Information (Bali)

Getting information when you're in Bali can be a challenge, and getting information when you are thousands of miles away is enough to make you tear your hair out. It is bad enough when I am trying to find out if a silversmith made the specified changes in an order. Did he add the small pearls to the amazonite necklaces? Did he correct the length of the heart charm bracelets? Did he properly close all the jump rings? These communications inefficiencies have probably cost me thousands of dollars over the years, but they are nothing next to trying to get information about 'Tut's prognosis. (See my previous posting, Warmth).

Ketut was in Denpasar when I called him yesterday, as he needs to be near the hospital where medical workers from Singapore are administering therapy. He does not have to stay at the hospital. He is sharing a room in Denpasar with another man who is undergoing cancer therapy from the Singaporean team. I ask him if he is getting radiation treatments following the operation he had for lung cancer in Singapore, and he keeps talking about "massage". But I don't think he really means massage, I think that is just the closest English word he can approximate, massage being seen as such a healing treatment in Bali.

He says he has a letter from his Chinese-speaking doctor that contains a code indicating information about his illness. But he says the code is unreadable and probably would mean nothing to medical professionals I could show it to in the United States. He does not understand why I keep asking for specifics when he feels he has clearly told me he had lung cancer, had an operation and is now undergoing therapy. He tells me he will be completely cured in six months. "They 100% guarantee it," he says. They guarantee a complete cure for lung cancer?

When my friend Lisa saw Ketut a month ago in Bali, she said he looked much thinner and appeared depressed. Her report put me in despair. She met Ketut when we visited her at her husband's family compound a couple years ago when they were in Batuan on vacation. She knows what he looked like before the illness, and she knows his normal joking personality.

'Tut keeps telling me it is raining, and he is cold, even though he has the coat. I am sending some waterproof boots with my friend Aileen who is going to Bali in a couple weeks. What else can I do?