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… Or Staying in Shanghai

Imagine, if you will, Monday at about 2:30am. I’m getting ready to start packing for my 10am flight from Shanghai to San Francisco. I get up from my sofa and my back seizes up and I fall over from the pain. It was pretty bizzare, I was stuck laying on the ground for a while wondering if the pain would go away, but every time I tried to move it was pretty much impossible and I was totally immobile. Not knowing what to do, I gave my friend Lois a call who was the sweetest person ever.

She came over in the middle of the night and brought her cousin who was a doctor. After her cousin did an evaluation of me, they called an ambulance and took me over to Zhongshan Hospital. The doctors at the hospital did an evaluation of me and took some lower back x-rays and found that it wasn’t anything serious (like a slipped disk) and said that I needed a few days of bedrest of staying on my back, gave me some meds and sent me on my way. The diagnosis was around a strained ligament in my back or a muscle spasm.

We had to take an ambulance back to my apartment since I couldn’t take a sitting position. It was my first time ever being in an ambulance and one of the only times (may have been the only time, can’t really remember) I’ve been in the emergency room. From what I could see (which was limited since I spent all my time staring up at the wall) the facility was quite modern and sophisticated.

Thus, I’m still in Shanghai. I’m feeling a lot better now and I can walk around and am mobile again. I’m going to attempt to fly on Thursday or Friday to head back to the states since I think I should be in pretty good shape by then. I’ve been passing the time by watching movies and laying down on either my bed or the sofa the entire time. It’s not exactly the way I had expected to spend the May holiday, but I am feeling better for sure. It was a pretty scary experience but I owe a lot to Lois and her cousin for being amazing people and helping me when I needed it as well as my family and family friends who helped out across all the time zones with their loving advice and knowlege.