "There's something wrong with your throat." Oh, wow! Really??

Now, I don't know if it was because I was white, or if it was because I was super, extra, pale-white, but a lot of people were staring at me in that hospital. And I know they have no word for privacy here, and the concept is totally foreign, but as that woman was prodding me with that stethoscope and this girl less then six inches behind me in line, and a bunch of other people were staring at me, and kind of moving in to get a closer look at the foreigner, I totally felt like I was being violated. So I turn to my agent, and whisper as loudly as I could, "can you please tell them to stop staring at me!" I think my body language spoke louder than my words, because the whole hoard of them immediately backed away. It might have been my breath for all I know, there's no way to tell for sure.

Then we went for a blood draw, which probably said some more obvious shit about my white blood cell count, and then, the goodies. We got some drugs. I got some throat spray, and some pills, and some tea. And two of the three drugs had a tiny bit of English on their packages, but one did not have any. I told my agent that I need all the instructions to be translated and written down in English. This was, apparently, way too big of a request to him. This man's English is not bad for a Chinese guy, but translating the instructions inside of the medication packages was way beyond him.

For the pills, First he said, "take two, twice a day," So I started with them, because they looked like real medicine, and I swallowed them. Then he turned around and said, "no wait, it says take one every six hours." Well I'd already taken them, so whatever. He said I'd be fine. I don't think I could get much worse than I was, so he was probably right. It was sort of a choice between being fine and being dead at that point. So I got some mixed messages for instructions and then he left.

I went online and looked up the English words that were on the other two packages. The tea, apparently is useful for treating neurological problems. Well, I can live with that, especially considering that I suspect I had some degree of meningitis from the delirium and visual hallucinations, but who knows. And the throat spray, well, it's throat spray, and while it tastes like medicine, I think it works like medicine, and fuck the instructions, I just take it as needed.

So now, the medicine has kicked in a bit. I still feel a bad headache, but not so much like I am dying, and I'm going to take them all again soon and go to bed. I hope I have it in me to go to work tomorrow, and from what I've heard from others about the Chinese flu, once it takes you down to knocking on deaths door, it lets up pretty quickly. It's all martial artsy, so maybe it just does what it does in self defense.