Sunday, January 10, 2016

Success, of sorts, in Hong Kong



Back from January trip 2 of 3 in Hong Kong, the second day trip in a row. It’s been an exhausting weekend because I followed up Hong Kong with a trip to the glasses market but I did get stuff done. Long overdue stuff, plus a good burger. And the good burger accompanied a root beer, something I haven’t been able to find in Guangzhou for many months. You don’t realize how much you like something until it goes away.

My two coups in Hong Kong were finally seeing the replica Noah’s Ark that’s there and getting a diagnosis of my shoulder.

The ark is something Leila told me was there; I never would have come across it. It’s on one of the other islands, a 25-minute ferry ride away. You can take a taxi, too, and the ark is right under the bridge to the island that you’d cross in the taxi.

It’s life-size, which is what is cool about it. It’s kind of in a little park, but is only becoming a tourist attraction now. (The ark doubles as a hotel.) I finally made it over there and enjoyed it, but didn’t stay long.
 
There’s a nice little garden, but I couldn’t figure out where to stand to get the whole thing in the picture.  Inside, it’s done up as an exhibit (complete with some live animals, mostly reptiles, and some models of animals in stables like you figure would have been on the ark. There are also exhibits with fossils and prehistoric wood. There’s also some sort of a film but I missed it.

Since it’s new to the tourist world, they didn’t have T-shirts, postcards, magnets or anything like that. I mean, they had stuff for sale, but it didn’t say “Noah’s Ark” on it or anything like that. They just had stuff like tea cups with animals on them.

But I was glad I made it there, just as I was glad to FINALLY get to a real shoulder doctor. And it was so simple, I almost cried – he had me do a few motions and said, yep, this is what it is, then he went to the MRI film and verified it.

Basically, my tendon has popped off where it’s supposed to be, and although I can do most things all right, those things that I can’t – like putting on a bra – bring me to tears.
 
The bad thing is, I don’t know where to go from here. The surgery is a one-hour surgery but I have to pay up front and file later. The price in Hong Kong is outrageous -- $21k, and that is for the “ward room,” not the private. It’s double the price I was given for possible hip surgery.

So we’ll see. Right now, I am just glad to have a name behind the pain. Specifically, the names are “torn rotator cuff” and “torn bicep.”

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