…in which he sees the doctor.

If you have a proper noun that ends in ‘s’ because it is normally a plural noun and you need to make it possessive, does it end with the apostrophe or the ‘s’? It’s a good thing that I’m an English teacher, right? I am as much an English teacher as Michael Jordan was a baseball player. We’re only talking about the minor leagues.

Bagels and I are both doing fairly well. I’ve spent a good chunk of the past twenty-four hours just trying to tire her out. She sleeps part of the day when I’m gone and she can be restless at night after I’ve gone to bed. I take her for long walks and I play with her in the courtyard in front of our apartment. It has a metal gate I can close so she doesn’t run into the street and water faucet for when she gets thirsty. She’s been a little too thirsty today. She went in the house twice in a span of thirty minutes. She doesn’t normally do that. I think her body went off kilter when I gave her a new chew snack last night. It was a composite, apparently composed of something dogs like very much. But it wasn’t nearly hard enough and once she got her back teeth around it she crushed it into its red fleck components and licked them up. The bone-shaped snack was large; it was like an extra meal for her. Playing all day seems to have worked, she’s asleep right now.

I’ve been a little under the weather. I’ve had a rough chest cough for about two weeks. Laura tells me both she and Sarah had it on and off for the first six months. She thinks it’s the air pollution. I’d believe it; it’s a rare day when you can’t see the air hanging about. It wasn’t like this back in ShiLin, my part of Taipei. It makes me think about other areas of the island. I could get away from this smog and this cough if I had a job on the east coast. Between the small population and oceans air currents, they just don’t have a problem with air pollution. But I’ve gotten my first paycheck here and it is pretty healthy. Next month’s will be quite a bit bigger still. Also, I’ve made some friends in the town here. I’m taking calligraphy lessons from one father and another friend just had a baby.

My cough has gotten a little better, but not before it got worse. I woke up on Thursday feeling awful. All my muscles ached, my head was congested and I didn’t want to get out of bed. I couldn’t expect to get better just lying in bed so I went in to school at the normal time. I made it through the morning session and Laura escorted me to the doctor just before lunch. The visit was easy. They took some quick information and then I saw the doctor. He spoke fairly good English and I told him what was wrong. A look here, a listen there, and a shot of penicillin and I was ready to check out. I received three days worth of pills (15 pills/day) and the whole visit cost me 350 NT (just over $10) and less than twenty minutes. If that seems like a lot of pills, don’t worry, all but one (the antibiotic) are over-the-counter strength. I didn’t receive my government health card until the next day, so that first visit came out of pocket. I’m still amazed at how cheap and easy it was.

I do have to go back tomorrow though. That’s one quirk in their system here. Because it’s nationalized healthcare and because the doctor get money every time he sees me, he’ll only give me three days worth of pills each visit. Three days of antibiotics is not a full course. Still, I’m glad to put up with that minor hassle considering how much better I’ve felt yesterday and today.

Thursday was the hardest day in this short ordeal. I felt really lousy but I had classes until 8:30 that night. Worse still, the evening classes were in ChuSan which is twenty some minutes away. I tried to get someone else to take them but no luck. I just had to buck up. And I did. On my scooter ride home I couldn’t help but feel satisfied that I had made it through the day.