Dear Family and Friends,

I miss feeling pretty.

"Tsk, tsk." I can her the admonishments and platitudes from an ocean away.

But, let's be honest for a sec here. Don't we all have days where we wake up and the world feels right to the point that we keep our shoulders a little straighter... or articles of clothing that when we wear them, our chins stay naturally raised and we feel the best version of ourselves? Of course we do.

And I miss that feeling. When I lived in the States, I was addicted to that pretty feeling that came from a well-accessorized outfit combined with a "good hair" day... and I lived in a world that valued, nee required a certain look for success. However, as I prepared to depart from the life that I had established in the States, I resolved that while traveling, while living abroad, I would wean myself from my addiction to material beauty... and in order to live my new-found pragmatic values, I bought practical clothing and cut short my hair.

However, almost immediately after my departure from the States, I found my resolution to decrease my valuing the material, my resolution to eschew material challenged. In Bangkok, I repeatedly found myself fussing over my shorn hair... and I spent more than several evenings wandering through tiers of posh Bangkok stores with my mind's eye drifting amongst what I could buy to return to feeling pretty. Later, a few months after I had settled into Korea, I couldn't decide whether living in Korea helped or hindered my goal of eschewing material beauty. You see, while Korean women are naturally beautiful, they also feel a lot of pressure to be proper females attired in sparkles and bows and frills. But I am very obviously not Korean, so my American self found it very easy to dress to my new pragmatic values - at first. But as time went on, I became increasingly desperate for that "pretty" feeling to that point that before family or friends came to visit me in Korea, I spent hours upon hours shopping online for pretty items that friends and family would generously lug across the Pacific for me. But shopping online is a gamble... and it was rare that the items that my family or friends packed resulted in that gratifying pretty feeling.

Bear with me - I'm getting to the point.

Anyway, here I am, two years past the life that I had established in the States, with increased confidence and abilities from having lived abroad but still at war with myself over "feeling pretty" versus being practical. For this last departure from the life I knew, I packed a backpack and left all my "pretties" on shelves in Woodinville. But a generous friend gifted me with "Magic" for my hair (i.e. we permanently straightened the curls out of my hair), allowing my hair to be pretty and long but easier to maintain.



September in the modern metropolis of Shanghai is stinkin' humid and hot. Luckily, Shanghai is filled with beautiful, posh tiers of air conditioned stores with an amazing array of beautiful material things to wander through. However, unluckily, I found Shanghai to be a city that values a well-accessorized outfit, a world that values a certain look for success and my pragmatically dressed self did not fit the bill. And so, it was very easy for me, in Shanghai, to wander amongst what I could buy to feel pretty with my mind's eye and poised credit card.

After several debates and an actually-better-not-mentioned incident where a twittering saleslady had to extract me from a Chinese-sized Stella McCartney top, I decided to limit ambitions of prettiness the hair that cloaked my shoulders. After sweaty, horrible, fruitless day of attempting to buy Chinese train tickets, I walked into a posh Shanghai salon and asked their top stylist give me this hair style:




BUT, the stylist must've had his own ideas... and he gave me a hair style a lot closer to this:



By the time that I realized that this top Shanghai stylist was not giving me the haircut that I had requested, it was too late. I looked in the salon's mirror and wanted to cry so badly that my bones began to ache. I paid the salon and wandered amongst the Shanghai tiers of stores, sunk into despair. I chided myself for being vain... I knew full well that I was being silly... and I firmly lectured on how fortunate I was to be out in the world having an adventure (even if my adventures didn't always turn out as I hoped)... but... but...

Finally, I dragged my aching body with its near-mulleted hair back to my hostel and decided to first, cry myself to sleep and then to splurge on some sparkly clips the next day (my beautiful Korean friends would approve). I assured myself that tomorrow could only, only be a better day. Little did I know....

