Where Is Home?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: I’m writing this on Sunday, on a plane somewhere over India—we’ve left Thailand, and are headed for Dubai, with only the loosest of plans.
Where is home?
Yesterday, Lee’s mom asked him if Dubai had begun to feel like home to us. That made him curious, so he did some quick calculations.
Since we started traveling, we’ve spent a total of 17 days in Dubai. We’ve mostly treated it as a convenient stop-over—a place where it’s easy to pop in for a few nights, visit with friends, recuperate from more challenging destinations, or break up the jet lag. It’s a major travel hub with all the mod cons (plus hummus!), so it’s great if we’re trying to cross paths with friends or family coming from elsewhere in the world. And because it’s such a global city, it’s a fun place to celebrate pretty much any holiday, of any persuasion.
But does it feel like home? Not really.
Lee kept adding up where we’ve spent our time, and realized Thailand is the definite winner—we’ve spent about 300 nights in Thailand in the last seven years. No wonder we’re so comfortable there. It is practically home (which makes sense, given that our eldest actually lives there).
I was a little sad to leave this morning. Between the ankle, the Covid, and everything else, these past few months have been a bit of a health trauma, and when I look back on it all, Thailand was the right place to be.
A couple of weeks ago, I had an episode of a minor heart arrhythmia that I’ve had my whole life, and wound up in a Phuket ER, on a Saturday night. It was the most reassuring emergency I’ve ever had. When Lee pulled the car into the emergency bay, I was put into a wheelchair and wheeled straight in. Within a minute I was in a bed, surrounded by nurses, and hooked up to an EKG. The doctor came in (it was an all-female team—yay girl power!) and knew instantly what the problem was. They injected something called adenosine into a vein in the crook of my arm; it felt really bad for about two seconds, then the normal rhythm kicked back in, and I was fine.
The whole thing took maybe fifteen minutes. There were six or eight people caring for me. One nurse held my hand the whole time, and explained everything that was happening. Everyone patted me—my knee, my foot, my shoulder. I have truly never felt so cared for.
They kept me for observation for about an hour, during which time they truly observed—one nurse stayed with me, keeping an eye on my heart rate. Another popped her head in to say goodbye when her shift ended. Then when the hour was up, Lee took me back to the hotel, and that was that.
I had a similar (although not exactly the same—they had to shock my heart to get the rhythm back) incident in Latvia a few years back—that was a whole different ball game. Medically speaking, the care was every bit as competent, but no one held my hand. As a matter of fact, when I said I was anxious, the anesthetist’s response was to make a joke: “It’s okay—we’re giving you propofol. That’s what Michael Jackson had!”
I was not reassured.
I have no desire to live in Thailand indefinitely (it’s too hot and humid for me). After three straight months there, we’ve been getting antsy, knowing we couldn’t leave until we were PCR negative. There’s a reason we think of ourselves as nomads—we like to move. But we’ll always go back. Thailand owns a little piece of my heart.
Take care,
Lisa
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