It is New Year’s day and we are in the basement of Chaoyang hospital. It looks like it could be a morgue. I am relieved there are other alive people around us as I wait for them to call my name. They wouldn’t call a dead person’s name, would they? I guess I wouldn’t know, not yet anyway.
I hear my Chinese name called from behind me. I turn and the attending technician has already started walking back to room four. When I enter the room, the MRI machine is exiting the patient before me. “Bu Dong, Bu Dong, Bu Dong”, the technician repeats as I lie flat and head gear is slid over my face. The machine slides me back into its belly and the MRI begins.
17 years ago on my birthday I had my only other MRI to help determine why I was having back pain (I wrote about it here https://vinceallio.com/posts/all-i-want-for-my-birthday-is-a-mri/). It didn’t help diagnose why and fortunately the pain largely went away on its own.
Turning 60 is a significant milestone. Hopefully not tombstone. In China, it is also the official retirement age for men. A couple of days after my retirement, Sabrina and I (with Amanda in tow) went to what I’ll call the retirement office to see how I could collect the equivalent of social security and medicare. We first went to the one that serves our neighborhood and after waiting for a bit, we received an explanation that included we needed to go to another office, the one that serves my former employer. So we drove there and people were flooding out for lunch. Luckily, we got to the counter minutes before it closed in order to be told my former company was now registered at an office on the other side of town. So, after lunch we headed there. Sabrina talking with the clerk while I played hide and seek with Amanda. Amanda only knows how to play the seek part of it and squeals whenever she finds me. In any case, the clerk told Sabrina the retirement age has changed and for me the new age is 60 and a half. Come back in June (for younger people it’s 61, 62, and so on).
On my birthday itself, Elisa finished her cat sitting duties and came over to watch the 49er game with me. After a game that reminded me of another 49er game on my birthday - a 1987 49-3 loss to the Giants - we had home made tacos for lunch. Tacos are a birthday tradition. We then hung out in the afternoon (read napped) and headed to a favorite German restaurant for dinner. The German restaurant recently relocated to the former site of a once famous brothel (technically also a restaurant). How did I know it was a brothel? Everyone knew. At least everyone I knew.
Since my elder kids have moved to Toronto and most of my friends have left Beijing, my birthday was pretty low key. I am grateful for the decoration Sabrina did, the time with Elisa, and seeing Amanda light up when she realized what was going on. Amanda loved the tacos and the ice cream cake. A true Allio.
I loved walking and talking with Elisa. Here’s us in our 500 year old neighborhood park on the walk home.
And the four of us later on the walk.
I took the MRI because I had a pretty severe dizzy spell. Just an inner ear thing, I thought. Wrth to double check. A blood test and two sonagrams showed nothing abnormal. The MRI? It showed a benign cyst and “normal” signs of aging. Supposedly, according to ChatGPT anyway, the cyst is nothing to worry about but may have caused the dizzy spell. The recommended treatment is following a healthy lifestyle until you die.