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Rabies

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

It is a 15 minute walk between mine and June’s apartments, and I’ve traversed the distance numerous times, sometimes in the middle of the night. One day June asked me, “Are you afraid (of walking the streets of Bangkok alone in the middle of the night)?” I said, “Only of the dogs and rats.”

There are hundreds of thousands of stray dogs in Bangkok, and, of course, millions of rats. On my 15-minute stroll between our apartments I might see between 8-12 stray dogs. And in the alley behind my apartment, if it’s night time, my sudden presence sends about 15 rats scurrying for their holes.

The dogs generally seem to hang out in the same areas all their lives: In front of a specific shop or apartment building (June’s has two dogs in front of hers); at a subway entrance; at a market; a bus stop; in an empty lot; basically everywhere. They do rome, but generally they stay close. Normally, the dogs and people here live in harmony. In America, if you see a stray dog, or especially a pack of them, it can be frightening. Here, the dogs see hundreds, even thousands, of people a day, so they tend to not pay attention to us. Mostly they just sleep, or lie motionless in the heat, and we can walk within inches of them without stirring them at all. And the people see dozens of stray dogs every day, and they know that they are virtually harmless, but that a wary eye is still somewhat necessary.

A couple of days ago, on a midnight walk to June’s, a couple of dogs paid particularly close attention to me. When I first started making this walk, these two dogs would bark at me, but nothing more. After they got used to me, they stopped barking at me, and with feigned interest, just watched me walk by. This day, however, their interest was quite real, and they didn’t just watch. They renewed their feirce barking, but also got very close to me and showed me their teeth. I didn’t panic or anything, but I tried to get away from them. I got passed them but the black dog was determined to get me. He lunged at me and bit me on my left calf. I was wearing shorts, so my skin was exposed. It hurt, but luckily he didn’t break the skin too much. But this thought did crossed my mind: “I just got bit by a mangy stray Bangkokian dog, that can’t be good.”

Hey hey mama, said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove. Click image to enlarge

Luckily I was close to June’s, so I went there and washed the bite, and put Betadine on it, then we went to the hospital (my third trip to the hospital since I came here). There was some slight bleeding, and a bite mark. At the hospital, I got two shots: tetanus, even though I was pretty sure I’d gotten one before I left America; and the passive rabies shot. One in each arm. And of course they disinfected and dressed the wound. But there was also another rabies shot they recommended, and they said it was very expensive. The nurse wrote the amount on a piece of paper: “21,000 baht.” Whoa, that’s around $561 for one shot! I wanted to make sure my insurance would cover it, but they didn’t get back to me, and now it was 3:00am. Even though the dog was pretty mangy, we didn’t think it had rabies, since it’s been there for so long. But they said I had 24 hours to get the shot (which is actually 5 shots), so we went home without me getting the shot.

The shot is a human immunoglobulin serum. I had an option to go to another hospital where they had a cheaper serum, but it was from a horse. The next day I called the insurance company, and they said the expensive human serum would be covered as long as the doctor said it was necessary. So I went back to the hospital to get the shot–better safe than foaming out the mouth in a few months, or craving hay.

The doctor gave me 3 shots directly into the wound! Yeeeeoooowwwwww!!!!!! June said he was wriggling the needle inside of my leg. It sure felt like it. Then the nurse shot me twice more. Once in each butt cheek. Now I have to go back for about 8 more shots, until April, where ever I happen to be. My insurance was due to expire in two days, so the timing was pretty good, but I wish I had taken a motorcycle taxi to June’s that night.

This is the nurse removing the bandage from my first visit. In a few minutes the doctor would come in and wriggle around a needle in my leg . . . three times.

Many times I've loved, many times been bitten, many times I've gazed, along the open road. Click image to enlarge

There wasn’t a whole lot of privacy in that emergency room. There were curtains, but they didn’t really hide much. I suppose they would have if someone closed them. I didn’t care though, because it was only my leg. But while in the waiting room, the nurse was talking to us–actually she was talking to June in Thai about my situation, so I didn’t really have to pay attention until June translated for me–and my attention drifted into the emergency room. There was a young Thai woman being attended to in the first bed right at the entrance, and her curtain hid nothing. She was on her side in quite a bit of pain and discomfort, kind of curled up, with her western boyfriend by her side. The doctor was working on her butt area for quite some time. I know I shouldn’t have been looking, but it was right there, impossible not to glance. Eventually June translated for me, and I stopped looking. And eventually the woman threw up. I hope it made her feel better.

