Can anyone tell me who is actually winning the Syrian Civil War these days? That thing was in an unresolved state when I first went over to Beijing, then while I was there the second Geneva talks led to only limited improvements. Now I'm going back with it seeming no closer to an end. Depresses me. 
The sadness of it.
Nobody is winning, everyone is losing.
The Syrian Civil War remains unresolved and won't be over for many months if not years. The Assad regime is still in control and people are dying there. It's a total mess and God Bless them that some miracle will happen.
For LL it means Dr Salameh can't do surgery there for 10k Euros. Don't think it matters now that we know that there are other Doctors who do external for the same price range.
I've arrived back in Beijing and I'm at the Guangji hospital. During my absence the leaves have returned to the trees. Our other foreign patients are getting about with walking frames and Dr Zhao has pushed the bumps out of my upper shins and retightened the frame attachments. That was a torture and right after I was too afraid to roll over or bend my right knee. Then I met a sixteen year old boy from Ningxia province who can't walk and whose grandmother is thin lady pretty obviously from a peasant/farmer background and who is the carer for him because his parents split up and went away to do their own things. Thus I wrote a memo to myself to man the f**k up and not display my daily own adversities as anything that should be thought of as big.
Yesterday I've stopped lengthening and in this morning had an xray to determine the extent of what that has been. This afternoon the doc will schedule me for the blessed date when these contraptions come of my legs.
My walking frame did not make it with me all the way. It missed the flight and will be available for pickup from the airport tomorrow.
An interesting development is that they have even more foreign patients, at least two, who are at a better provisioned hospital where it costs more to stay. Maybe I won't even get to meet them, but the two other patients here did.
It's a great time of year here and good to have left the onset of Autumn where I was.
Years ago when the protests in Syria turned into a war I thought it wouldn't be long till another dictator fell and that would be a good expression of people power. But neither has that happened nor has it looked likely to come to a voluntary end while year bleeds over to year. Now I just want someone, anyone, to roll over the other side decisively and have an end to it all.
To Medium and any others who have been to Dr Xia's Institute in Beijing, there is a man I refer to as Mr Jing who does the driving when a patient has to leave the hospital. As you can imagine, I've spent a lot of time with him on the way to medical attention outside the hospital. He formerly worked at the hospital but now he is retired and the nurses and maids all know him very well because of a long time that they previously spent working with him.
I expected Mr Jing to be at the airport to pick me up yesterday but it transpires he is in Szechuan so I didn't get to give him the gift I had for him. He has a spry and upbeat nature and he also sneaks a cigarette now and then.
I just wanted to ask if any of y'all remember him or have any nice stories about him. I hope that he's feeling a boost out of his spring holiday and I hope that I get to see him again before I leave.
There's a chapter in Fear and Lengthening about going shopping with him:
http://www.limblengtheningforum.com/index.php?topic=84.msg6906#msg6906
I remember keeping a blanket with the Air China logo on it from my flight to Beijing the whole time I was there for my nail removal. When we went back to the airport I held up the blanket as a way of communicating to him which terminal we should go to for my return flight to America. 
Limb lengthening patients here travel in wheelchairs which hold the legs straight out ahead. Today I changed to a more normal sort of wheelchair where the feet rest on horizontal paddles with the lower leg vertical. I was inspired to go twice there and back to the Tesco supermarket which is half a kilometer away.
Two months ago when I left for home every patient was from Szechuan province, and now everyone is from Ningxia. Those regions are quite far from here which underlines the national reputation for expertise that this place has in lower limb deformity correction.
There is a significant expansion here which has not been comprehended by me before today. When I left in February they were close to making a elevator operational to get to the first floor. Today I travelled in that lift for the first time and up there I discovered new ward and rooms practically ready for occupation above the length of both wards here and the offices linking the two. Now this is not to say that lower limb deformity correction will double here, as I suspect they will be used for the other operations of the venue which include treating conditions unrelated to lower limb surgery.
I've now being formally directed by the doc to quit lengthening, having passed the limit of 8cm which was originally agreed to. Mission Accomplished 
He can have his Sidchrome spanner back. Next I await to be told of the scheduled date for the removal of these frames which I expect to be 14-21 days from now. And the x-ray confirmed my extended legs are of precisely equal lengths, which is another relief.
Here is a depiction of the gap in the frame resulting from lengthening with one of the common model Nokia phones shown for scale. This was taken only a couple of days before stopping.
Its been two weeks since I stopped lengthening which gives a further week to the time that these leg frames come off. Then I will be taken to the other hospital I have heard to be about 40 minutes away. There's no internet for patients there.
This morning I took such a long time to go from my bed to the bathroom and the lesson is that inactivity is not so good for healing as it has brought upon weakening at the very top of the shin just below the knees. It was the feeling of being the most crippled since the nine prelengthening days prior to my first operation. I am back to grabbing at these frames to move my legs from step to step which is another way of saying that my legs feel too heavy to lift with their own power. I've addressed this setback by purloining a roller chair with a higher seat.
Extra height is more difficult to manage.
just hang in there warrior))!!
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