Live & Uncensored..

Let me just get this out there - my daughter is a delight! Her heart overflows with kindness, her mouth gushes with sweetness and affection, and she possesses an empathy for others that is way beyond her years. Lately this precociousness has served her well as she settles into our new life in Thailand and the poor little thing commences learning her 3rd language in her very short 4 years on this planet. But I'm not sure if it's a result of growing up in multilingual environments, that it's simply her personality or most likely that it's just spot on for her age and development, but lately her a speech has been flush with this raw literalism, comedic non sequiturs and genius linguist inventions (which around here we refer to as speaking "Elkish") that have had me in stitches! It's gotten to the point where I've decided it'd be a sin not to share them as they're simply too good to waste. So with eternal gratitude to my incredible daughter, I joyfully present to you some highlights from the last month of 'Little Feather; Live & Uncensored.'

  

"Mummy, Mummy! I just saw a car spraying water out of it's bottom."

"Don't worry Daddy, Jesus will put the sick away from you."

"Dad, whenever my poo comes out it makes me cold, or warm, or hot."

"Daddy, yester-night when we went over the bridge the moon dipped itself in sauce and that's how it got orange."

"Dad, at school the peepee from all the doodles gets all over the ground and I don't like it very much."

"Daddy, Daddy! I saw a water fountain and it spat out a rainbow!"

"Dad, do you remember the fish with jelly on it? Wobble wobble wobble?"

"Mum, why do you love wearing chicken?"

 

  "In night times Daddy spews in the potty.. Silly Daddy."

"Daddy, Daddy!! What's that noise upstairs? I think it's a Dinosaur! Or Mummy!"

"Daddy, I need a band-aid to put on my finger so the Germans don't get in and make it ouchie."

"Daddy, last time I was sick you forgot to bring me a bucket and all my vegetables came out onto the bed."

 

That Which Locks Most Dread..

There is a silent terror that lurks in the back of every dreadlocked mind, and indeed the back of your mind is where you want it to stay! Because when that silent terror moves from simply lurking in the back of your mind to lurking on the top of your head, well, that's when you know you're in real trouble! 

We recently were enjoying some time away with our dear friends and whilst as far as we adults were concerned it was just a sweet time of filling up the love bank between us, something far more sinister was taking place between our children. At some point along the lines a silent and unknown exchange took place which would bring our deepest terror alive and into our home. Does this terror have a name I hear you ask? Why indeed it does.. Pediculus humanus capitis! That good ole blood sucking obligate extoparasite of humans... otherwise known as Nits!

Now maybe that doesn't sound too bad to you; perhaps you can remember getting them at school when you were a young or have already had to deal with you own kids getting them and so you went to the shops and picked up a bottle of something off the shelf and it stopped them dead in their tracks... but alas, you don't have dreads.. because those who do know that in dreads they are almost impossible to kill! Your locks are so tight that they have plenty of places to dig in and hide, and head lice brushes like the one pictured a little below, forget about it! I have literally met people who have had to shav their entire head, dreadies and all, after years of growth and maintenance all because they couldn't get rid of their nits and the scratching began driving them crazy. So if you're a regular person (by which I mean a poor soul without a glorious mop of Dreads) then this post is for you, so that you can sympathise with us in our terror and feel that weightiness of that which locks most dread!!

 

Day 1:   You've just put on a friend's hat/you've cuddled up close with your child whose come home from a day at school/you've laid in a bed that usually sleeps someone else/you've taken part in any number of other such seemingly innocuous activities and it's happened. A lone, solitary female Nit has found her way in amongst your magnificent head of locks.. and she has decided to stay. After cruising up and down the block a few times she decides on a location that's near to the local amenities and services and begins laying eggs - just like the Mother Alien in Aliens (which if you haven't seen yet then you are truly missing out on one of the all-time action classics). Whats interesting is that at this point you are continuing to go about your day in your normal fashion, completely oblivious to the invading species that has set up shop right next to your brain and is literally there to suck your blood! So whilst you enjoy your coffee and watch repeats of the Bachelor (not mentioning any names here *cough cough Wild Flower cough cough*) somewhere between 3 and 8 eggs are being laid right on the top of your head.