Well, as I write this, tomorrow I will have been here for one year. So I made it. There were some ups and downs (read all of my previous posts and see what they were), but I made it through the year. Now I have to decide what to do next. I did go through quite a bit of money, especially lately with the teaching class and all, so I’m getting a little short on cash. So this week I have to aggressively pursue a teaching job in South Korea. But tomorrow morning, hopefully, I can watch the Mets and Cards in game 5.

If You Didn’t Already Know That I’m Weird

Saturday, September 30th, 2006

I had a heck of a time trying to post this as there were problems with the site, and it took me days, but it looks like it will work now (part of it may have been somewhat my fault, but not really).

Okay, I know these pictures don’t seem to have much to do with traveling, but in a way they do. It was during Songkran in Thailand, and I wanted to stay dry (after having been soaked earlier), so while sitting in my room bored, I took these pictures. In a previous post, after showing one of the photos, I did a survey asking if you would like to see the series. The results were in favor of posting the series. So if you didn’t want to see them, but didn’t vote, you should have voted, and you must look at them. If you voted no, you can choose to look or not. If you voted yes, then here they are, enjoy. If you just randomly clicked on this post, and you don’t know me, welcome to my insanity.

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? You been out ridin' fences for so long now . . .

 . . . Oh, you're a hard one, I know that you got your reasons. These things that are pleasin' you can hurt you somehow . . .

 . . . Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy, she'll beat you if she's able . . .

 . . . You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet . . .

. . . Now it seems to me some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you only want the ones you can't get . . .

. . . Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger. Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home . . .

 . . . And freedom, oh freedom, well, that's just some people talkin' . . .

. . . Your prison is walkin' through this world all alone . . .

. . . Don't your feet get cold in the winter time? The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine . . .

. . . It's hard to tell the night time from the day . . .

. . . You're losin' all your highs and lows . . .

. . . Ain't it funny how the feelin' goes away? . . .

. . . Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? . . .

. . . Come down from your fences, open the gate . . .

. . . It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you . . .

 . . . You better let somebody love you. Let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you, before it's too late.

Well, that’s it.

You might have noticed that my last post, (Legally) Qualified, is gone. That’s because the site lost all posts from Aug 17 to some date (unrelated to the problem of trying to post this), so I didn’t delete it for some reason. They suggested ways to get our posts back, but none seemed to work for me. I have no back ups of any of the posts I’ve written, so I guess I’m lucky I only lost one post. I wonder if any of you have saved some of my posts? Maybe it would be a good idea for me to have back ups, for the inevitable big crash.

Anyhow, if you didn’t already know it, now you all know that I’m weird.

Mark (Desperado) Schraeger

P.S. I still have no idea what the hell I’m doing with the rest of my life.

Eight Pictures

Friday, July 21st, 2006
Click on the images to see them bigger: I did no editing at all to this, the sky looked like that. That's why I took the picture. Georgetown on Penang Island, Malaysia Again, ... [Continue reading this entry]

We All Look Alike

Thursday, June 22nd, 2006
An interesting thing about Malaysia is that, unlike most, if not all, other Asian countries, they don't have their own script. They use our alphabet. The official language of Malaysia is Bahasa Malay, but there are a lot of Chinese living ... [Continue reading this entry]

Banana Transactions

Tuesday, June 13th, 2006
In case you were wondering, I'm still alive, and here are the pictures to prove it. Well, they don't prove I'm alive, unless I've turned into a monkey. Sorry for those of you who have been following my blog. I've been doing ... [Continue reading this entry]

Blindsided In The Face With A Supersoaker

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006
I've been trying to write and post this for 3 or 4 days now, and either the site or the internet I'm using keeps crashing on me before I can finish writing it. So I haven't abandoned you again. Hopefully I finally get to ... [Continue reading this entry]

?????

Saturday, April 15th, 2006
Sorry, I haven't written anything in a while. I'm still alive, and here are a couple of pictures to contemplate. Do your research and see if you can figure out what happened to me [Continue reading this entry]

Some Complementary Pictures

Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
Well, the last time I wrote a somewhat disconcerting post, I followed it up with some pictures. My last post was, I'm sure, somewhat disconcerting to some people, so I will follow that up with some pictures as well. These pictures are not ... [Continue reading this entry]

“Everyone Who Comes To Chiang Mai . . . “

Tuesday, March 21st, 2006
I often find occasion to utter the sentence, "This was covered in a Seinfeld episode." And I'm sure many other fans of the show have made similar statements. Well, the episode I have in mind today is the one where the ... [Continue reading this entry]

Billionaire!

Wednesday, March 8th, 2006
Two consecutive 10-hour slowboat rides in two days--without the aide of Dramamine--up the mighty Mekong River from Luang Prabang, Laos, to the Thai border, with nary a queaz, has all but confirmed the eradication of my embarrassing, lifelong affliction with ... [Continue reading this entry]