What's This?

ALBANY, N.Y. — Regular readers of the blog, or those following along in chronological order, will notice a large gap between the last China entry and this one with no explanation. I'm here, after a break, to provide one.

I had to leave China unexpectedly due to health reasons. My headaches started in Hong Kong last summer. They came and went through the fall, forcing me cut short my road trip back from Kansas. This meant no Mount Rushmore or car camping in Wyoming. I went on a medication early in the winter, and was still tapering up as I traveled through the Russian taiga. The pain seemed stable for several months, until it wasn't. By the summer I also had chest pain and a ball of worries. I wasn't sure what was wrong with me, and my scatter-shot visits to the doctor had been inconclusive. On vacation in South Asia, I went to a couple of dingy clinics and modern hospitals - experiences that one day I plan to share here - with little results. Back in Beijing, with a new semester looming and no pain relief, I made the decision to come home.

Examinations continued here at a steady clip. I had my blood drawn, spinal fluid examined and brain cut into tiny slices on an MRI. After several months of investigation, a bevy of specialists have concluded that I am quite healthy, and have no major system failures, neurological damage or cardiac problems. What's causing the consistent pain, tingling and dizziness apparently is a misaligned jaw, which has thrown other muscles off-balance. Correcting this is possible but it will take time. I'm getting physical therapy and will have strange things done to my jaw. The good news is that I can and probably will feel completely better someday.

In the meantime I will be home in Albany, resting up and being thankful I have a roof to come back to in times of crisis. I want to keep writing. I could blog about Albany, but I'm not sure if the entries I produced last fall at home were my strongest. This time, I'm going to start by doing something different. I'm going to blog about past experiences that didn't make it to my blog. In truth, I've been doing some of this all along. Occasionally I'll write an entry a couple of months after the fact, and then pre-date to the date that it actually happened. Sometimes I can't finish an entry on the day I started it and it will remain a draft for over a year before I finish it. For now I'm going to publish the new entries when they are finished, so they will appear on the main page as new material. Some day I might decide to put these in chronological order, but that's a decision for down the line. I also might eventually return to writing about Albany, as interesting things develop and my well of untapped stories begins to run dry.

Who knows? You'll just have to keep reading to find out.