Sickness

I don’t know about other parents but I’ve never gotten used to my kids being sick. It’s something which always causes fear and tension in me. Lots of people told me many things before I had kids, as I’ve said before, but no one really talked about the sickness. If they did it was usually in a “you don’t know what you’re in for” kind of way. It was always, something along the lines of “hope you’re ready to clean up another person’s barf, har har”. No one really mentioned the arse puckering terror of seeing your child’s temperature rocket to 40 degrees celcius. Incidentally if it stays at that temperature for too long it can cause neurological damage. A fun fact I picked up now I’m a parent with access to the internet. 

Whenever my kids get sick my mind will generally go plunging down the anxiety inducing worst case scenario thought track, like a Mack truck with broken brakes plunging into a ravine, there’s little I can do to stop it. The internet only makes things worse. We’ve all Googled symptoms of an illness we’ve had, and we’ve all been terrified to find we have Cancer, Ebola, sudden terminal onset low libido, menopause or just DEATH; and not excema like we thought it might be. 

I TOLD YOU IT WASN'T MAN FLU!!

We all do it, it seems to be a human trait, how many of you watched Still Alice recently then went and told all your friends you for sure had Alzheimer’s? When my daughter recently came down with something it was the weekend, the doctor’s office was closed and we didn’t want to fork out several thousand dollars for an on call doctor. So I consulted The Oracle of all things, Dr. Google. This was, as it always is, a mistake. My daughter had a fever, pink cheeks, a body rash and a cough. Go ahead and Google that. I had a choice of 25 different illnesses to choose from on WebMD, as though it was a sickness combo menu. This was provided I ignored the other results saying it could be 1 of over 100 things, I was after all trying to narrow it down a bit. Of those 25 things the scariest were meningitis, MRSA, and Rotavirus, all of which can be extremely dangerous or potentially fatal. Fortunately I figured it probably wasn’t any of those things, and was more likely Scarlet Fever which was also a choice on the sickness menu. Turns out Scarlet Fever isn’t just something which happened in the 1800s, there’s been a resurgence recently. Another fun fact I recently found out, it’s estimated that about 60% of Staph A strains causing Scarlet Fever here in HK are drug resistant to a particular kind of antibiotic, though fortunately there are alternatives which are effective.

My wife and I recently had a casual discussion about our family’s general health over the past 5 years. We realised that each one of us has been in hospital in that time. Sher wins with the most visits; 3 for babies and 2 for health related surgeries. Carys has 1 surgery to her name, an adenoidectomy which has helped her health somewhat. Benny has been admitted once for a mystery viral illness; he was hooked up to an IV, given fever meds, and antibiotics, after a few days he was released. I’ve been admitted to hospital with a mystery respiratory illness which affected my ability to breathe, caused a constant fever and general lethargicness. I had 3 different types of antibiotics, was hospitalised for a week, and it still didn’t go away. We’re not sure why it did eventually go, but I think it’s because I had osteopathy which helped open up my chest, literally because my lung had partially collapsed with the bacterial infection sitting in the collapsed part. Sher was NOT happy about that one. 

So between the 4 of us, we’ve had 7 hospitalisations over 5 years. This is both a testament to the availability of health care here in HK (THANKS Obama...no wait), and a testament to just how sick we’ve been. We can’t even begin to count the number of times we’ve been to the doctor. Carys has quite frequent illnesses, and we think it’s largely due to the pollution here. It’s almost always a respiratory illness. She’s had a postnasal drip since...forever so she’s pretty full of phlegm. From the age of 2 she’s had weekly, if not daily doses of Piriton or Aleve, both medications to stop anti-histamine responses. She seems to be quite sensitive to the air, no joke, she tells us the air is bothering her. When the pollution is high it bothers her nose so much that she’ll be in tears about it. She tells us her nose bugs her and will rub so vigorously at it that she causes a nose bleed. Some mornings we walk into her room and her bed is like the scene of a brutal murder, there’s blood smeared everywhere. Some nights she’ll wake us crying because her nose is so itchy she can’t sleep. That’s with air filters going all the time. We don’t think it’s allergies, it’s year round and when we travel overseas we haven’t had to medicate her. I’m deeply worried about the effects of frequently medicating her will have on her long term health. Similarly, I’m worried Benny will have the same issues. 

