Dear Grandchildren,
This week's note is a little lighter than last week's. That is good. Right?
Our main bathroom has four levels. Nifty, I would say. Of course, the door to level one leads from the hallway to the sink and washing machine, complete with cabinets. Level two is a step up to the toilet and the entry into the shower. Then a person steps over a high barrier into the shower, and the shower floor is on yet another level, just above the first level. Which means that a person has to step way down into the shower. That is level three. Inside the shower one can stand on an elevated spot to get out of accumulated water (I suppose) or can sit on it while the water rains down one’s back. Level four. You see? We don’t need a multi-level apartment with a cool sunken living room and a classy stairway leading up to the bedrooms. All of that stuff resides in one room, the main bathroom. Sorry, the small bathroom is just that. Small. No extra levels. A person can use that one just to feel normal.
We saw two movies this week. We were in one of the small malls a few days ago and I spotted a movie that I wanted to see. So we took note of the starting times and the next day showed up at the theater. But the movie had left. It was not on the marquee. "What is going on?" I asked myself. We had to make a decision. Do we just go back to the apartment and call this a defeat? Or do we attend some sort of movie? We decided not to retreat to our apartment. We were more than an hour early for the second movie of choice. So we went next door to KFC, ordered some chicken burgers (mine had a strange sauce on it and tasted a bit gross), ate some dried fries, hung out for another twenty minutes, and then went to the movie that we had chosen. It wasn’t bad. We made it home in good time. The next morning I googled a set of movie theaters in a distant suburb and I found the movie I wanted to see. It was playing at 3 p.m. So we ate a hurried lunch, rushed out the door, stopped a hundred yards away while I ran back for my phone and bus pass, then rushed to the bus stop, went one stop, got off at the Metro and rode the train to the mall where the movie was playing. Grandma and I each stood in a long line for tickets (there were bunches of families there for some children’s movies). She reached a clerk first. We were ten minutes late. The young woman did not want to sell us tickets even though only fifteen seats out of sixty had been bought in the whole theater. But Grandma insisted. We reached the interior of the theater just as the movie started. We made it. Movie number two. Happy. It will probably be a good long while before we go to another.
Speaking of fries, the French fried kind of fries (we were just talking about that, weren’t we?), almost every dish that a person orders in a sidewalk café around here serves fries as part of the meal. Chicken, beef, salads, whatever. All come with fries. As a result, we have eaten a lot of fries since arriving here. Fries with shishkebabs, fries with wraps, fries with burgers, fries with ... You get the drift. And so it will go. I hope that the "thirty-pound mission" does not kick in with us. You know, the condition of bringing home an extra thirty pounds that everyone can gawk at.
Things are about to become interesting around here. For my voice, that is. I have been thinking that the only doctor in the country who could help me is in another city. I found her name and contact information on line before we came. But I decided to look around on the internet for someone local who could give me the needed shot for my voice. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an email to a doctor who had co-published a paper in an Iranian medical journal on my condition. No response. Then, a few days ago, after more than an hour's hunt, I found a qualified MD who seemed to be prominent in a medical school. I called the hospital where he was supposed to be working. The answer was, "No Doctor _____! No!" Well, that was that. (I wondered if he had been fired for incompetence.) So I went back to the internet. Finally I found the name of an MD whose office is less than 500 yards from our apartment. I went to his office and knocked on the door. His non-English speaking receptionist answered. By hook and by crook, I made it known that I wanted an appointment with the doctor. She set me up for Friday afternoon. When I went, she greeted me as if she expected me. That was a good sign. I waited for a few minutes, giving her my telephone number by repeating the digits in Turkish. That was a good sign to me. She then called my mobile phone just to be sure that I had repeated the numbers correctly and she had understood them correctly. Amazingly, my phone rang. I next stepped into the doctor's office. He seemed competent enough, a big key for me. We conversed in English while I explained my situation and he read my medical files that I had brought from the UofU Medical Center. Now I am set up to receive a botox shot in my throat on Tuesday at a university hospital south of town. The doctor will be there as will one of his neurological colleagues. I don't know whether the shot will work. I hope that it does, of course. If it does, then I am in business for the rest of our stay. If it doesn't, you may hear me merely whispering the rest of my life. All of this just adds spice to our lives here. It doesn't get any better than this.
I love you and pray for you.
Grandpa Brown
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