When we felt like Hagrid...

It wasn’t swine flu: I diagnosed myself. I didn’t seek medical advice about it but the respiratory bug that it was, knocked me right off my feet. Crucially, it didn’t give me a temperature and I’ve passed it onto the children who just got coughs. So, in anticipation of their return to school tomorrow we stopped in at the hospital to get them ‘declared fit.’

I warned my strapping 6ft 1” son (who’s 15) that we still had to go to the children’s department, and we all had a snigger that he’d probably try and get into the climbing frame room. Son was most disappointed to discover the play area was closed because of the swine flu virus, which I understand can exist for up to 24 hours on hard surfaces.

Toddlers raced around and babies howled. My great big children hung their heads and looked down at all the small people.

The tiny Thai nurse stood Son on the height and weight scales and then needed a step ladder to reach up to place the ruler on his head. Son obligingly crouched down to enable her to extend far enough to measure him which rather defeated the object, but then I suspect there’s no danger of him not growing sufficiently. I think after yesterday’s appointment that his files might well show him as having shrunk. A medical mystery perhaps.

Barney the purple dinosaur sat on the doctor’s desk; just in case one of my children might need him…The doctor examined them and then declared them both fit for school but in possession of coughs. He prescribed ten minutes each on the nebuliser and we were all issued with masks to make our departure from hospital safer for all the other patients.

I can’t believe that I took this picture in the treatment room. Clearly they weren’t very sick and I couldn't resist documenting the final embarrassment: the nebuliser masks they had to wear.

The truth is...

Big thanks to Jane Smith at How Publishing Really Works for her Pitch Party yesterday. It was a tremendous idea and discovering some new blogs cheered up my otherwise dreary (and somewhat bad-tempered) Sunday.

Thank you to everyone who came by to Tea Stains. My apologies for not acknowledging your comments instantly but I was straight off to the hospital this morning with no time for niceties! I will get on with it soon.

It’s not my favourite appointment of the year. No, no it’s nothing really nasty *whispers: not gruesome or anything yucky* but a fasting blood test. That’s all it is. It’s not the needle that bothers me or the lack of eating (fast for 8-10 hours) or even the waiting around in the hospital for the results so I can see the doc with up to date information. No, what I hate about the fasting blood test is the fact that I can’t have a cup of tea until the blood has been taken.

So today I’ve spent from 9am until 2pm at the hospital. (From 9.10 – 1.50 I was pretty much non-stop consuming tea.) In between being drained of blood (do they really need so much? Is it any wonder that I’m chronically anaemic?) and seeing the doc, I tried to write.

All the while, I was worrying. Worrying, not just about the results of my sugar test but also about promising Doc faithfully three months ago, that I would try to lose weight. And I haven’t. Well, I’ve thought about it… you know, for three months…)

And when a Thai wants to tell you that you need to lose weight, they just tell you: “you’re fat.” It’s a fact so they tell you and that’s okay here. In Thailand, there are all sorts of subjects that we westerners are coy about (commenting on weight is just one.) It’s absolutely fine to ask people (strangers!) how much they earn; how much do they pay for the apartment; why they haven’t got children; how old they are? I could go on and on.

Here’s the catch, if someone in the UK called another person fat, they would be offended. It’s rude; we just don’t do it. In Thailand there’s no intent to hurt and while I flinch inwardly, I can't take away my own cultural responses. HOW can it not be offensive? I know it’s simply one of those cultural differences that I can’t get my head around. I don't like it, but there's no point in showing my displeasure.

The thing I quoted to my children when we came here was about the Asian habit of spitting. We think that’s disgusting and yet they think our blowing the contents of our noses into a tissue/hankie that we return to our pocket to use again later, absolutely repulsive. And you can see why, can’t you?