MARCH 2009

Ok, fuck it’s half way through March. The year is nearly over and it hasn’t even begun to feel like it’s started yet.

Well, what an eventful few months. I have no idea of any timeline anymore, but I can honestly say that I think Australian healthcare was trying to kill me, I probably helped them along a little though.

For 3 years, well actually since the beginning of blood, I’ve had incredibly bad ‘wimin’s problems’, but over the past few months with everything that has been going on, they had become completely debilitating. With the amount of stress and duress I was under (moving country, crash course in farm management, a perpetually medicated dog, house packing and a month of organising last minute shit where 3,800 km’s were traversed, a thousand changes made, and finicky fine details by unreasonable people has to be adhered to, oh and a husband who had an acquired a drinking problem and liked to give me a stern talking to for a few hours a day, whilst drunk) and the upping the tolerance of self medicating to keep pushing myself and to stay sane, I also incurred another stomach ulcer. Third one before 30… can anyone say ‘bonus round’?

This period of time also included a couple of doctors appointments in December, and a ultrasound at a private hospital, another couple of doctors appointment, all to say that there was absolutely “NOTHING WRONG WITH ME’. Well my insides anyways… everyone knew I was starting to go crazy. So they helped medicate me to stay sane so I could sleep, breathe and speak in sentences instead of frothing at the mouth and stuttering. Thanks for that.

Then when the pain started really bad, horrible abdominal cramps, the ulcer coming on (sure signs of this is acid reflux, inability to eat food without pain, and rapid weight loss) I had a trip back to emergency, (got seen to pretty quickly – acute pain room 2) where again, I was ‘stabilised’, internally examined, tested for everything I had been tested a month beforehand, knowing it would be negative, and sent home with really strong painkillers this time, and again told that there seemed to be nothing wrong with me.

I did mention I was moving to Asia though, and the Australian doctor there was VERY encouraging about how good the health care system was where I was immigrating.

Anyways, I went back home after emergency, started taking the new meds, promptly throwing them up, rang the hospital three times the same day to hopefully talk to the doctor who looked after me to find out any more results that might have come through, but only got through to nurses whose medical advice was ‘oh yes, that would be the morphine making you throw up, when your stomach settles and you’re in pain again, just take another pain killer’. It was at this time, I pretty much gave up pain killers, and Valium, and everything but the sleepers, so I could at least sleep till I could get out of the country. What a fun week that was. Rapid detox, full of fun and pain and anxiety.

So, I made it out of Australia, waved the customs agents goodbye, and slept my first night without the help of sleepers for about 3 weeks on the plane. The sleep of relief, and of the vindicated.

I get to Bangkok… the next drama is waiting for the dogs. Will they arrive, wont they arrive, what day will they arrive, are they going to arrive with their 1.67 mean average of eyes. Another stress, to deal with. Well they do arrive, healthy, alive, happy to get out of a small box they had spent the last 24 hours of their lives in, and with their mean average of eyes. Thank god. Another catastrophe averted.

I do get a doctors appointment though. And get put on a full course of stomach ulcer medication, which means I can start digesting food again. W00T. I’m not going to die this week. And next week, they can do something about the ‘wimins bits’.

Then there is 6 of us: 3 dogs, and 3 people in one small room. A house still needs to be found. The husband has spent two weeks of fruitless two hour drives in Bangkok traffic to dumpy little places in the middle of nowhere with a 2X2 metre squared garden, to scoff, and start the process all over again.

When I arrived it was my turn. I did it twice, and was so depressed about ending up a suburban wife with no friends in the middle of nowhere, having no transport and drinking gin at midday, with the stoic expat wife grimace I have become familiar with, that I cried. Then I totally changed the MO of where we were going to live.

