The Rambling Writer Visits Thailand, part 20: Home to the Coils of Covid, Chaos, and Cancer

Bidding goodbye to beautiful Thailand, Thor and I flew into the coils of the year 2020 that most of us are eager to flush down the drain of history.

NOTE: “And now for something completely different.” Thor and I made our first trip to Asia — the beautiful country of Thailand.  We were lucky to squeak through the pandemic flight closures in February of 2020 as we returned from our three-week trip. Since more travel has now become a distant prospect, we hope you’ll take a virtual vacation with us in the following weeks. (This blog series started on June 13.)

During a year of nearly nonstop trials, I found comfort and welcome distraction in reliving my memories of a wonderful trip, and I hope you found the posts a pleasant “virtual vacation.” I write now amidst the terrible news of mob violence instigated by a power-mad, corrupt U.S. president, and join the many fervently hoping his malignancy can be contained for a peaceful transition of power and recovery for our nation and world. As many others have been recounting their journey through the trials of 2020, I join those voices with the goal of helping purge our collective traumas. Usually I keep these blog posts light and entertaining, and I promise this one ends on a hopeful note!

As Thor and I were preparing to depart Thailand — a last glimpse of its beauty…

…we learned that the airline had changed schedules, and we had to make an overnight stop in Manila, Philippines. By this time, the early impact of Covid19 virus was becoming clear. Before a major source in Wuhan, China, was made public, we had been in many tightly-packed crowds of Chinese tourists, including crammed like sardines with them in a closed tour boat for hours (not recommended). Halfway through our trip, Thailand closed to flights from China, which started us wondering. We had no symptoms, luckily, and passed the temperature check at the Bangkok airport with flying colors.

We were getting used to seeing the mask-wearing practice that would soon prevail back home, at least among people capable of reason.

The top photo in the Bangkok airport, with dueling demons, would soon morph into a metaphor for the coming year. If anyone can identify which demon battle it depicts, I’d love to hear from you. As we saw in earlier posts in this series, there are many sacred guardian demons and epic mythic battles between forces of good and evil, but my knowledge of these stories is very limited. Here are the multi-heads of the serpent (ironically in front of the Gucci store), and the tail end:

On to Manila, site of political unrest and crime, an interesting study in the gap between the wealthy and the struggling poor. (Which worsening gap would soon erupt into renewed visibility in the U.S.) Our airport hotel was located in “Tourist Town,” a glitzy few blocks with expensive shops and a fancy casino, where every shop was guarded by security staff with assault rifles.

Crossing from one block to the next, we entered a very different city:

Transportation options included moto-cabs, lots of moto scooters, and crammed mini-busses.

The next day at the airport for our flight to Vancouver, B.C., we were herded into a crowded area with many others, including literally two dozen elderly Chinese lined up in wheelchairs to board. We guessed that these elders were being sent to the large Chinese community in Vancouver in order to be safer from the virus.

A kindly fellow-passenger gave Thor and me masks, as we didn’t have any. We didn’t guess that we’d still be wearing such protection at the end of the year, and certainly for many more months, as the criminally bungled Trump Administration rollout of vaccines lurches along and the crisis worsens.

Shortly after we got home, in March, much of my local extended family became ill with what was later determined to be a virulent flu. Because of the confusion and precautions of the virus, including shortage of test kits, my sisters and others were denied testing even with fevers of 102 degrees. My three sisters and I had been doing a lot of caregiving over the past several years for Dad Neil, whose dementia had been progressing even as he insisted on remaining in his home and doing increasingly disturbing things. He was a handful to try to keep safe! He came down with the nasty flu the rest of the family had, which really hit hard at his age. Thor and I had been cautious about contacts, so we were the only ones standing at that point, and I ended up by Dad’s bedside in the hospital for a week. The precautions were both alarming and reassuring there, but I was pretty nervous, since Dad had lost his hearing aids, and I had to lean close to shout into a speaker for headphones they’d given him.

Then he was transferred to a nursing home, and the doctors agreed with me that we needed to move him into assisted living when he was sufficiently recovered. He was no longer safe in his home. Over the course of the next couple months, I found him a very nice assisted living apartment, but they kicked him out after a months because he was wandering and climbing into other residents’ beds. So another move, into a memory-care lockdown facility. Of course, none of this helped Dad’s confusion, and his decline worsened. We couldn’t see him except through a window, or briefly if they could bundle him up in a wheelchair for a porch visit.

Sisters and I started tackling the exhausting project of clearing out his vast hoarder shop (including his machinist tools, fishing gear, hunting rifles, dozens of crates of rusted metal, etc., etc.), and the moderately-packed house full of stuff he liked to buy and never use. Meanwhile, I had been bothered by a persistent cough and shortness of breath, but because I had no fever, no one was interested in checking me. The Covid chaos continued, health crisis flowing into waves of protests over police shootings of Black people, homelessness and economic suffering, all flowing into the madness of overheated and never-ending U.S. presidential election campaigns. I was terrified that we might face another four years of the Trump nightmare.