As an interesting side note and something which I only discovered during our recent ordeal, 'nits' is in fact only the name of the egg. What emerges from the egg/nit is actually called a Louse, but considering that throughout my entire life I and everyone I have known has called the adult Louse 'Nits' - I shall unashamedly continue to call them so!

Day 6:   You've continued on about your business this week completely unaware that your new neighbour is currently busy finishing up the last touches of her nursery and making sure she's happy with her birth photographer. Unlike you, she is fully aware that today is the day that will mark the homebirth of between 3 and 8 of her darling little angels. Now whilst the addition of 3-8 extra nits doesn't seem like much (and rightly so as you're still unlikely to feel anything), Mother Nit hasn't just been sitting around in her rocking chair knitting booties and complaining about stretchmarks, swollen ankles and the strains of being a single parent, oh no, she's kept herself busy this week by laying up to an additional 48 eggs, all up and down the block!

Day 8:   Your life still hasn't changed in any significant ways. Sure you might have the occasional urge to have a quick scratch, but it's nothing serious and you think nothing of it. But down on the microscopic scene things are progressing rapidly. The babies that were birthed just two days earlier have graduated from primary school and undergone their first moult whilst Mother Nit has busied herself laying up to an additional 64 eggs.

Useless Waste Of Money!!

Day 11:   Things haven't seemed to slow down in Locktown as the first high school graduation and second Moult takes place for the first generation of nits born on your scalp. But for you, the realisation is starting to emerge that you've been scratching your head a little more than usual and that occasionally at night, and particularly behind your ears, it's been itchy like all hell, but unless you happen upon a chance sighting you're more likely to just chalk it up to some dandruff.

Day 16:   Today marks a fairly significant moment in the War Of The Curls. Mother Nit who was once that trailblazing pioneer and explorer of new worlds has grown frail throughout the years (well, days..) and now lays quietly in her bed surrounded by her loved ones. Without any fanfare or commotion she quietly and very peacefully slips away from this world to enter into that great big hairball in the sky. Her first borns, filled with grief, shed their skin in a ceremonial manner for the final time and emerge as fulll grown Adult Lice (and then it starts getting all weird and Deliverance like as they start making out with their siblings). 

Wild Flower's Experiment; The Manhattan Project

Day 18:   The mobile phones of every midwife begins producing a cacophony of ringtones as all of the Female first generation natives of your head have finished their final Lamaze class and begin laying eggs. And this dear friends, is what they will continue to do every.single.day. until they die some 16 or so short days later. You, on the other hand, have become aware that something is up as you can't go more than a couple of hours without feeling the overwhelming need to scratch like a crazy man (or woman). A detailed exploration of your roots reveals the worst fears have come to fruition; you have nits. You explore the scalps of those in your home, they are also colonised. As the full implications of this begin to dawn on you and the realization of your Leprosy-esk status in society sinks in, you start scrambling to get your hands on something, anything that might do away with these vile invaders but soon you come crashing back down to reality with the revelation that the only product you know actually works on dreads needs to be imported from the UK! Salvation, you realise, is almost a month away! 

You walk aimlessly in the backstreets and lane ways.. you remove your infected clothing and don sackcloth and ashes.. you sit in the dust.. you weep!

Delacet: Salvation In A Bottle

Day 31:   It's been one month since the invasion and colonisation first began. The beachhead was formed, reinforcements arrived, supply lines were established and a highly sophisticated network of trenches now keeps the invaders mobile and protected. You are tired and weary. Your scalp is itchy, really itchy, always, constantly and unceasingly itchy! You find yourself randomly yelling insults at inanimate objects, but you tell yourself it's ok, because deep down you know it was really the bookshelf's fault, not yours. The various store bought potions and lotions may have worked on your children but they've failed dismally at stopping the flow of opposition on your mane. 

