Guest post from Yanmei today.
It's always good to have more friends!
My biggest concern of our around-the-world trip is our safety and health. Recently, David got a bump on his back. It has been about one week. He got this bump during our trip in Taiwan. The weather was humid and I felt the towel in our host 's house was not clean and had smell on it. David used the towel any way, then got a small bump originally but getting much bigger and sore in Beijing.
My big sister is a nurse. We went to see a doctor in my sisters's hospital. She found a good doctor for us. The doctor said it was an infected cyst. He prescribed an antibiotic cream to David and said it should be cured in 4-5 days, if not, he has to do a small surgery. The cream worked well, the swollen bump getting flat and he got a lot sticky liquid out of that area. However, it has been 5 days, he still has it. The bump comes and goes, back and forth, although he told me he feels much better. I started worry about his health and nutrition. This made me more nervous about our trip to Egypt.
We are going to Egypt in 2 weeks. I urged David search American government website about what vaccines should be taken. There are 2 are highly recommended: hepatitis A and typhoid. Then I asked my sister to help us to find a place to take the vaccines. She is so fast and found the place to take hepatitis A, but no typhoid vaccine she can find. I am still worried, then I called the local public disease control center to get information, no result then. I remembered an American friend told me the importance of taking vaccine to Egypt and her mum is a doctor in a hospital in China. Then I texted her to get information as well, even though she is in the US now. No reply, she might busy or did not get my text. What I can do then? I tried to contact another Facebook friend who went to Egypt before but Facebook is blocked in China and I cannot contact her. So frustrating!
Luckily, I contacted a Chinese friend named Esther about having a dinner together. Randomly, I found out she has been to Egypt. What a suprise! She told me 6 people were in the group and nobody taken any vaccines and all of them are fine. She told me to buy some Chinese herbal lotion to give local people as gift and to use them for ourselves to avoid mosquitoes. She also told me we can get bottled water there. She emphasized that it was very hot, she almost fainted inside the tomb.
After talking with her by phone, I felt so relieved. We are going to join a family party at her house, I will get more useful information from her.
It's so great to have friends! More friends, more information, more resources!
-Yanmei
[David: the cyst is almost completely healed. Yanmei's sister was wonderfully helpful to us. In terms of the vaccines there are no required vaccines for Egypt, but hepatitis A and typhoid are recommended by the CDC. However I take that with a grain of salt because the CDC recommends hepatitis A and typhoid for travelers to China. They even recommend the hepatitis A vaccine for visitors to Canada (along with a rabies vaccine). So I hope I don't sound too reckless when I say I'm not worried about not having the “recommended” vaccines. If we watch what we eat and drink we'll be fine.
We also have good travel insurance for both of us which covers medical expenses and even evacuation back to the US if necessary.]
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