Christian Living
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE As A Member OR Visitor
Message Writer
Hire Writer
Report Article
No course on first-aid or tropical medicine could have prepared me for the day my rear froze up and I became bedridden and was in great pain. It was then that I learned the hard way that not dressing underneath as the local people did was a prideful and foolish decision I had made in our early years in Urumchi. We had done our best to dress as the local people, so as not to draw extra attention to the evident fact that we were different. We wanted the only thing evidently different from ourselves and others to whom we had come to meet, was our relationship with Jesus. So we had locally made coats and locally made pants and shirts and a dress and skirt for Ann. But we liked our thermals from America and pooh-poohed the locals’ insistence that we all wear four layers of pants beneath our long coats. In our pride we still thought American know-how and ingenuity to be better than any product made elsewhere. How foolish to not take the advice of people who have grown up a product of countless generations in that climate and nature! Our thermals were great for New York. But after 6 years of insufficient insulation, my sciatic nerve froze up and my “pi-gu” as they call it in China (pronounced “pee-goo.") has never quite been the same.
It started one morning as I was walking to class. The ground was frozen with its usual winter layer of unmeltable snow. Our first snowfall was in October and it never rises above freezing until April or so. Urumchi has two seasons: A wonderful dry and hot summer, with air blowing in from the Taklamakan (that‘s just how you pronounce it) desert to the south, and a bitterly cold winter with a Siberian wind swooping down occasionally to remind us that yes, it could actually be worse. Autumn lasts about three days. The trees turn color in about two days and on the third day, the leaves drop off the trees. It is beautiful but short. Then a cold wind sweeps in, bringing with it winter. Usually that happens at night. You can hear it and you just know that tomorrow is winter. In springtime it is similar. One night there is a strong wind and the next day you wake up to the sounds of dripping ice. Sicles that line the roofs of houses and apartment buildings are to be avoided as they one by one come crashing down. The bazaar turns to mud and the sloshing of boots in puddles, together with the dripping, must be the happiest sound I know. The long winter is over. Ann and I would greet each other with the words, “Aslan is on the move!”
But this is a story about winter, so I must get back to the subzero month of December. As I was walking that morning, my right leg was dragging and I had a definite pain in my pi-gu. By the end of the night I was literally dragging that whole leg. And I could not put much pressure on it as the pain was definitely getting stronger. We lived on the fourth floor and the stairs that night were long and slow. I entered our apartment and lay down on the bed, and I didn‘t get up for a whole day.
The next day I could not go to class. I usually never missed a class, except for daylight savings or when they turn the clocks back. The only one on campus who wouldn‘t know it, I would always go to class those two days every year and find my students either gone, or grinning from ear to ear. Classes at our school were two hours long each. So missing one hour means either all your students have escaped, or you barge in on the previous teacher‘s class. I would walk through an empty campus as the realization would dawn on me that indeed, I had done it again. It wouldn‘t be so bad, but the loudspeaker had been announcing it in Chinese all week. The loudspeaker was something most of the students and I just blocked out, as it rarely gave useful information. One month it played Doris Day‘s greatest hits for about an hour every afternoon. I missed my mother those days and would be greeted in Chinese and Uighur all the way home, as if friends were saying, “Hey, Tom, this music is great! I‘ll bet it makes you homesick.” It was all very strange.
But I must get back to December. That is just how winter is in Urumchi. You just try to think of something else. So I must concentrate or I won‘t finish this story.
When I couldn‘t get out of bed the next day, Ann called the foreign affairs office and Mr. Zhang came rushing over. When I told him what the problem was he knew right away that it must be the nerve in my pi-gu. He then began to lecture me on how many times he had told me to dress warmer. He then unzipped his trousers and showed me all four layers of proper winter wear. He had one colored long underwear, then some woolens over those, then another pair of colored underpants and over those a pair of warm army pants. I was not convinced that these were better than my two pairs of thermals with jeans on top. I never had to wear that much in New England. I didn‘t feel cold, I protested. Zhang just rolled his eyes and left, saying he had to get me to the hospital.
About this time I was in quite a bit of pain. I could not get out of bed without help and then the pain would shoot up my leg and pi-gu. Zhang brought in the school nurse. She was very kind and older I recall. She gave me a thermometer and told me to take my own temperature. I started to put it in my mouth and she looked horrified and gasped. Then I looked horrified and questioning, pointed to my pi-gu. Then she and Zhang burst out laughing. Apparently I was to insert it in my armpit. Well, I didn‘t know!