At that moment you feel an icy chill shoot down your spine because you crunched the numbers (yeah, I really did!) and realise that you could potentially have as many as 16 new nits born on you that day, another 24 currently undergoing their first moult, a further 40 on their second moult, a devastating 128 full grown adults set up homes, and a catastrophic grand total of 4,352 eggs that have been laid on you since the invasion first began!! You run to the calendar where the dark clouds of dread envelope you as you realise that you'll still be waiting another 18 days before the postman arrives with your cure. You slump into a deep depression and drag your tired feet back into the lounge room where you open the floodgates and let the bookshelf know what you really think of him!  

Day 33:   Your significant(ly more attractive) other is hunched over the laptop but in the flash of an eye stands bolt upright and exclaims that she's had a brain wave! She's in too much of an excited fluster to explain anything but instead disappears in a puff of smoke only to return an hour later with a bag of groceries which you assume are for dinner, but they're not for dinner.. and considering the bag only contained Apple Cider Vinegar, Coconut Olive and Cling Wrap you're in no way disappointed. She disappears into the bathroom and you follow. She lays out the plan and it rocks your socks off! It turns out that the active ingredient in the product your still waiting to arrive is basically Vinegar, and so by some fairly liberal application of Apple Cider Vinegar (which essentially strips the Louse of their ability to grip tightly to you) followed by Coconut Oil (which is apparently used in plenty of hair products these days but has the added benefit of suffocating your attackers!!) then wrapping your head in glad wrap for the evening (to hold it all in place as well as attract members of the opposite sex.. so hot..) you launch another offensive against the ever encroaching hoard!

Day 49:   Your initial blitz worked! And even though nothing can kill the eggs without also taking out your hair follicles as collateral damage, on the morning after your assault every moving thing atop your resplendent head was dead! In the days since you deployed your version of the Manhattan Project you have felt signs that you're on the verge of acceptance back into the broader community. The contamination warning signs and quarantine tape hasn't quite been removed from the front of your house but you've noticed birds have begun to perch in your backyard once more. Sure people still won't come near you, but it's a start. Now even though the eggs that were laid previous to the initial fallout have continued to hatch, none of them have reached maturity and thus are unable to reproduce, but it's then that you hear it! Your heart begins to race, your palms get sweaty, the knocks continue to echo down the hall as you race to the front door and there he stands! The postman, wearing a Hazmat suit and baring a package from the UK that's addressed to you! You grab it, race to the bathroom, and breath deeply; for it is there that you will make your stand! It is here you will deliver the final blow! 

Delacet had arrived. The war is over. You return to society. You are Nit free.

My final word to you today is this; and be honest now, just how many times did you catch yourself scratching your head while reading this post?

Afternoon On The Gunga..

Last week we were blessed enough to have a few friends from Australia breeze into town and spend sometime with us here in Varanasi. This just so happened to coincide with my entire family coming down sick with various illnesses which, of course, made for an extremely long and difficult week and meant that we spent most of our time running off to see Doctors and staying awake throughout the nights tending to our sick little ones.

Thankfully the day before they left my tribe was all feeling much better and so we were able to join them on one of the staples of visiting Varanasi; a boat ride on the Gunga.

The city is such a memorizing place from the water and there is something so special about the feeling of stepping outside of it and peering back upon it as you float down the river. We've been on the water at sunrise, sunset and night, in the hot season and the cold, and each time I find that it's such a different experience than the last with differing colours, water levels, Pujas and atmospheres along the shore line which means that even though it's hugely touristy, it's also amazing.

I won't say too much more, instead I'll post a few of my favourite photos from this most recent trip down the Gunga and let the images do the talking for me.

The Elephant Man (Not For The Faint Hearted)..

That quick pinprick pain on your foot. You know the one. When a small critter sinks his teeth/stinger/dagger right into you and for a split second the only thing in the world that matters is slapping the hell out of the affected area. Well I had that today, and after it happened my sweet Winnie Wild Flower said "Well, lets hope it doesn't get infected like last time." What she was referring to took place almost exactly 12 months ago when I woke up one morning and felt a slight pain on the corner of my lip.

