Anniversary

Today marks a year since our arrival in Bangkok. Immigrants, I find, almost always remember the day they first passed through customs. It is a kind of birthday, I suppose.

I confess that when we first came I thought it might be a short stay, that Jip wasn’t really going the right direction, that Thailand wasn’t necessarily going to improve her health any. But recently I watched her harness up in the standing frame for the first time since we’ve been here (it took me a few days to piece it all back together) and I thought, my god, she’s stronger than she was THREE years ago, let alone the day we showed up here. It really is remarkable how her physical health has steadied, and perhaps even made some gains, in this weather, which we’d been told so long to avoid.

We’ve been to see a doctor exactly twice over the year, once to simply introduce ourselves to a general practitioner, the second time to fix yet another hyponatremia episode. Granted, that second trip was a serious event, requiring a couple nights in the hospital, but even so, it was much simpler to deal with in Bangkok than it would have been in the States. And Jip has shown zero interest in visiting a neurologist, even though I’m told that there are several good ones in town, some who even have experience with her condition. A few folks have speculated that there is an Asian version of the disease, which for all we know prefers hot conditions to what we lived with in Seattle.

Thailand has also steadied me. My blood pressure is likely lower than it’s been for some time, certainly lower than during the fast and furious days just before and after we flew here. The pace then was pretty quick, as we emptied a house and looked for an apartment, at the same time that we were combining so many goodbyes with so many introductions. Today, the same nice place we’ve lived in all along here still serves us well, as do the same two young women, who still come every twelve hours, six days a week, to take care of Jip.