Perhaps while sleepwalking, I somehow managed to revise the second novel in my early Ace/Berkley science fiction series and shepherd it through production to release an updated edition of Win, Lose, Draw. As I worked on the revisions, I was surprised to realize that woven into the galactic adventures of my kick-butt gamer and rebel spy fighting tyranny, my explorations of racism and alternate sexuality remain timely. (New edition of number three in the series is coming along soon, I promise.) Thanks to my esteemed colleagues at Book View Cafe for essential assistance!

https://bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/book/win-lose-draw/

I finally got a doctor appointment, and my GP felt something was amiss in my chest. An X-ray suggested asthma. Referral to a specialist led to confusing results, but this new doc said, “You know, maybe I’ll order a CT scan just to see what’s going on.” That revealed a lung mass “suspicious for malignancy.” (I have never smoked.) New doc’s decision maybe saved my life.

But then came weeks of bureaucratic snafus and bungling, probably partly because of continuing Covid issues with our healthcare workers maxed out. The tumor had grown by the time I finally got a biopsy that confirmed adenocarcinoma. Then I lucked out getting an immediate appointment with a very fine surgeon right here in town, after the Seattle Cancer Center had lost my records and referrals for an appointment.

Surgeon said he needed to remove a lobe of my left lung, and I was in surgery the next week, August 5, for a major procedure lasting five hours. If anyone else here has undergone a thoracotomy, in which they pry open your ribs to get access to the lung, you will know it meant one mean demon of painful recovery for months. Good news: It appears the cancer did not spread, although it did impinge on the pleural wall as it grew, so there is a risk of recurrence.

Here I am in post-op ICU, hooked up to everything imaginable. The barf bag was because I spent the night losing any fluids left inside me — I don’t tolerate pain meds well. But I want to thank the great docs and other dedicated health care workers for coping and caring for me in the midst of the pandemic. They are heroes.

Then in the midst of the painful recovery slog came the immense relief of a Biden win for president! Followed, of course, with more disturbing incitements by Trump of violence, and division.

Through my surgery and continuing recovery, my hero husband Thor has been by my side. I couldn’t have done it without him. We were saddened that we had to cancel two trips this year that generally get us through winter and get us snorkeling in warm seas, though compared to the general suffering all around us, those lost trips were barely a blip on the radar. Still, every year I barely get through our gray, rainy Pacific Northwest winters, just waiting for summer and our brief, glorious swimming season. Disabled, I completely missed it this year. In late September, I did manage to get into a shorty wetsuit and snorkeling gear, just so I could float weightless in the bay and soak in the healing touch of the sea. (I was probably an otter or dolphin in a former life, and I fade away without renewal in the sea.) Thor also helped me manage a couple of short hikes with Bear dog in our beloved nearby mountains before snow closed down the trails.

I celebrated being alive!

And we also got to slip into a mountain lake with a mother river otter and her two younglings. I took that as a sign of hope and healing.

As the fall slipped into early winter, Dad’s condition continued to deteriorate, though we managed a socially-distanced celebration on the facility porch for his 98th birthday. We’re not sure he understood that we were there, as he was not responding by that time, but we hope he felt our presence. He had been on hospice care there, and by Christmas week we were on death watch, as he was failing rapidly. He died on the day after Christmas, and we’re now in the midst of planning an outdoor memorial service. Since he served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II, and also in the Korean War, there will be military honors, including the traditional gun salutes and playing Taps. Dad was very proud of his military service, including also many years in the active Navy reserves. We took him every year on Veterans Day to the local “Festival of Flags,” where he loved to wear his uniform. This cemetery is where his ashes will reside, in addition to some we will scatter at his favorite hiking and fishing spots.

So the turning of the year came as a great “grielief,” only to turn ugly this week with the horrific events in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. But I have faith that our nation and world will recover and transform, though demanding hard work.

On the day of the first sickening news releases about the violent attacks on Congress, I got a call from my doctor to report results of my five-month post-op CT scan: All clear!

So, 2020 dispatched from my end, here is an early Valentine to you all from Thor and me (taken last February in the Manila casino). Best wishes and strength to us all! And love to all wouldn’t hurt.

*****

You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is available in print and ebook: The Ariadne Connection. It’s a near-future thriller set in the Greek islands. “Technology triggers a deadly new plague. Can a healer find the cure?”  The novel has received the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize and the Cygnus Award for Speculative Fiction. Sara has recently returned from another research trip in Greece and is back at work on the sequel, The Ariadne Disconnect. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com