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I was only 19 years old when this happened. I certainly didn't expect or ask for it to happen and was extremely surprised when it did.
I wanted to be away from the negative influences that had been the key to me becoming the person I was back then. I think my decision to leave must have come from a small part of me that was immune to the external influences I had allowed to bring down the good in me.
I remember going to bed happy that night. As a special education teacher, I was on Thanksgiving vacation. I was planning on going to San Diego to visit my family. My partner and I had laid around all week binge-watching everything we could on Netflix, and life was good.
In April 1996 I was deployed to Thailand to support this annual military joint exercise named “Cobra Gold.” If I would give a ‘guesstimate,’ I would say around 2,000 U.S. soldiers from all military branches were also deployed. Thailand was a beautiful place to live. The people were friendly, the food was delicious, and there was so much to explore. Unfortunately, the country is a public health nightmare. There is an incredible amount of disease and germs in Thailand. It was so bad, the military’s Public Health Department prescribed everyone Doxycycline as a preventative medicine. I am not totally sure about how I got the H. pylori germ. It is a toss-up between the ice that was in my glass of soda or the “sampler plate” that had ten different types of meat. I am not a gambling man, but I would probably put $100 on the sampler plate, from which I accidently ate frog, snake and dog meat. Let’s just say that dog meat tastes like a tough steak.
I started feeling the symptoms somewhere around the tail end of my deployment in June. I remembered asking my friend Pic, “Does my neck looks swollen to you?” to which he replied, “Hell yeah!” At first, I felt fatigued. The fatigue was so extreme that I drank Pepsi nearly all day, for the caffeine. This chronic fatigue lasted weeks, until I returned from Thailand, sometime in late June 1996.
I was able to get some free time away from home and went to visit one of my friends. When I arrived another friend of my friend was there also. They were smoking wax and asked if I wanted to smoke and so I took a hit. I’ve tried wax once before and experienced anxiety and really didn't care for it. After taking a hit, I sat back down and took a few sips from my beer. I started feeling hot and then my hearing started to close. I knew I was in trouble but didn't let anyone know. I knew my friends were talking but I couldn't hear them. I could see their mouths moving through my blurry vision which was getting worse with each second. All while keeping how I was feeling to myself because I didn't want to ruin their high.
Even now almost 15 years later, hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about my experience of going to the other side during surgery. I’m frustrated and I have been searching for answers.
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