I spoke to Oodbilav about it as he was a Triage Nurse before moving to India but he couldn't see anything wrong with it and so he sent me on my slightly less than merry way.

A day later the very corner of my lower left lip swollen and was painful to the touch.

A day later it was half of the left side of my bottom lip, it was hard as a rock and my 2nd back molar was giving off quite a bit of pain. I googled it and the verdict was pretty much unanimous; an abscess under my tooth. Now this is bad news regardless of what country you live in, but in Varanasi this news means having to see a dentist, and that is almost as bad as it gets.

We rang around and found the best dentist we could and went in to see them right away. Her office was clean and so was her equipment so that felt like a good start. I told her what the issue was and she took her scraper thing and poked around for a bit. But then it got all India. She took her little mirror, the one that's attached to the end of a little metal rod and turned it upside down so that she was holding the mirror in her hand with the metal rod sticking out from her fingers. Using this metal rod, she then gave a strong and decisive WHACK, right on the sore tooth. I gave off a shocked and slightly pained shout but by that point she was already taking off her gloves and walking away, totally satisfied with her work. She said "You need a skin doctor, not a dentist. If that was an abscess you would be crying on the floor right now, and you're not, so it can't be an abscess." 100 bucks says they don't teach you that in any Dental school in Australia! So off we went to find a skin doctor.

I'll skip past some boring bits like plenty of searching around and sitting in waiting rooms and go to when things began to pick up when we finally got in to see a really great skin doctor. She told me that what I had was an insect bite of some sort and most likely from a spider, and that it had turned into Cellulitis and thus she prescribed a ridiculous lot of tablets. It was a Friday afternoon and she told me to come back after the weekend if there wasn't any signs of improvements.

To be taken 2 or 3 times daily

Saturday morning the growth was so bad I could hardly speak.

Sunday morning turned out to be worse. I woke up early but found that I was unable to speak a word. The skin on the left side of my face had stretched as far as it could outwards and so had began to stretch the only other direction possible, inwards. I couldn't put the teeth on the left side of my face together as my cheek had swelled about an inch into my mouth in a giant painful bulge. On this morning for the first time you could actually see a small white headed pimple right at the spot where I first felt the pain and so I began to do what one does when they have a pimple, I squeezed it.

What came out is almost too distasteful for me to describe.. but I will, cause hey, that's the kinda guy I am! Wave after wave of thick, off white, semi solid puss oozed out from deep within my face with each squeeze. The process was intensely painful but with each squeeze I could feel the bulge inside my mouth lessening and the ability to open and close my mouth was improving and so I'd give myself a few moments to get psyched up to get through the pain and then would just keep on squeezing. On a couple of occasions the tiny hole became blocked and so I sterilized some tweezers and literally pushed them into the hole in my face and pulled out semi-solid masses of puss. After about 40 minutes I had filled up a small glass cup about a third of the way.. I offered to show it to Wild Flower but surprisingly she was not even slightly impressed with me.

Hellooo Ladies!

Oodbilav made a call and took my to see the Doctor again that morning as I was in too much pain to wait another day. She saw me sitting in the waiting room and called me straight in and I must have looked quite a sad sight as she didn't bother with any examinations but instead told me that she was going to have me admitted to the hospital immediately.

Going to hospital in Banaras is never good and in general I will avoid it at all costs, however today I really felt that I had run out of options. The hospital she wanted to sent me to was not a good one, in fact it has a terrible reputation and Oodbilav voiced this concern with the Doctor. She replied "in all Ponds there are good fish and bad fish. The hospital I am sending you to is filled with mostly very bad fish, however the specific fish you want to see is the best fish there is!" She had proved herself to be a very capable and trustworthy Doctor up to this point and so I took the gamble and trusted her.

