<p>The last entry I made on this blog, I pressed”Save” and I never saw it again. From now on I’ll go directly to “Publish”. I have skipped several days dealing with a crashed hard drive, and then tryig to decipher the Chinese directions on the communal computer here at Stemcellschina I haven’t had time to make entries. So I’m now going back several days and copy from my mother’s diary.</p>
<p>The plane landed 2:05 pm California time. (6:00 am Bejing time) Took shuttle to pick up luggage. Went through immigration. Hundreds of people in line. Bejing largest airport in the world we were told. Now another wait to plane to Qingdao. (Pronounced Cheen dao) The ladies in the restroom let this old lady go first. After another shuttle to the plane, sat for an hour and were told of bad weather in Qindao and back on the shuttle to the terminal. 7:15 PM, (CA) finally arrived in Qingdao and was met by a girl Jessie, our interpreter, for our short trip to the hospital. Room on the eighth floor with large bathrooom, small refridgerator, microwave, TV (one English channel) with a DVD player (all button directions in Chinese), hot & cold bottled water dispenser, and this communal computer down the hall, (also everything in chinese).</p>
<p>Someone comes in to take lunch and dinner orders for some of the local restaurants. Chinese food, pizza, chicken nuggets, Italian, etc. Weather in the mid eightis and humid. Room air conditioned in the daytime, with a fan for night.</p>
<b>Thursday, July 17</b>
Things are sort a setteling down to a schedule. I have a meeting with the Doctors in my room around 8:30, accupuncture, electro wave therapy, (sort of an electro shock, muscle relaxation/stimulation machine), and physical therapy. We have been to the local supermarket by cab. (8 yuan, a little over a dollar,) out to dinner one night to a fancy sea food restaurant, (the lady from Stemcells China paid). Dinner in the room, ordered out, is about $4.50. Had my first IV stem cell treatment on Monday. Have the first spinal injection tomorrow, Friday.
July 17th, 2008
Today is Sunday, July 6, 2008. At 1:30 am on Wednesday morning, my mother and I will be leaving Los Angeles International for Qingdao, China for me to have four stem cell injections over the course of three weeks. Almost three years ago I developed the symptoms of ataxia, including: slurred speech, double vision, balance and equilibrium problems, muscle weakness, and a few other symptoms. After many, many tests, they have never found a cause or given a diagnosis. So on July 12, 2008 I will start stem cell treatments in Qingdao, China in hope of some improvement of my symptoms. I will be updating my progress over the course of the next few weeks, and hopefully as well adding some photos of the experience, if I can figure out how to use the borrowed, very unMacintosh laptop I’m taking with me.
packing philosophies
There are two official schools of thought on how to pack for a three-week long trip such as this: my mother’s, and mine. My mother’s school says you should start packing at least a month early to make sure you think of, and pack, at least twice, everything you may possibly need within the next year and a half. Put all of these things in a small, high tech suitcase that will easily hold four times as much luggage that there is physically space for, that she read about in one of the brochures on her last flight, so it will be easy for your son to do the heavy lifting. My school says you should wait for the very last minute to fit what should fit into a lunch bag into a very large, cheap suitcase, around all the extra things that wouldn’t fit into my mother’s suitcase. My mother’s suitcase has been packed for weeks. As soon as I finish this first blog entry, I’m going to see if I can go find my suitcase in the garage. (Unless there is something good on TV.)
I have been preparing for this trip though. I have dual times set on my watch, (add three hours to Pacific time and change am to pm), I have my money exchange calculator set to yuans, or kilometers, or something foreign anyway, (1 dollar = 6.864 yuan)(1 mile = 1.6 kilometers), and I have been studying how to use my English-Chinese Speaking Dictionary so I can communicate with the locals without having to have any idea of what I’m saying. (Now that’s American!) I already feel I have a head start on mastering Chinese syntax just by trying to decipher the English directions to my electronic translator. I think I have figured out where in Qingdao the Chengyang People’s Hospital is. Enter these coordinates into GoogleMaps if you’re interested:+36° 17′ 06.00″, +120° 23′ 40.00 ”This my first entry, from home in Oxnard, California. Hopefully I will continue updating as our trip goes along if I can figure out how to use a Windows computer, or if we don’t hit a water buffalo when we land.
July 7th, 2008
