Day One

Insomnia mixed with my jet lag resulted in two nights without sleep. I was tired of twisting and turning by 4:30am and was waiting for the day to begin. The days here are supposed to be played in a soft relaxing tempo, like listening to the monk’s horns from a nearby Wat. That wasn’t to be the case; breakfast served at 8:15 was interrupted by Stu telling me I had to be ready by 8:30 and go to the Chaing Mai hospital for a medical exam, standard procedure upon admission, status quo, etcetera, etcetera.

            The states could learn a great deal from the Thai medical system. The new patient form was about the size of a large post-it pad and didn’t care what your grandparents died of. The waiting time from registration to seeing the doctor was about ten minutes and didn’t include the three-dozen nurses that acted as support staff. The physician was bilingual, polite, efficient and knowledgeable. The fifteen-minute exam consisted of touching, probing, and asking questions, very old school but one built on confidence and trust.

Did you know the human liver would function normally after it’s 75% destroyed, and repair itself in three to six months if kept healthy. The overall consensus at Chaing Mai medical was that my liver was 25% shot. Hell, that’s better news than I expected and based on the doctor’s projections would mean I have another one-hundred and eighty years to live before I’ll need a liver transplant. By that time a Miracle-Liver will be available in my favorite color. Stripes won’t be available until after the year 2210. Dr. Succipan, a handsome fifty-something man with a reassuring smile suggested, and humbly so, that I have blood work done to insure a narrower margin or error on my one hundred and eighty year theory. The results are due back Tuesday. The doctor’s appointment, blood work and taxi ride in both directions came to fifty dollars. Did I mention Dr. Succipan would bring the results to me personally at “The Cabin”?

            Ms. Ure, pronounced “Or” a case manager and Australian beauty with rich brown eyes and sandy blond hair nestled very nicely on her bare shoulders suggested I rest rather than participating in group therapy today. I seems news travels fast and the entire staff including the kitchen help knows I didn’t sleep last night. I tried to nap, wrestling with boredom, but to no avail. I located the fleet of mountain bikes and chose one for tuning. It was there that I met Ali, my personal trainer, yoga master, weight lifter, and otherwise what use to be called by the girls in high school, a male hunk.

*   *   *

Marlon. The sun was beginning to set over the Mae Hong Son [river], and created a violet glow like neon around the lean boy approaching. He looked forlorn with his head hung low, eyes to the ground and shuffling his feet slowly without any purpose to his stride. I said hello and he nodded back, introducing himself as Marlon and telling me, without my asking, that he had come from an intense one on one therapy session. I asked if he was all right and did his response mean the therapy went well?

            “It did,” he responded, now appearing slightly more alive since someone had taken an interest in his wellbeing.

He surprisingly suggested if I were to wait for him to put his notebook away he would come back and get to know me. Five minutes later he was jabbering away at what I’ve learned was everyone’s favorite topic in therapy -- themselves. If I were to pass Marlon on the street my first impression might be of a young kid trying to look and act tough. His hair was cut short, not a quarter inch from his scalp and he wore a four-day growth like a badge of honor. He was six-foot with no body fat and had those long unnoticed muscles like a seasoned swimmer. If it wasn’t for the lost faraway look in his eyes his facade was of someone who stayed in shape with little evidence of any addiction problems, but appearances can be quite deceiving. Marlon was a retired kick boxer from Indonesia and a serious pill popper at the ripe age of twenty-one. More varieties of pain medications passed through his system them I had ever heard of, or could imagine. Opium derivatives of Hydrocodones were chopped into small grains of white sand and snorted through his nose. Then there was his Valium abuse to come down after the high. He said he tried fighting like that once and lost so badly his back got broken. Then with all that down time he turned to “Zimpy”, crystal methamphetamine. The scary part is he told me how lucky he was.

            He explained, “A young teenager was brought here last week with a crystal meth addiction so bad his brain had neurological disorders resulting in his becoming mentally retarded. He only lasted two days he was incapable of treatment. They moved him to he psychiatric ward for the mentally insane in Chaing Mai. He could no longer communicate with the outside world.”

            Marlon said if they would let him, he would like to go visit his friend inside the old city walls. The friend’s name was never asked or mentioned. I suggested I might go along with him if he wanted. It was obvious to me, Marlon wanted to be someone’s hero and was trying hard to please me, possibly a parent figure that he met five minutes ago. My suggestion to accompany Marlon was my acknowledgement of my acceptance of him and his loyalty to his friend. I knew it would be a depressing wasted trip, his friend was seventeen and dead on the vine.

            It’s Christmas morning in Thailand and Marlon’s mother is coming to visit. He’s getting more nervous by the hour and shrinking with a low self-esteem that gives off an odor of rotting eggs and dead fish. No more jokes for today.