HEALTH

After my dinner with my neighbours I get stomach cramps in the night, which wake me up. I put this down to indigestion but it persists the next day. I go through the day thinking about constipation, and mild food poisoning, but surely not from vegetables and tea? After the third day I begin to get worried and talk to colleagues at work, but carry on as normal. Some of the cramps get quite painful. I start looking online and come up with things like Crohn's, colitis and other unpleasant bowel disorders. Finally on the fourth day when it settles in my lower right side and begins to look like appendicitis, I arrange a visit to a local clinic, but keep kidding myself and taking laxatives etc. At last on the 5th day I arrange to go to a hospital for diagnosis: a full medical reveals chronic appendicitis.The good news is I don't need surgery. But I do need intravenous antibiotics and this means 2 visits day to the city hospital for three hours in the morning and an hour at night.

They suggest it may be a combination of a radical alteration in diet and the bitter cold in China during winter. I  am warned off street food and too many spices.

This whole experience is a challenge, however generally speaking the staff are very efficient. I do become exasperated from time to time as they tell me one thing on a particular day and a different thing another day. And send you to another department only to have that department send you back to the last one! The university sends a colleague with me to act as interpreter, so I wander around with this little Chinese lady trotting around after me and beaming with happiness all morning long, and she can't do enough for me! I feel well looked after but also very alone and a little scared at the prospect of having an operation in a strange land, where the thought of infection fills me with visions of septicaemia.

After the 5th day of treatment the symptoms seem largely to have subsided but they also seem to come and go, depending on what I eat. I decide to try fruit and water for a few days, so have to forgo pizza, beer and quiz night with the team.