“It’s not your pills,” Dr. Elvis said, handing my malaria pills back to me. His office was filled with flies, like everything else in India. But it was also the first place I’d been with air conditioning.
“But what else could it be?” I asked, disappointed. I was hoping so much that it was the pills, and not a psychotic break (early to mid twenties!) “I just don’t feel like myself,” I told him. “All I do is cry all the time, and feel scared, and wake up every hour panicking and whispering over my roommate’s bed that I need help.” (A staff member had finally forced me out of bed and insisted on taking me to see Elvis).
“What do you do at home?” Elvis asked.
“I’m a therapist.”
He slowly shook his head, for a very long time.
“I know,” I sighed. “I get it. I’m a therapist and I need a therapist.”
“Therapist is the worst job!” he said. “Therapist is hardest job! No wonder you go crazy!”
“But I haven’t even been thinking about therapy!”
“It doesn’t matter. I can see that it is in you. You took in all those other peoples’ problems and they have stayed in you. You have not let them come out. You have not been taking care of yourself to let them come out, and now they are coming out here in India, in depression and anxiety.”
I felt a bit defensive. I was pretty sure I HAD been taking care of myself, with Pizza Pros and dance parties and human pyramids and writing. But then again, the last two years are such a blur of crying clients and no-harm contracts and 12-hour work days that sometimes it’s hard to tell what was what.
“How much can a sponge hold?” Elvis asked.
“Uh,” I said. “Not that much?”
“That’s right,” he said. “It must come out.”
I nodded.
“You have to take better care of yourself!” he said. “You have to take time to go away and do what YOU want to do!”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why I came to India!”
“No!” he said. “You can’t do that in a foreign country! You have to be at home with the people you can talk to! You have to go sit at the mountains, or by the lake, and let it all out. Not in a foreign country with a different culture where you don’t know anybody!”
Touche.
He started writing out a prescription for anti-anxiety medicaion and a letter saying its his professional opinion that I return home immediatley, in case I decide to change my flight.
“I also think I have a parasite living in my foot,” I told him. “I feel it squirming around in there at night.”
But he just shoved the letter and prescription at me. “Quit being so sensitive,” he said.
Insightful. Wait, did you catch Malaria or are they the preventative kind of pills? You might want to stomp your foot really hard to make sure you get that parasite. ❤ Timmy.
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This had better be in another memoir. Amazingly written, I can hardly believe this is actually happening to you. It must be awful. Elvis is a wise man. Here we were thinking that's the perfect antidote to 2 years of insanity. I'm sorry you're feeling scared. We miss you Queen Julia!
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I think I like Elvis. I think some American's could really benefit from his kind of medicine.
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Ok, Elvis seems like a wise man, but I still think it's the malaria pills. Malarone is the shit (in a bad way)
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I’m convinced that if I ever went to India, some variation of this is EXACTLY what would happen to me.
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That’s because super interesting stuff happens to us and nobody else, right? 😉
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Hilarious! This reminds me of a time a friend visited me in Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year when NOTHING WAS OPEN and the only doctor was some 20-year old named DR. JO. DR. JO gave my friend a cocktail of drugs, not excluding penicillin, Oxycontin, etc…. none of which was helpful for his particular issue…but he remembers Hong Kong as a city of big swirly lights, bouncy, bouncy, happy, happy, joy, joy. Doctors in foreign countries are the worst.
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Haha. I ended up getting a prescription for some pills called Petrol (which turned up nothing in a Google search) that tasted just like bananas and made me feel amazing. They cost 25 cents. I picked them up at the shadiest drug store you can imagine. Think big bins filled with unlabeled pills. I later restocked on them without my prescription. Someday I will go back to India to stock up on these. Also got some killer sleeping pills that lasted me until a few months ago. Good times.
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Too funny….recently I told my India doctor that I thought I had a parasite too…he didn’t think so either. Funny stuff…I don’t travel to foreign countries… But would imagine I might have have the parasite problem there too.
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Yes. It took me months to stop feeling that “imaginary” parasite…
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You raise an interesting point, haerts are, IN FACT, going to hate, by definition. I mean, bus drivers are going to drive a bus and tennis players are going to play tennis and so on. So, thank you for pointing that out. Astute. As for The Fish, he is a case study in why surfers should just surf, not talk (or attempt comedy, music, etc.). Yes, he can surf well, but he\’s tone-deaf, taste-challenged and funny like a late-stage cancer.
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OH MY GOD I LOVE YOUR BLOG.
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Thanks!!
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Too funny….recently I told my India doctor that I thought I had a parasite too…he didn’t think so either. Funny stuff…I don’t travel to foreign countries… But would imagine I might have have the parasite problem there too.
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“No!” he said. “You can’t do that in a foreign country! You have to be at home with the people you can talk to! You have to go sit at the mountains, or by the lake, and let it all out. Not in a foreign country with a different culture where you don’t know anybody!”
Oof… for a girl who experiences major life-changing breakdowns in China at 21, that hits close to home! But, great life/learning experiences, everything worked out for the best, all that jazz. Still. Insightful stuff. Sounds like an amazing experience!
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Ah yes, breakdowns in foreign countries- good times.
If you experienced a meltdown in China, you need to go read the memoir “Undress me in the Temple of Heaven”- about a very similar situation It is amazing. It also made me feel slightly less crazy.
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Thanks for the suggestion!
Keep being awesome 🙂
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Dude I never would have guessed therapist = sponge. I wonder if it goes the other way, i.e. try just therapising happy people and see if you can absorb the glow.
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What a trip!
🙂
Enjoying your blog – thanks!
Emma.
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Thanks for finally talking about >An Indian Doctor named Elvis Teaches me the Importance of
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