poor, sick Ben

Poor Ben has had a terrible cold ever since we were in Chengdu, complete with runny nose, hacking cough, sore throat--all the terrible stuff that comes with a cold. He has had an awful time trying to sleep at night because his cough and congestion (and the accompanying inability to breathe) wake him up. He just hasn't been getting better, and in fact today, he was feeling worse. And his sinuses were hurting. And he was pretty sure he had developed a sinus infection. Poor Ben.

So, we decided to go to a Chinese pharmacy, in the hopes that we might be able to get our hands on some amoxycillin (I guess you don't necessarily need a prescription for that stuff here). Ben is more than ready to get this nasty stuff knocked out of his body.

We walked into the pharmacy, and the first woman we saw asked what was wrong. I told her Ben had a cold, and she directed us to the appropriate counter. The woman there asked what Ben's symptoms were, and she started pulling out boxes of medicine for each of the symptoms. I explained to her that Ben had been sick a long while, hoping she would understand it was serious (I wasn't sure how to say sinus infection). Her response (which I actually had to call Sam to have him help me understand) was that she thought Ben had too much heat/fire in his body, and if you have too much heat for a long time, it will develop into a serious cold, but it wouldn't be unusual for it to last so long. She then pulled out some more boxes of Chinese medicine.

Meanwhile, Ben was standing, looking longingly at the boxes of antibiotics, muttering under his breath, "They have amoxycillin. I just want some amoxycillin." Poor Ben.

We ended up leaving without the amoxycillin, but with a whole bag full of various remedies, including effervescent vitamin C tablets, licorice lozenges, and some kind of pill that I was supposed to take too, because the pharmacist thought I probably had too much heat, too. We also had one box that the pharmacist identified as "Western medicine." What kind, we didn't know.

Ben's many boxes of pills

I just got done giving Ben his first dose of everything: 7 pills, an effervescent glass of vitamin C solution, and a sachet packet of medicine meant to reduce his "heat." Ben was feeling pretty unhappy about walking away without an antibiotic . . . until he did a little research and found out that the unidentified Western medicine was an antibiotic after all.

So, we've got the Chinese herbal medicine, and we've got the Western antibiotics, too. Hopefully something in that mass of medicines will do the trick, and Ben will be back to his old self soon.