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20 hours later, I had a fever exceeding 39 degrees (Celsius) (102 Fahrenheit) when I wrote the following e-mail to my parents:

Dearest Mum & Buster,

I'm sorry to say that I have some bad news. Last night I developed a fever and so this morning I took myself to a hospital here in Shanghai. Apparently, I've managed to develop acute appendicitis - which means, obviously, I'm a bit weak, I'm in a bit of pain and that I'm not leaving Shanghai tomorrow as planned. For the record, I am fine, the doctors and nurses at the hospital I'm going to are wonderful, friendly and professional. At this point, they are treating me with IV antibiotics for the next 2 days and then the doctor is going to check my white blood cell count and see where we are at. I'll e-mail again soon...

I love you.

Laura

It had been a tough day... so I didn't re-read the e-mail before I pushed the send button and went to bed. My parents - understandably - found this a very, very upsetting e-mail. Mostly because there is only one cure for accute appendicitis: surgery.


The night previous, I repeatedly pushed my new and detested hair out of my eyes and tried to cry. But I felt horrible, truly too horrible to cry and instead fell into a fitful sleep. My body turned feverish and a dose of acetaminophen didn't at all help... I hovered in and out of sleep bemoaning my hair, resisting the idea of going to the doctor, tossing and turning and unable to argue with my own body. I pulled myself out of bed at a respectable 8 am, walked to the hostel's front desk and said, "I need a doctor. Where should I go?"

The front desk lady kindly gave me a hospital name and directions. I walked outside and spent 20 minutes dully trying to hale a cab at rush hour before surrendering and deciding to walk to the hospital. The front desk lady had said that it was a 20 minute walk to the hospital but it took me over an hour to walk... more like shuffle to the hospital. Every step hurt but I knew that if I sat down, I not be able to get back up and so I walked... I walked so slowly that old ladies my grandmother's age kept passing me on the sidewalk and a security officer had to escort me from the main hospital lobby to the foreigner's building of the hospital.

A kindly Chinese doctor with very good English was able to see me right away. He wrinkled his brow and sent me down the hall for blood tests. The nurses had to give me a sheet to halt my shivering while I awaited the test results. And when the doctor received the results, he pronounced my problem bacterial.

"Thank goodness." I replied. "That means antibiotics."

The doctor looked pleased at my comprehension and told me that he was going to put me on iv penicillin for the next 2 days.

"An iv? Do I have to stay in the hospital? And wait, what is wrong with me? And I never ask this but please, please have some pain medicine??"

The doctor looked amused... and replied. "You can sleep in your hotel. Acute tonsillitis. Yes."

I followed a nurse down the hall and into a cubicle with a bed. My body hurt so badly that I welcomed a shot in the rear for pain... and I slept through the first 3 hours of my first iv. I awoke during a nurse's check, the nurse had very good English, and one of the sweetest personalities I've ever encountered. At that point, I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink in some 30 hours, so the nurse helped order me a half portion of soup and a taxi back to my hostel.

I wrote that e-mail. Panicked my parents. Tossed and turned for 12 hours... sometime during the night I realized that I had e-mailed the wrong diagnosis to my parents. E-mailed my parents ASAP to correct my earlier error and returned to the hospital, via bus, for my second iv. My fever broke sometime that evening... and by the next day when I returned to the hospital for a third time for more blood tests and to see the doctor, I was admittedly physically weak but already calculating how long until I could return to traveling... I was beyond determined that I was going to Lhasa. The doctor admonished me, prescribed tons of rest and enough pills to revive a dead elephant and told me that if I continued to improve, I could continue my travels.

I returned to my hostel, spent 48 hours arranging a flight to Xi'an (traveling in China is not as easy as one might imagine) - and flew from Shanghai to Xi'an the following Monday. I cannot exactly say when I recovered my physical health... it must've been some time after I visited the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an and was definitely after I boarded the train for Lhasa. My hair on the other hand... well, now, that's a different story.

Love,
Laura

PS: Today's picture is indeed of me, with hopeless hair, but at that moment my hair worries were literally over 5,000 kilometers away (we had just passed a marker saying that Shanghai was kilometers away) and instead I was preoccupied with my first look at the magnificent Mt. Everest!