Birthday

I was with people I care about and love, and that was enough for my birthday. I did not need grand gifts or trips to exciting, exotic places. Just a little gathering of family and friends at a monastery in the mountains of central Taiwan was more than enough.

I did not want to let people know, and wanted to keep it very quiet. In fact, I had removed my birthday from my Facebook profile a month earlier so that people who not realise it's my birthday and start scribbling en masse on my wall. Even the fact that I was born 26 years ago had escaped mum (to be fair, she only remembers my birthday according to the lunar calendar, which is the same date as her birth mother and usually one or two weeks later...). But at breakfast at 8.30 in the morning (the time I was conceived born), I toasted her and thanked her for giving birth to me and raising me. She was embarrassed to have forgotten, and started to spread the word, making me the embarrassed one.

There was a cake, a huge chocolate cake that someone had coincidentally bought and brought to the monastery a day earlier to offer to the monk. But he brought it out and offered it to me instead, and lit three candles. Later he would quickly improvise and joke that the three candles represented the Triple Gem, he joked, referring to the Buddha, Dharma and Sanghathat all Buddhist seek refuge in. I received big hugs, and just before blowing out the candles made my wishes. Nothing grand or luxurious, nothing personal that I desired or wanted... just good health and happiness to all and for all, especially mum who was standing next to me. (I hope I haven't jinxed things by revealing this...)

I really didn't do anything special that day, and spend the day with mostly mum and brother. Later that evening was the real 'surprise', and it came soon after we sat down to eat Asian fondue and barbque at a restaurant.

Ever since I landed in Taiwan around two weeks ago, the skin on the back of my neck and on both my arms have become very irritated and itchy. If I scratch, then it becomes so red as if I had scalded myself with boiling water. The itch is really unbearable, and made even worse when I am around warmth or moisture. So sitting in front of a boiling pot of fondue and burning charcoal did not help, but instead aggrevate my itchiness.

It was so unbearable not scratching, even though I wanted to scratch more than anything else. I tried to simply stroke the irritated parts with my hands to soothe the itching, but that did not help. I tried to bend my neck sideways violently to see if it would stop the itching, but it did not... Never have I ever felt so uncomfortable, and my mood was so sour and dampened that I could not enjoy the food or company I had. It felt like my skin had millions of cuts, and that fiery ants were crawling and nibbling on the inside trying to escape. The severe itchiness and burning pain was so unberable that at times I felt I was going to pass out from dizziness. I tried everything, even to 'watch' the pain as meditation taught me, but it would not go away...

In the end, I was rushed to the emergency ward of the Puli Christian Hospital, even though I had resisted going to the hospital for fear that I was wasting valuable medical resources for something as trivial as a skin irritation. But I really had to go, because I felt myself losing control of my mood and mind from the constant itch and pain.

Within 10 minutes I was registered, attended to by a doctor who examined and diagnosed the problem, had a nurse inject something to calm the irritation, and received medication and salves to soothe the redness and bumpy, peeling skin. Apparently, I (may) have atopic dematitis, which is a reoccuring inflamatory skin disease, which though not contageous, makes the skin very itchy, flaky and red. Wintry and damp climate can cause my skin to flare up, as it did almost as soon as I arrived in Taiwan, and the level of air pollution in a big city like Taipei does not help at all. And apparently, a sudden change in temperature, such as the shift from -20C in Canada to 10C in Taiwan can also be the cause.

I left the hospital with the itching and irritation slowly, slowly fading. Of all days, on my birthday...