China 2nd Week - Hot and Sour Soup

Great, the Internet is back up. It was off most of the day today so I better get this out while I still can. Saturday night we ordered chicken wings and hot and sour soup. I thought it was pretty good and at the time so did Linda. Until yesterday morning. When I got up the first thing I noticed that Linda was green. Not her usual color. As she lay in bed moaning I called for the Dr. Being Sunday Linda's regular Dr. was not on so this other guy shows up and he was not much of a help. He left and Carol from next door came over for something and Linda is getting sicker and sicker, Soon, here comes all that soup looking like it just came from the bowl. Not the least digested. So I am holding the bucket while Carol and I talk, Linda is hurling and Carol has a towel to wipe Linda's face. Like we do this every day. But that fixed Linda right up and soon she was her old self. Not much else happened yesterday except more gallons of stuff went into her.

This morning she woke up just fine, looking great and feeling good. Off to see DR. Wisdom for some TCM, but she had taken a shower just before going and her hair was wet. So two doctors gave her a scalp massage with a towel to dry her hair and also to stimulate the scalp. Now this was the morning of the big meeting with the hospital director and the surgeon and Kotan and a bunch of other people. It's hard to have a meeting when every one speaks Chinese and you have no idea what they are talking about. And they all talk at the same time. But the jist of it is we are going for the whole enchilada. After reading Steve's blog we had thought about just the lumbar injections, but talking to the surgeon and the head Dr. we feel that we came half way around the world so we are not going home with half a loaf. It looks like next week they will do the operation. I asked the surgeon if he was the guy who was going to do the work and he said yes, so I grabbed his hand and looked it over and he thought that was funny. So next week it is.

There is supposed to be a supermarket close by, so after the meeting I took the bike out and started to look for it. Linda wants Quaker Oat Meal so I set out to find this supermarket. I think a Chinese Supermarket and an American super market are two different things. First it was cold, way below freezing, so I didn't want to spend all day riding around, and second, this was my first trip into the really big traffic. I had ridden all over the alleys but this was the real thing. Think about riding a bike down interstate 80 at rush hour. The only thing that made it seem almost do able was there were other fools out there also and I didn't see any dead body's on the curb. When I found what may have been the supermarket I parked the bike and started to go in. There was an old lady sitting in a chair in the freezing weather all bundled up and she put out her arm to stop me. It seems she is the guard who watches the bikes and she wanted 2 of something. She showed me a coin, I had gotten some back in change so I pulled them out of my pocket and showed them to her and she picked out 2 and gave me a big smile. I don't know if she was official or one of the guys we see on the corner with a sigh will work for food. But if she made sure no one stold my bike it was worth it. Probably if I didn't pay that would guarantee the bike would be gone. I found a huge bag of oatmeal, not Quaker, but what can they do to oatmeal, and brought it back. Linda gave it the fish eye thing about the soup she had just lost.

Barry, still nothing from the web cam, just a blank screen. Ok Linda on goggle, I will send you the pics over. And the best news, after 5 days Linda pooped. And thank you David for the payers. Also Janie, glad you got the dues and hang in there Bob.

john and linda in China