Happpy Birthday to Me!

I had had visions of a pleasant late lunch somewhere down by the riverfront, glass of bubbles to hand, the breeze wafting in from the water and lounging its way across some French colonial style balcony; food and conversation to accompany. Well, that's not going to happen.


Late Thursday evening found me at the local international medical clinic with stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen. I had been in bed and drifting towards sleep when I was rudely and insistently brought to full wakefulness by the sudden onset of this acute pain. An hour later, it had continued unabated and I found myself panting rather than breathing, which I took as a sign to make my way to the nearest medical facility. After much poking, prodding and ultra-sounding, I was sent home with a supply of anti-inflammatories and anti-spasmodics to ease the pain, and an appointment for the following day. Despite whatever it was that so violently interrupted my life, I enjoyed the lovely, floppiness inducing, cosyifying  effects of the meds and had the best sleep in a long time. Following a few tests the next day, it turned out that I was hosting a large population of non-specific bacteria i.e. there was a lot of the little buggers but no-one knows what they were. These kinds of unidentified bacteria are common in Asia (come on, where are all the researchers who want to name some new discovery after themselves) and are dealt with in a heavy handed manner. This saw me partaking of a cocktail of anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial and antibiotic meds. The results were rather spectacular and it seems that I have finally been purged of my inner troubles. This will not have me racing to eat bread again however, as the gluten thing has been raised in the past so will need to be addressed separately, and soon. A final parting comment from the rather odd young doc I saw has me quite bemused. It went along the lines of "You're in really good shape considering everything." Yeah, well that's because I have had to work bloody hard at it unlike many 'normal' people who take their health for granted.


Just to add birthday insult to bacterial injury, my dead neighbour's 2nd funeral started this morning. At 6am, discordant plinkey-plunkey music starting spewing forth from loudspeakers, just in case the first go round didn't work and ghosts were still chasing his spirit around the streets of Phnom Penh. As I have previously noted, the wealthy dead here don't seem to have a very good idea of getting on with the business of passing over, and remain as earth bound spirits desperately clinging to their worldly excesses. Just f**k off already old man and leave the rest of us in peace! 


What to do about my birthday then? I'm going to go shopping, with a high level of intent to purchase, and next weekend, I will hopefully be sitting on a balcony somewhere down by the river with a glass of bubbly to hand, celebrating my happy late birthday!