USA: Back home, but not really

There I was, armed with a broom, sweeping snow off CR’s car and mine. Snow, mind you. I don’t do snow. And cold, it got cold. 19 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about -8 Celsius. For someone who normally needs a sweater at anything below 75F, nineteen is bordering on unbearable.

How did this happen?

I finally left Penang. On October 16th, I got on a plane in Kuala Lumpur and flew back to Wilmington, North Carolina, where I had left my car with my friend Jellybean. Hoping to beat the cold weather, I headed north to Raoul’s house in southern Massachusetts, with just short stops along the way.

So Raoul’s, then my brother’s, then my friend CR’s house in Falls Church, Virginia. Once again, health problems intervened, this time the dental type. And once again, my departure was delayed. Or it would have been if I’d had any idea where I wanted to go.

Finally, as really, really cold weather loomed, I decided to join Jellybean on a trip to Costa Rica. I never made it to Florida at all. I managed to come home without actually going home.

USA: I'm back

I’m back, with apologies and plans to do better this time.

I left off back in Penang, when I came down with a couple of different ailments, including a case of bronchitis so bad that I had to sit up all night to breathe. A secondary infection was resistant to all oral antibiotics, and I ended up in the hospital overnight to start getting my medication intravenously.

The experience was full of contrasts. Very modern in some respects, but a step back into the 50‘s in others. For instance, the hospital had one of the new cardio CAT scan machines, but the nurses wore white skirted uniforms, and the ward beds had to be hand-cranked.

Once I left the hospital, I had to go to their outpatient section twice a day for a week to get pumped full of the antibiotic. And once all that was over I was just plain wiped out from all the different antibiotics. Somewhere in there, I gave up on the blog.