By the time they were done laughing and able to stand properly, the thermometer was ready, and so I took it out of my armpit with as much dignity as I could display. I had a bit of a fever. The nurse then began telling me it was my shin-jing, which I later found out to be my sciatic nerve. Zhang just kept telling me and Ann and the nurse and later the driver and doctors and nurses, that I had frozen my pi-gu. So that is what stuck. The nurse continued lecturing me and then she too unzipped her trousers and showed me the exact same four layers that Zhang had shown me, of the proper underwear order. They then both pinched my thigh, feeling for the layers of underwear and shook their head at me tisk-tisking. I guess that was just to let it sink in.
So the school‘s driver came up. He was not Chinese but Uighur. I was glad for that because I could ask him whatever I couldn‘t understand the nurse saying. When they explained my situation to him in Chinese, he looked very concerned. He too pinched my thigh, tisked me and began telling me in Uighur how I was too underdressed. He then unzipped his trousers to show me the exact same set of underwear that I by now knew everyone in Urumchi wore except the Harvey family.
They carried me down the four flights and I grunted and said “ooyouu!‘ which is Chinese for “ouch!” I used to say “ouch" when I hurt myself in China, but people looked at me strangely. You‘d think that kind of expression was innate, but it is learned I guess. If I said “ouch” or “ach” people would laugh. Well, then I‘d have to struggle a bit and then forgive them. So if we wanted any sympathy in our affliction at all, we needed to learn to say “ooyouu." Over the years we had lots of practice.
I “ooyouu"ed over every bump on the way to the hospital and then being carry-dragged into the hospital, I was placed on the bed. The hospital next to us was the Army Hospital. So everyone there was in uniform. I kind of liked the effect. It kind of justified my feeling more like I was being tortured than treated. And though their faces and demeanors were kind, these doctors and nurses were all business with no gentle bedside manner. I was literally shoved onto the table and my pi-gu exposed. I shouted in pain, but because I said “Ow! Ouch!” It only produced laughs and not pity. The doctors were all to the side arguing in Chinese about what to do with me as another doctor press-searched for the exact point of my nerve. When he found it he pressed down hard with his finger and held it there. I pounded on the wall “ouyouu”ing. He didn‘t have a marker and so called over the other doctors to see the exact location, by keeping his finger pressed on the point of pain. I writhed and kept yelling.
Finally they came over and marked the spot and I broke into a sweat. Then as I lay there recovering from that, I overheard one of them say they needed to, “kao ta de pi-gu.” Well they were talking about me, and “ta de‘ meant “his”, and “kao‘ means “to roast!” They were going to roast my pi-gu! Well, sorry folks but I just turned as best I could and asked them if they were indeed going to roast my pi-gu. Apparently the idiom is more universal than I thought because that got everyone laughing. My laughter however, was nervous.
Well, in order to heat the area, they brought in something that looked like a broomstick with a Chinese hotplate. If you have ever seen one of these, they are a throwback to a former time. Electric, they are coils surrounded by asbestos. They heat up red hot and you can cook on them. The students would often smuggle them into their dorm rooms and use them as electric heaters when the winter cold was stronger than the steam heat.
The doctors took this hot hotplate though, and turned it upside down, attaching it onto the end of the broomstick. They then attached this to the side of my bed. Apparently they had done this often as they set it up quickly. Keeping my pi-gu exposed, they brought the hot-plate as close as they thought necessary to the marked spot, and turned it on. It took a while to warm up, but the doctors decided to consult on medication. One of the younger doctors obviously knew some English and wanted to practice with me. He went and got his Chinese-English dictionary out and looked up a couple words. Then he said to me; “We doctors will be in the room across the hall. If you smell anything strange, please call loudly.” And he left....like, as If I wouldn‘t!
I lay there on my stomach with red-hot coils perched precariously (so I thought anyway) over my exposed and roasting pi-gu. I totally forgot to breath through my nose so that I might smell any burning flesh. The heat was certainly on, but it was bearable. The doctors all came in again and looked at my situation, and then they set a timer next to me for 20 minutes. It was connected to the chord that was connected to the hot plate over my behind.
