This is Thailand. Chapter 7: 27-year-old professor. Part 7

I went with Piam to one of the best private hospitals in the area. We stopped at the car park full of luxurious cars, where our Toyota looked rather ordinary. The registration process at the hospital included being weighed and having my blood pressure checked. I waited 10 minutes for a doctor who spoke English and entered the office where a dark-skinned doctor from India was waiting for me along with his beautiful Thai assistant. Taking for consideration the general bad attitude from Thais between things non-white, and particularly Indian, I doubted he had fucked her.

Link to the previous post: This is Thailand. Chapter 7: 27-year-old professor. Part 6.

-Good morning Marek. My name is Doctor Sangesh - he said, introducing himself.
-Good morning Doctor.
-How can I help you?
-I hope you can. Generally I don’t feel too well. I have regular headaches. They aren’t very strong, but annoying. I can’t focus on simple things like driving and having conversations. I am getting annoyed at everything.
-I see. How often does it happen and how long do they last?
-Every day. It usually lasts several hours. Sometimes it stops, then comes back. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to stop.
-I see. Have you travelled recently, especially to countries with a high malaria risk?
I answered that I had.
-We, we will perform a couple of tests on you, including for malaria. We’ll see what happens. Take this piece of paper to the laboratory on the sixth floor, then come back with the results.

I followed his instructions and found the laboratory, which looked like a space ship. The rooms were full of modern equipment that was being used by people wearing white smocks, rubber gloves, and surgical masks. I showed the piece of paper to the receptionist, who took me for a blood test, pee analysis and x-ray. My chest, throat and head were x-rayed. I hoped I wouldn’t shine like a bulb at night. I waited for the results for more than an hour and went back to my Hindu doctor. He looked carefully at the results.

-Mr Marek...
-Yes?
-I don’t see anything here. All the tests for results that I considered have come back as negative.
-I’m happy on one hand, but it doesn’t solve my problems. I still don’t know what’s wrong.
-You have a standard tropical infection. I’ll prescribe you some antibiotics. If they don’t work, please report to me again in five days.
I took the pills and left thanking the doctor.

Standard tropical infection? I felt like that meant “I have no idea what’s wrong with you, but here are some antibiotics and hopefully they’ll work.” Great! This whole event cost me 6500 baht. Hardly surprisingly the antibiotics didn’t work and a week later I was back at the doctors getting another set. They didn’t work again. The “disease” seemed to disappear whenever I decreased the number and intensity of meetings with Piam. Perhaps three hours sleep a night and a few orgasms for more than eight weeks is not what a doctor calls a “healthy lifestyle”?

I managed to get into some routine over the following weeks. Working Monday to Friday, I tried to teach something to my English 1 class but without success. I fought with my Advanced English Composition group. A bunch of whipper-snappers who thought they were the smartest kids in the world. They didn’t attend the class or were constantly late and didn’t do their homework. They didn’t submit essays.

I had no idea if it was self-confidence, which they had acquired during 3-4 years of studying in the college or because they had been raised in “new-rich” families. They fought with me in English better than politicians do. They were hardly ever right. They spoke fluently, but wrote tragically and I really wanted to help them, but never saw any progress...

TO BE CONTINUED...

The image used is not mine. CC0 Public Domain. Free for personal and commercial use. Even though no attribution is required I think it's worth mentioning I've found it here.