Hi everyone. I’m back in Portland, but things aren’t going well. I’m calling in to the office this week to tell them I’m sick. I’ll write a short post today. A week ago, I thought life was good and nothing could go wrong. But I’ve discovered that life can hit you in unexpected places.
food poisoning
First, I got food poisoning in Thailand. I tried a lot of weird foods and got food poisoning. It was probably the grilled jellyfish. I got a little feverish and threw up on the way to the airport.
lost trip
At the airport, Cathay Pacific refused to issue our tickets to Hong Kong. We had missed part of the flight from Osaka to Tokyo earlier. They said our return tickets were invalid. The rest of our trip was with Air Canada. It was a mess.
I should have bought new tickets to Hong Kong and tried to resolve the matter with Air Canada. I’m sure it would have been fine. Mrs. RB40 flew home from Japan and had no problems. Air Canada does not have an office in Thailand and I was unable to contact them by phone. As a result, we missed our flight and had to book a new flight home.
Let me tell you, trying to book a flight at the last minute is no fun. The flight search engines kept showing me fake tickets. When I tried to buy something, they said the payment had not gone through. I think economy seats were sold out on all of the regular flights. The search engines showed these tickets, but they didn’t process them when I hit the buy button. I checked the airline’s website directly and saw that there were no economy seats left on those flights. It was very annoying.
Finally, I found a flight on Qantas for $1,500 per person. It was an expensive lesson. My mistake.
Insect bite?
At that moment, my immune system was weak from food poisoning and I was feeling stressed. Imagine what happened next.
MondayI thought I got stung on the forehead by a bug. It felt like a bee sting. My forehead felt tingly, itchy, and a little numb. I tried to ignore it.
TuesdayThe 30-hour journey home began Tuesday morning. RB40Jr and I flew to Sydney, then Los Angeles, then Portland. The “bite” seemed to get progressively worse. It blisters and grew. I thought it might have been a tick or flea. I’ve never had this type of reaction to a bug bite before.
WednesdayI went home and went straight to the urgent care. The doctor thought it might be shingles. I told him no. I had only had the shingles vaccine six months earlier. Plus, it wasn’t as itchy as chickenpox. They took a swab and started me on antiviral pills, just in case.
Unfortunately, they were right. The lab test came back positive for the varicella zoster virus. Welcome to old age, stupid. Oh! This is the same virus that causes chickenpox. Once you have chickenpox, the virus stays in your body and will come back as shingles when you get older.
Saturday:The shingles have spread to my left eyebrow and the bridge of my nose. My eyelids are swollen and I can barely keep my eyes open. (I look like I’ve had several rounds of Apollo Creed.) I went to the urgent care again and my eyes are fine, for now. That’s scary. If the shingles spreads to my eyeballs, it can cause vision loss. It can also cause hearing loss if it spreads to my ears. I would need to go to the ER if I have any vision or hearing problems.
That’s all for now. I have to stay home and hope the antiviral pills work soon. Too bad! Wish me luck… I hope to be back to normal by the end of next week. Stay healthy everyone.
Passive income is the key to early retirement. This year, Joe is investing in commercial real estate with CrowdStreet. They have several projects across the USA, so check them out!
Joe also highly recommends Personal Capital for do-it-yourself investors. It has many useful tools that will help you achieve financial independence.
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