We did haggle with the 30 mins out of town, 6 bedroom house, one acre block people, to no avail. I am sure I will look back at this period of my life and laugh… much, much later. Anyways, after a week of doing that process, dancing around, you lease this, take it off that, don’t pay taxes here, yadda, I got fed up. Woke up next day and decided, “we are going to choose a house TODAY”. I am not living in the suburbs, and the dogs are just fucking dogs, fuck the garden, and the pool.

We looked at 3 houses that day. We chose the second one. Extremely central, close to work, five storeys, five bedrooms, a shared common area of park for the dogs, security, etc. Lots of space, I can hang things in/on the walls, tons of flights of stairs, so my ass is going to look great, and the dogs will get more than enough exercise, running up and down stairs all day. Of course we have to pay to get the place cleaned. And a couple more days of price haggling and lease signing, dancey dance, dancey dance.

So now we have the dogs, a house (which needs cleaning and repairs), and our stuff has arrived in sea freight, but we don’t have a work permit yet so we cant get it out of customs. Ok things are looking up. I go back for the second doctors appointment, with the gastro, my stomach is better. Well the top bit of it. Then I go downstairs to the Women’s department and check in with the gyno. Not much he can do for me that week, because we’re back in bad pain territory. So 5 days later. I get booked in.

I like this doctor, he has a picture of Melbourne on his back wall, he speaks good English, he is ever so polite (he says stuff like ‘may I look into your vagina now?, may you spread your legs now? may I stick my Fingers into your vagina now?’ etc). I had already explained to him my experiences with the Australian health care system, where he had shaken his head and kind of laughed at their treatment of me and made the appropriate ‘tut tut’ sounds.

When I go for the actual INTERNAL ULTRASOUND – (here is the clue Australian medical healthcare practitioners: when someone complains of chronic ongoing pain in their gyno area, maybe suggest the internal ultrasound, which can actually pick up the problem that they could have… dickheads)… anyways, when I go for the internal examination, he finds all the problem spots he suspects I have. Now when he says ‘Suspects’, I pretty much take that as… well you probably/maybe definitely have something wrong with you here! And he was right.

He asked ‘when do you want it fixed’, hubby and I turn to each other, look back at him and say ‘A soon as possible’, and he says… “how about tomorrow morning at 8am. We can do the preliminary tests now, and it is a good time of month” etc.

So Hey Presto: 3 hours of hospital time that night, a taxi driver who speaks good English to pick me up at 6.45 am the next morning, surgery pretty much as soon as I walk in the door. A 5 star hospital hotel room, 3-4 hours in surgery, a fuck load of sedation – 6-7 hours of it afterwards, seeing double of everything, including a nice something, something inch flat screen TV, 4 nurses on call, drugs when in pain. 6-7 bags of saline, a catheter for my pee, (kinda disconcerting). I went in 49 kilos, and less than 48 hours later I was 55 kilos, (until I did a shit… and man did that hurt), but I think I had eaten a total of maybe 2 meals in there.

I stick to soft foods for the next week. But I did get my boobs back. All the salt and sugar seem to have gone straight to my boobs, oh and my left arm is substantially bigger than my right. The entire operation cost about 4k US, and happened immediately, and will hopefully allow me to have children and stop me having 2 weeks of pain a month for the rest of my life. And I get to keep my fallopian tubes. So kinda awesome results all round, except for the recovery… because of the stomach ulcer nuisance I can only take Tylenol as a pain killer. Probably not a bad thing. And I'm out of the hospital and walking around.

So, there is so much more the story than that. But fuck, who wants to bore any of you any more than I already have. Australian health care bites the fucking weenie. I highly recommend coming to Thailand for any major surgery, and you can get it cheaper than what I did. For some reason I got booked into the 5 star hotel hospital, I’m sure you can haggle, I mean, they already were, over my hospital bill. Ahhh Asia, you got to love it.

Pssst. Just never mention anything about eating chicken feet!

Oh, And I will will post 'The Opening of Cysty Beethoven' DVD highlights of my operation on youtube later. Worst horror movie ever. Only 3 more scars though, and they aren't very big. I think I can still wear a bikini.