While the doctors discussed my medicine, an argument broke out. One doctor grabbed the bottle of pills from the other and I thought he was going to knock into the precariously perched hotplate. I remember thinking that I didn‘t get a very good look at the hot plate, and so I wondered what kind of brand I was going to get if a fight broke out. Two of the three doctors were arguing about the dosage. No, it wasn‘t the dosage. They agreed I should take three pills a day. One was saying I needed to take three pills once a day, and the other was saying I needed to take one pill three times a day. Then I really messed things up by asking if I should take them before or after meals. The argument raged for another two minutes, neither doctor giving in. The young doctor with the dictionary wasn‘t taking part in the argument. He just stood there looking at the other two doctors with a really funny expression on his face, that I couldn‘t read. I asked him to come closer so I could ask him something. I then asked him what kind of pills they were? What were they?
He then grinned, and began looking up a word in his dictionary. I was twisted up trying to keep my pi-gu down and eye contact at the same time, so as not to be rude. I must have looked rather pathetic, and so this is what I thought he was grinning about. “No mercy,” I thought. But then he found the word he was looking for. He placed his finger on it, scrunched up his eyebrows and read the word out loud according to the parenthetical pronunciation guide: “Plah - see - boh.”
Placebo? The doctors are arguing about how often I should take a placebo?! I think that this was the first moment when I almost started to cry. These guys were going to cripple me, if I wasn‘t already. I don‘t know what a Shin-jing is. My pi-gu is killing me, and I‘m about to be branded. I was so upset. “God, are you there at all?”
And then the timer went off. I knew it was a timer. That year all electrical appliances in Urumchi, it seemed, came with timers that went off with an electronic melody. Ann and I had a washing machine that played “Silent Night.” Well, it played most of silent night. Whenever a load laundry was done and ready to be spun, the melody would play, “Silent Night, Holy Night, all is calm, all is briiiiighghtttt.” and kind of wind down and die on that note. But this song, on the hot plate, kept going. I knew the song but I was too busy asking God where He was in all of this. The doctors kept on arguing about my placebo, while the young doctor with the dictionary began to remove the hotplate. The music kept playing and I kept praying.
Well, I was more complaining to God. You know, “Great, this is great, so I get to be dragged home after this treatment and I have to convince myself that these bread pills will work. God, come on!” And then I suddenly knew the words to the melody that was electronically emitted from the hot plate timer. And I sang along: “Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful, and since there‘s no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snowwwwwwwwww!” And I fell in love with God all over again. We were having fun again. And He made me laugh.
Well, I had one more treatment to go through. I prayed that it would not be a shot. I had had shots at the hospital down the street before. If I were to only slightly exaggerate, the needle was so dull, that the nurse had to get a running start just to give me the injection.
But there were no shots today. This was to be another electrical treatment it seemed. Apparently my pi-gu needed to be roasted more deeply. So they brought me to another room with many tables. And they brought me to a table that had a kind of heating pad right where my pi-gu should go. The two arguing doctors, by this time had decided on my dosage and were ready to finish my treatment. So they spun me around with a loud “ouyouu!” and pushed me onto the table. Every jolt sent a pain right up my leg and rump. In America I would have thought they hated me. But you could see in their eyes that there was no such negative emotion going on. Just all about the business of getting me healed up.
As I lay there, they connected the electrical heating pad under me, with another such pad that would go over me. When they learned that I spoke Uighur, they got in an interpreter who worked down the hall in one of the labs. He was happy to get out of the lab and enjoyed listening to his language being spoken by a foreigner.
Uighur people learn Chinese in school, but not many people come to study their language. So it is really easy to make friends if you speak Uighur because they often feel that their culture is dying. Many feel that no one in the world knows who they are, and their children speak less Uighur and more Chinese with each generation. It is a wonderful opportunity to tell them that as long as God knows who they are, they will never be forgotten. For most sadly, this does not comfort. But we met many who could see that that is very true. If God knows you, you are truly known.
It seemed that this new healing device was going to send electrical currents through my pi-gu and heat up the shin-jing. I asked if I would get a shock from this and the doctors stopped and looked stunned themselves. Then the older one, one who had pushed me onto the table and pressed his finger on my nerve before, said in a rather hurt tone. “Of course we wouldn‘t shock you.” Well, I didn‘t mean to hurt his feelings! When I asked I fully thought no shock could be worse than I have been feeling.
The same doctor then turned my machine on. I say “my” machine, because in this particular room, there were many people with just this treatment going on. Some seemed to have pads under their heads and on their sinuses, others obviously being treated for the same thing as I was.
