April Fool's Day 2018 2010

I forgot to mention yesterday that on Friday when I noticed the staff meeting had ended and went to ask Janet if the school bus would leave on time, she invited me along with her mate to her office. She noticed the visible facial swelling and asked what was wrong. With her poor grasp of English and even with her having the use of a translator on her mobile phone I couldn't exactly say it was a periodontal abscess, that would have sent her into meltdown.

Oh! you should go to hospital!

No. I got a student to buy me medicine.

What medicine?

Amoxicillin.

No, no no! That's wrong! That's for a cold!

Yep, the Chinese take antibiotics like Smarties for a cold. I do my best to counsel against it but my voice is lost. In the end I was losing my patience when I loftily informed the pair I had in fact received limited medical training years ago (Ships Captain's Medical Course) and that in my time on the planet had learnt not only my own body but also what the bloody doctor would give me so I was cutting out the middle-man.

Last night again I went to bed early (2030), had the sweats and shivers and emerged once again twelve hours later. The swelling has reduced so that only I know it is there and happily at this time although my jaw still hurts there is no dental pain – I can eat!

I never did get to go for the sweet pork because I ended up messaging Alice for too long but I did have ham, cheese and pineapple. I complained about my students telling me 999 was what I needed and she immediately exclaimed it was for colds. Well by now I knew that but I said another student wrote me a note to give to the chemist for a painkiller but they seemed to do nothing for the pain and I couldn't even check the stuff out online as not a word on the pack was in English.

She got me to take a photo of the box. The pills are for toothache (although honestly I would doubt their effectiveness for even that) so no wonder they had no effect. I ended up using my arthritis pills – they work.

So I have a busy day tomorrow washing welded-on food from plates and pans, shopping and cooking.

But it is nice to be feeling so much better when posting another milestone. This, in various guises, is my 1,500^th blog entry. Two blogs a week for eight years on average. When I came to China I thought maybe a hundred all told. But then I thought I would be here a year. Now if I was Samuel Pepys......