Getting checked into the hospital was a typical Varanasi bureaucratic nightmare. A forty-something minute wait at the front counter to pay your first pointless "welcome" fee. Another long cue to pointlessly hand over your receipt at another counter in a different part of the hospital and pay another fee. Another long wait with the thousands of other sick patients on concrete benches in a cavernous underground room that apparently disdains natural sunlight in order to see our specific Doctor. Finally seeing the Doctor and being assessed by him at the same time as he assessed two other patients with horrible (and smelly) skin infections and then offending the Doctor by asking him to please use new gloves before he put his fingers into my mouth after he had just been poking an open wound on another man's leg. The list goes on.

Angelina Jolie Sold Me Her Lips

I was finally admitted to a private and quite decent (decent by Banaras standards of course) room with the help of Oodbilav who really was my hard working hero throughout all this. They brought in an IV drip with some cocktail of antibiotics and after a couple of failed (and painful) attempts managed to get it into a vain, and slowly things started settling down. Or so I thought.

I had fallen asleep around 11pm and at midnight the nurse came in, woke me up and asked what every single other person who had entered my room that day had asked; "Where is your family?" This question was fine, it was the second question that was really the kicker; "Where is your medicine?" I did my best to wake my mind up and managed to grumble out "huh?" She asked again. I naively responded through swollen lips "My family is sleeping at home, and aren't you the nurse? Aren't you suppose to bring me the medicine?" And here came my introduction to the Indian medical system!

You see, in Banaras when someone is sick or injured and is admitted to a hospital this turns out to be a whole family affair. And for good reason! You see, the sick person lays in bed while the family members do all the running around as Indian hospitals don't provide you with food, or water, or medicine, or medical tests! This is all to be done by your family members! And as I didn't have any family members with me and it was too dangerous and unthinkable to call Wild Flower and get her to wake up Little Feather and make the trip this late at night, I had to go for a walk, with the IV still attached to my arm out of the Hospital and up the street to the nearest store that sold medicines. I didn't get to sleep for another couple of hours.

The next day was pretty uneventful. The swelling seemed to have stopped and maybe even come down a little and so I watched a couple of movies on the computer and read for a bit. At one point the nurse forgot that she had turned on my IV and so about an hour after it had finished I went wandering through the halls looking for someone to take the tube out. At one point blood from my arm started flowing out and down into the tube so I squeezed the tube to prevent further flow. When I found the nurse and she came back to my room and took the tube out, I asked her if she would get me a new tube to which she rolled her eyes, said she would clean it, then walked to the corner of he room then held one end of the tube up in the air to let the blood splash out onto the floor in the corner. When Wild Flower and Little Feather visited I made them keep their shoes on and sit on my bed.

That day I made sure I had all my medicine in advance so as to avoid the post-midnight stroll into town to buy some and was settling in for a quiet evening. I ate some dinner (sweetly brought in earlier by my dear wife and daughter), watched a movie and curled up and fell asleep. But sure enough, jut after midnight, in walked a young student doctors who wanted to take some blood samples. His first question "Where is your family?" His second question "So who will take your blood to get tested?" Yep, at 12:30am I was told I would have to walk out onto the street, hop in an auto rickshaw, traveled to the next suburb (still with my IV in) and drop off my blood samples to get tested. Oh India!

The next day was Wednesday and it was a pretty drastic improvement. It was my third day of being routinely treated with IV antibiotics and by midday the swelling had come down to the point where if you didn't know me you might not have noticed any swelling at all. The little hole in the corner of my lip (from where the puss had made it's grand exit) had now opened up a little and if I pushed it from behind with my tongue the skin would open up just enough that you could actually see into a cavity inside my face! Very bizarre. They gave me an extensive list of medicines to continue using for the next couple of weeks and to my great joy discharged me sometime later that afternoon. Getting out of there and arriving home was a huge relief and thankfully within a couple of days all swelling was completely gone and I was the Elephant Man no longer. 

So tonight, as I'm sitting typing this up and looking at the little bite mark on my foot I'm rather thankful that I'm not sitting and thinking "hummm, so which hospital would I like to stay in this time!?"