Lhasa to Nepal - part 3

Wednesday, 22 October
Wake up feeling weak and cannot move. I think I've cuaght the flu. Lianna and kids go out and I stay in.
Caleb (C) returns mid-afternoon with fatigue. I'm relieved as I'm feeling like hell, and have run out of acedamenophine AND ibuprofin. So I have no drugs. C goes to the hotel pharma, but it's closed. He's fatigued and goes to lie down; I lay there in delirium. By 2:30 p.m. I'm feeling like death. I phone C's room and beg him to go across the street to see what they have. He comes back a few minutes later, distraught because they forced him to have a doctor come to the room. I am relieved.
Doctor ckecks this and that, tells me my oxygen is low and I need a transfusion. This is a phrase he's written in a book of phrases he has, with set things that he says: "You need a transfusion", and I respond, "Blood transfusion??!!" and he says "Yes. Transfusion." So we spend the next few minutes with him fiddling with the computer so he can get to Google translator and type in some stuff in Chinese and translate it with Google Translate. Good idea, but he played with the computer for 10 minutes or more, as I lay dieing.
I say no to the transfusion. I draw the line at blood.
He can't get the computer to translate, and next thing I know there's a Chinese woman in the room. We're not sure who she was or why she came, from the hotel is my hunch, but hard to say, as she sat there playing solitaire on the computer while I got my transfusion. So for the next 10 minutes or more, he tries to translate, then calls another doctor. I speak with him: "Your doctor says you need a transfusion."
"A blood transfusion? Does he want to give me blood?"
"Yes, he wants to give you a transfusion to help you."
"Yes I understand that, but what is he going to put in me? Is it blood?"
"Your doctor says you need a transfuion to make you better."
"OK, thanks."
I give him back the phone, and I ask this guy what he will be putting into my veins. He finally realizes what I want, and shoes my some vials of liquid. Little glass viles which you break the top off of. Then I wondered if he was going to just give me a shot, a needle, which I felt more comfortable with, rather than the thought of having a shunt in my arm. He flipped through his black book and showed me the phrase: "Intravenous is not intramuscular". So no go. He wants to shoot me up right in my vein.
I agree.
Now he's all excited. Gets his mixtures and potions going, puts his IV-holding contraption together, and gets the shunt into my arm (they have to remaket that word). It hurts but I live through it. I also get a large canister of oxygen next to me with tubes of it blowing up my nose.

Mark with Intravenous in his arm - to cure Altitude Sickness

Of course I'm still not convinced that this is altitude sickness, as I feel distincly cold and flu-like. But I let him do his thing, as I also found out that Tibetan pharmas don't sell western drugs and I feel just awful.
Then within minutes of this treatment, I begin to feel better. Midway through the drip the doctor could not help himself and shot in a mixture of "Chinese herbs" into my IV back. It's a golden brown coloured liquid, and I swear I can feel camphor at the back of my throat.

The doc and this lady stay in the room the entire 60 minutes or so of the drip. When the IV is done, he gets another huge plastic syringe filled with a clear liquid and soots that right into the small part of the shunt, directly into my vein. This takes about 5 minutes. I've been watching "Henry Poole was Here", thankfully, to keep my mind off of things. Don't really recommend the movie.

When he gets ready to leave, I say thank-you to him in Tibetan. It's taken me two days to learn the word. I say it, "Tochena," and he looks at me blankly. Again I say it, and he shakes his head. I must be saying it wrong, so I get the paper I walk around with in my shirt pocket, and show it to him, "Tochena". Then I realize he's not Tibetan, he's Chinese. I say thank you in Chinese: "Che-che", and he now knows what I'm talking about. So we realize he's Chinese, and we later find that he's an army guy who's been in Tibet for 10 years. And then I think in 10 years the guy has NEVER heard of the word "thank-you" in Tibetan! He had no idea what the word was, even when the woman from the hotel explained it to him, in Chinese. It's then that I realized the Tibetan people are seen as "indigenous" people, something to be pushed aside. Basically what we did. So when we see it being done by others, we react with moral outrage.

