We maxed out our thirty days of temporary housing today, so had to check out of the Traders hotel and actually switch over to our new rental house, which we had the keys too since Friday, August 1, the day I had to be admitted to the hospital. Our original plan had been to actually move in the weekend of 2-3 August, but my illness led us to go ahead and stay in the hotel for our full time period for a number of reasons: close to the hospital, close to food, easy upkeep. But all good things must come to an end, and frankly, staying in a hotel room, even one as nice as the Traders, does pale after a number of days.

Over the weekend, it wasn't such a sure thing. My sore throat had returned with a vengeance on Saturday and I had to go see the ENT specialist again on Monday, who did a blood test and found that my white blood cell count had increased. That, and the pus he believed he could see in the back of my throat, led him to believe that the viral tonsillitis had become bacterial, and he proceeded to throw the works at it: antibiotics, an anti-fungal throat spray, and more gargling.

On Wednesday morning, while still sore, it did seem to be improving, so we went ahead with the plan and checked out of the hotel. I had a morning follow-up appointment with the cardiologist and got some great news: he did a new echo sonogram which showed that all the walls of my heart were moving and the systylic function was back to 60% (it had been at 45% on Aug 1). This is very good, as both the cardiologist and I were expecting to see scar tissue (which shows up as white on a sonogram). Instead, the walls of the heart that had not been moving on 1 Aug (evidence that that part of the muscle wasn't receiving blood) were now moving freely again. The cardiologist thinks that they heart had a "shock" now, rather than a full attack, although the shock could have been the same thing as an attack if I hadn't gone through the thrombylitic treatment. Coupled with the improvement on the throat and I finally feel like I'm improving.

Afterwards, we had to go by a grocery store so that there would be some food in the house, which took longer than we expected. It's always one of my favorite things to go into a grocery store in a foreign country. There's something fascinating and science fictional about picking up a meticulously branded food item and have no clue as to what it actually is. The market, on Jalan Ampang, catered a bit to the expat community, so some things were familiar, although expats in Malaysia tend to come from the U.K. or Australia, so even some of those items were still strange.

That was enough for my strength for the day, so we headed to the house where I took it easy the rest of the afternoon.

For dinner, we popped open a bottle of wine and (barely) managed to make our most common dish, pasta with broccoli and tomatoes. It wasn't quite the same (we had forgotten the salt and pepper, for one thing), but it was sure comforting after the last couple of weeks. And it feels good to finally be in our new home.