Wee wee

It’s always something here, and yet we still love it. You may recall I hadn’t even moved out of the hotel before Montezuma sought his first revenge on me last year. He got me a couple more times before I learned how to protect myself, but nearly everyday there’s been something afflicting me that I haven’t experienced before. Just before I moved to Jogja I finally saw a doctor for the first time to deal with my first case of athlete’s foot (barefoot poolside lifestyle requires different standard of personal hygiene, the doc advised me, politely), a two-week back muscle injury, three months of the Jakarta hack, and a new fever flu thing that broke the camel’s back…

Antibiotics. I'll say it again: antibiotics. After twenty-five years of avoiding them, I now adore antibiotics. I haven’t breathed this clearly for this long since I can’t remember when.

The back healed up after a couple of weeks… But during those two weeks, my right eye became barely tolerant of its contact lens… 6 weeks and some high-powered eye-drops and things are just now getting better…

But in the meantime… Tuesday morning I was checking email when I looked at my hands… there was crescent-shaped light burn mark in the webbing between my left thumb and index finger (outside, not palm side). I racked my brain trying to figure out how I could have burnt my hand the day before (and not remember…). I’d cooked, but was pretty sure nothing had spattered there… and besides, wouldn’t I have remembered? So if I couldn’t remember, had I burned myself in bed? Not possible. Bizarre.

By evening, two little blisters had risen on the burn, and I used some cortisone cream to relieve the irritation and inflammation. Wednesday morning, checking mail… and an identical mark, but this one already blistering, covered a similar amount of space below the outside two knuckles of the same hand… Only one time during which it could have happened, and I’d slept in pretty much the same spot and position as I had the previous night. I made a beeline for the bedroom and changed the sheets and hauled the bedcover to the washing machine for the housekeeper to do a number on… The next morning, with new sheets and a fresh blanket, there were no new marks.

Let’s keep in mind that I pay good money to bug-bomb the house every two weeks, and the bombing (or the cats wandering through every now and then) even seems to have persuaded my rodent-friend to stop visiting… The only roaches I have seen in a month have been belly-up, but my friend Julia told me today, laughing of course, that she’s pretty sure the now peeling baby red scars on the back of my left hand are due to, in her words, “’roach wee wee”. Sleep well folks, and do come visit. Meanwhile my hand is healing, which means it’s time for the next affliction in my truly wonderful life…