Monday is my early day, so I had to get the bus at 7
a.m. It was a little more crowded than
usual, but I was able to get a seat after the second stop. It is a long, long ride if you have to stand
the whole way, and I am not supposed to do that with my DVT. My classes went well.
On my way to my second class, Lulu Pilson (the girl from
South Africa that is a member of the Church), saw me and walked to my second
class with me. She had to miss Church
yesterday because of classes that she had to take then. We had a good little visit.
I had forgotten my bus pass, so I had to use cash to pay for
the bus. I had three five Jiao (compare
to half a dollar), two Yuan and two five Yuan bills. The bus that I take costs two Yuan, so I
needed four Yuan to get there and back.
I used one Yuan and two of the five Jiao for the bus ride there,
thinking that I would see of one of the students could change a five Yuan for
me so I could get home. The buses do
not give change. I forgot to ask the
students, so I was wondering what to do.
There are some food stands close to the campus gate, but I didn’t know
if they would have anything that would give me the one Yuan change that I
needed.
There happens to be a little guard house on the way out of
campus, and the guard there is always so friendly and says, “Hello,” to me all
the time, not just, “Ni hao. As I passed
by and he greeted me, I decided to see if he would have change. After some struggle, I was able to convey
that I need the change so that I could get the bus home. He reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a
folded one Yuan and gives it to me, indicating that he was giving it to me and
to not worry about it. He is so kind! Think I’ll bake him some cookies or banana
bread.
By the time I got home, we had exactly 25 minutes before we
had to leave again to go to my doctor appointments. After a quick lunch, we got the bus and
arrived at the hospital the same time the Dr. Tricia did. As we sat in the office waiting for the other
doctors to become available, she had David cut open one of the three
watermelons that she had sitting on her desk.
That was a good watermelon! We
ate about half of it between the three of us and then it was time to go meet
with the cardiovascular surgeon.
The appointment with him went well. My INR number was down, but he thinks that we
need to wait two weeks to see what it does before he changes the dose. In his facial features, he reminds me of
Randy. He knows some English and he can
ask me the questions that he needs to ask, with only a little translation from
Dr. Tricia.
After that, we went to see the orthopedic surgeon. He is an older guy that is quite the
character. He likes to joke around and
is very personable, but it is all in Chinese.
He always seems to have something to tease Dr. Tricia about. The pain in my right knee had gone down, but
it was still bothering me a lot. Since I
can’t take the usual anti-inflammatories that they would prescribe, he
suggested some physical therapy. I
decided to try it, thinking about physical therapy that I get in the US.
I went down the hall with Dr. Tricia to the Physical Therapy
room. This therapy is an electric shock
therapy. She applied a small amount of
gel to my leg at the sorest spot and then pointed the electric “gun” at my knee
and started the shocking treatment. It
was a little painful and I had to tolerate as a much pain as I could so that
the therapy would work. After five
minutes of torture, she declared that I was done. Dr. Tricia had to go back to her office, but
left a young man that speaks a little English there with me so that he could
explain things to me that the therapist needed to tell me.
David had to leave before I finished with all the
appointments so that he could be back to the campus to play football with his
students. I made my way back on my own.
Stan and Nancy Pace were coming to an activity on our campus
that their students had invited them to, so we made them dinner. Nancy teaches a late class, so they were
pressed for time to get here when it started.
We went along with them to the activity.
The Pace’s teach under the department of foreign languages, so the
student show was singing in several languages.
There were enough English songs that we understood it, but they had a
lot of pop songs that we didn’t care for.
It was also very hot in the auditorium so we were especially glad to get
out of there when it was over.
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