The kids and Lianna are out exploring a monastery. After Caleb gets back then Art and Lianna do a little shopping but come back soon.

Lianna develops a bad headache whichs gets increasingly worse as the night goes on. She uses one of the 2 cans of oxygen that come with the room. My tank is empty, and we both spend the night wondering how we'll get our next fix of oxygen or ibuprofin or acetamenophyne. L ends up going through both cans, but without much success.


Tibetan babies wear open bottom pants - no diapers here.


Lianna, kids and Artune (our guide) having tea outside the monastery.


Thursday, 23 October
I actually awake feeling quite good. My body is so confused though, or I am so confused about what state my body is in, or I can feel all the states that my body is going through: at some points I feel like I'm recovering from the flu; but then I think I never had the flu, so why am I feeling like this; and at other points I'm simultaneously hot and cold, uncertain as to whether I want to remove my jacket or do it up. My chest had begun to produce a bit of phlegm, and I was coughing up stuff, but I thought it was my lungs clearing out at this high elevation.

L is in agony by morning. I go down to breakfast ready to beg other tourists for western drugs. I gather my coffee, toast, and order a fried egg, sit down and wait for tourists, of whom there are none at the moment.

I feel quite good, and eat hardily. Enjoy the hot coffee with warm milk.

I spot two white people, gather the courage and ask them for Ibuprofin. The woman is in her early 30s, from Brazil, and quite concerned. She gets her bag out of the jeep (the driver does) and she gets her medicine sack, and pulls out some extra-strength Advil gels. She also gives some western anti-altitude drugs you take two in the moring and two at night. We've taken loads of these by now, from everyone. No go. Hahahaha!

L wants to leave. OK, so now Artune, our guide, has to get us a car and a driver. We need a 4x4, as this truly was off-roading!! Ultimate off-roading.

I find out that tips are welcomed, meaning it's done, as it wasn't done in China. Also want to see what I can actually get at a pharmacy, in terms of western drugs.
As the kids and Lianna get ready to leave, Artune and I drive around looking for a Bank of China, but they misunderstand, and keep brinGing me to the "Agricultural Bank of China", not realizing that this is different from "The Bank of China".
Finally find one and it miraculously gives me Chinese Yuan from my account back home.

I also spot a pharmacy and we go to check it out. It's a dark, greenish small hallway with a stairs leading up. Two people sit at small desks with some papers on them and a light. They wear what were once white smocks, but have become a study in greytones, from some very strong dark shading to a light dusting.

The guy is not helpful, but my guide is a pit bull, and so he pulls out his Chinese/English book of worldwide drugs. I look up Ibuprofin in English, and there's the Chinese translation. He reads it and says "This?" I look back and check the word. "Yes." He says OK, they have. But we have to go upstairs to get it. That's the dispensary. How much? Expensive he says. But he does not know the price. I look up acetamenophyne, and it's there. "This?" he says, pointing to it. I check it carefully. "Yes." He looks at my guide and tells me that is very dangerous and he does not recommend it. I then look up acytasilikacid (sp?) and point to it. He shakes his head, does not recommend it. Very bad for you. I tell him not to worry about it. In Canada you can buy it at a gas station.

I tell him I want both the Ib and the Acet. He tells my guide he recommends only one. "Can I get 2 though?" My guide asks him. He says you can, but he doesn't recommend it. She finally loses it on him, and yells something in Chinese along the lines of, "Just give him both!" He very churlishly writes them both down on a dingy little script book made of newsprint and we go upstairs to the dispensory, where a girl whirled around in a grey smock opening plastic bottles with pills, and pouring them into little oragami pill holders made of office paper. The Ibuprofin was 2 dollars, and the acetamen was 15 cents for 20 or something along those lines.

We then zipped back home, where all were packed, said good-bye to and tipped our driver from Lhasa and said hello to Kasa, our trusted driver to the Nepalese border.

Part 4 coming up ...