"Emergency Medical Evacuation" 9,800 Miles
I took the travel insurance offer to fly me back to SF rather than continuing on to Vietnam. It was a difficult decision since there was a lot to be said for either choice.
Today I flew 9,800 miles from Mumbai to London and Mumbai to SF. Left at 2:40am, arrived at 1:30pm, same day, 13.5 timezones, more than 20 hours in the air. It wasn't an option, but if I'd flown via Bangkok, I'd have completed going round the world and it would have been only 9,700 miles.
My travels don't really end quite yet, though. I don't have a job or home to return to, and I have a few more things I need to do before I settle down. I'm staying with friends, and I'm planning to be in SF for a couple of weeks. Then visiting friends and family in Washington state as well as doing a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat there, probably back in SF mid-March.
Feeling the Energy and Peeing Gravel
Three days ago I went running for the first time since my surgery. Just 15 minutes, but it felt nice to do that. Then yesterday, I ran for 20 minutes. Within an hour after that, I'd peed out three small pieces of my broken up kidney stone. Wow was that nice! So today I ran for a bit more than 30 minutes, but all I got for it was the reddest urine I've ever seen. Still, felt wonderful to be out for a run at dawn and then to Chi Kung class before the sun is over the trees.
One of the really wonderful things about being "stuck" in Pune is that I've found an amazing Tai Chi and Chi Kung instructor. He's been studying for the last 30 years all over the world, and it really shows. Though I've felt the movement of energy before, it was always vague compared to this. In his classes I've felt it intensely and clearly. He breaks things down to the smallest details, taking three weeks to go through 24 move Yang short style. He says that it has been the last 20 years here that have really made the energy work part of it come together for him, that it is a part that the Chinese don't teach verbally and really don't even have a vocabulary for. For me, I think it is the main thing that has ever been attractive to me about martial arts, but it is missing from most classes (and most people's practice -- not that there is anything wrong with it as a purely physical or physical and mental exercise).
Funny, I had hoped to do Tai Chi in Thailand with Master Chia after doing Vipasana and then making my way via Vietnam to Thailand. Seems like I was meant to do a different order in different places.
I've also made some wonderful friends. Hanging out a lot with four women visiting from Iran (two sisters, one of their best friens and their mother) and a couple of their Indian friends (one self-described hippy and the other who has a construction business). It's been eye-opening to learn about life and politics in Tehran (I was shocked at how different they are from Arab countries I've visited, and it took a while just to get over the idea of four women from Iran traveling on their own). It's been interesting to see how middle to upper-class Indians live (with maids, cooks, drivers and etc.). Really, there isn't much middle class here, it seems, you're either really poor or you've got a strange mix of amazing luxuries combined with the fact that no amount of money will buy you good service, clean air, quiet, or other things that are foreign to Indian cities.
Now about that Tehran connection, I wonder if I'll have problems with Homeland Security when they read that I've befriended nationals of our next enemy...
Surgery in India
On January 4th, I got on an overnight bus from Goa to Pune from where I was going to catch another two busses to get me to a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat in Igatpuri. I made it to Pune early morning on the 5th, got on the next bus, and then had it take me to the hospital. I was having severe pain in my low back and side, severe enough to be accompanied by dry heaves (I hadn't eaten all night, so I couldn't actually vomit). I had the bus get me to a hospital in Pune where I found that the problem was two kidney stones, one which was 9mm and required surgery to break it up.
So I got to enjoy the adventure of four days in an Indian hospital. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been since Pune is a major city with one of India's most prestigious universities. I got a great surgeon who's performed this exact surgery over a thousand times, and the hospital, while not what I would consider up to US standards, was much better than I might have expected. Nice people. They all were amazed that I was alone though and kept asking where my friends and family were. If an Indian goes to the hospital, it seems like not just their friends and family but their entire village accompanies them! OK, perhaps that's a minor exageration, but there looked like a heck of a lot more visitors than patients.
I got to stay awake for the surgery and he showed me on the monitor what he was doing, though there came a point where I was uncomfortable enough that they sedated me and I missed out on some of it -- I'll have to wait until I get back to the US and watch the video tape he gave me.
The first procedure, including four days in the hospital and everything else, came out to about 35,000 Rupees or $750. I think that's about the room charge for one night in a hospital back in San Francisco!
I go back to the hospital again on the 22nd to have a stent removed, and will probably stay in the hospital for two days at that time.