A while ago we stopped asking why we were all getting sick. The answers were pretty clear to us; first and foremost for Sher and I it was probably stress about almost everything including but not limited to, money, work, sickness, and money. Next it’s because we live in what one of our doctors called a petri dish. Discovery Bay is a bit of a closed system in some ways. Kids generally don’t leave the island for any reason, all their friends are here, they live here, many go to school here. We can shop here, see the doctor, dentist, go to the gym, swim, eat out, all within a 10-20 minute walk of our homes or a 5 minute bus ride. Once an illness gets into the system it does the rounds, hitting many, many people. It’s difficult to avoid these illnesses because you’re in contact with the same people, the same objects, every single day. This is doubly true for our kids who have a small number of play areas to use here; once one kid smears his boggers over the climbing frame dozens of kids will come into contact with it in a short space of time. Not all parents are vigilant about their child’s health, outsourcing this responsibility to their helper either by choice or necessity (the work culture in HK is insane and toxic in itself, with people expected to stay in their offices until 8pm or usually later, as well as working weekends. It’s just an accepted part of living and working here.). As a result you have kids whose faces are caked in snot running around outside, hacking their wee lungs up, sneezing on every surface including your face and generally spreading whatever nasty bug they have to others.

A final reason we figure we’re all sick frequently, and it’s the one that bothers us the most, is the pollution. It’s been clearly proven that high levels of pollution have been linked with increases in respiratory illness among other illnesses. Here in HK the levels of pollution are high on an almost daily basis, though the government uses standards and benchmarks which are decades out of date which results in their measurements showing pollution levels to be low or moderate. If they used the updated standards we’d see the levels are hundreds of times higher, and thus hundreds of times more toxic. In my lifetime, Hong Kong has gone from a highly desirable location to live and work, to a hardship posting requiring added incentives to get people over here. Despite this the government has no interest in changing things. 

An average to bad day in HK, courtesy of:
http://www.strippedpixel.com/hong-kong-air-pollution/

So, the question for us became how can we stop the sickness. The answer we came up with was simply to leave HK. If it is the pollution, the closed system we live in and the stress linked to living here then it’s time to get the hell out. We can’t in good conscience stay here if it’s costing us our most valuable asset, our health and the health of our kids. Personally, I’m fucking tired of living in fear of my kids coming down with some illness AGAIN, because that means another trip to the doctor, more drugs, possibly another hospital visit. I’m just tired. And I’m angry, I mean thoroughly pissed off like I want to kick the living crap out of someone because the place I live may be causing my family to become ill. I’m angry that the government doesn’t seem to be living up to it’s responsibilities of safe guarding people and tackling the source of so much illness, choosing instead to treat the symptoms. The health care here is great, but I’m tired of having to rely on it on a near monthly basis. I’m also scared that one day the sickness one my family members has will be one of the terrifying Google results. 

At the end of the day, sickness is going to be a part of our lives no matter what. Where you have sick kids, usually you get sick adults too. Kids need to build their immunity so I won’t stop ours from playing in the dirt or socialising with other kids. However, we have the choice to live in a place which supports my family’s overall wellness. It’s a luxury many others don’t have. I reached the point where I couldn’t make up excuses for living here anymore. There are many good reasons to live in Hong Kong, but they aren’t good enough for us anymore. The pros no longer outweigh the cons. We have the luxury of choosing to live somewhere else for the wellbeing of our family and while there are no guarantees being in a new country will be better for us, we’re pretty sure it will do. So we’ve made that choice and are leaving. Sickness can kiss my sweet ass as I walk out the door.