The heating pads under and over me were connected and led to a kind of box with dials and measures. It looked kind of like one of those car battery testers that tell you how much life your battery has left in it. Here the doctor brought the needle to about midway and then it started to hum loudly. I didn‘t really feel anything, and certainly no pain.
But then the doctor did the strangest thing. He went over to the corner of the room, where a bunch of fluorescent light sticks were up against the wall. You know, those big long light tubes that a lot of schools and institutions use to light big rooms? He then picked one of them up. I wondered if he was going to change one of the ceiling lights as two of them stood blinking and were almost out. But instead he came over to me, and with nothing connected to this lightstick, the doctor waved it over me like Merlin. He did it about three times. I think I repeated slowly, “There‘s no place like home...There‘s no place like home...”
The doctor looked at the energy box and turned some dials so that the needle went higher and higher, even into the red. “This sucker is going to blow any minute!” I wanted to yell. But of course, like I could really run out of the building. I began thinking how vulnerable I was now. What if a fire broke out? Not just my pi-gu; all of me would be roasted! I couldn‘t even walk, much less run!
When the needle on the gage reached the red fully, the doctor again waved his fluorescent light stick over me. Dear Lord! It lit up! The light stick went on. It had no wires connected at all! Soon the doctor went around the room, slowly waving his magic light stick over the rest of us who were in repair. Sometimes the light would go on over the person. Sometimes the light would not go on. For these, the doctor would turn up their battery chargers, and wave his wand again; doing so until the light went on. I just thought this was so funny!
When all of us had the light stick shining over us, the doctors all left the room. It was then that I noticed that this particular doctor, who ran the electric energy boxes and who waved the magic light stick, was completely bald.
The treatment lasted an hour. Then the doctors came in and sat around the table I was lying on and began to lecture me again. From now on, I was to wear the proper underwear. Two of them unzipped and again showed me the proper order. They must teach this in the schools, I thought. And next they told me how to take my placebo with implicit instructions. And finally they told me I had to come in for these treatments twice a day for three weeks!
No way! I couldn‘t believe my ears. I protested that I had a job to do and fluorescent lights at home. Could I not just rent an energy box? Again the doctors looked hurt. So I shut up. Would I ever be humble and just listen to the local folk who know what they are doing? The lecture continued. It was extremely important that I come in twice every day for three weeks. I mustn‘t miss one session.
“Then I guess I need to come back this afternoon? “ I asked dismayed.
“Oh, no. This afternoon we are closed because of political studies.”
(I forgot that school and hospital workers had their mandatory political studies sessions each Wednesday afternoon. It was indeed Wednesday.)
“Well, then I guess I will come in tomorrow.” I said.
“Oh no, no one will be here tomorrow as the paint crew is coming. This department is closed for two days.” he said.
“Okay, “ I said hesitantly, “then I guess I‘ll see you Saturday?”
“Oh, we‘re closed over the weekend.”
“Okay, next week then.” I said happily. I knew this was my last treatment.
When I got home, Ann heard my tale and devised a wonderful treatment for me with hot water bottles and using our radiator. We had a folding chair that had an opening right in the back where my pi-gu would be exposed. She planted that chair right up flush with the steam radiator and that is where I sat whenever I was out of bed.
To this day, I am fine. The pills did their part. And except for twice a year, when the seasons change from cold to warm or warm to cold, I will feel it in my pi-gu. But not nearly as bad, and it now only serves to remind me of that interesting morning in Urumchi.
PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE AS A MEMBER OR VISITOR
This article has been read 746 times < Previous | Next >
Free Reprints
Main Site Articles
Most Read Articles
Highly Acclaimed Challenge Articles.
New Release Christian Books for Free for a Simple Review.
NEW - Surprise Me With an Article - Click here for a random URL
God is Not Against You - He Came on an All Out Rescue Mission to Save You
...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them... 2 Cor 5:19
Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Acts 13:38
LEARN & TRUST JESUS HERE
FaithWriters offers Christian reading material for Christian readers. We offer Christian articles, Christian fiction, Christian non-fiction, Christian Bible studies, Christian poems, Christian articles for sale, free use Christian articles, Christian living articles, New Covenant Christian Bible Studies, Christian magazine articles and new Christian articles. We write for Jesus about God, the Bible, salvation, prayer and the word of God.