A few weeks ago, I visited the school infirmary because of a skin problem. Covered here and there with red spots, I had come out in a rash. After a quick check, the doc there recommended I go to the hospital for better advice and treatment.

At the hospital the doc said, at a glance, that my condition was so serious that I deserved hospitalisation. For some reason I did not want to be hospitalised. Therefore, the doc prescribed me some medication at my insistence before I came back to school.

The next day my condition deteriorated rapidly. The rash went up to my chest and neck. I was very much afraid that it would next be crawling up to my face. Should that happen, how could I face my sweetheart day in day out? In the end I decided to be hospitalised.

I am a boarder. My folks are back in Zhuxi. Choosing the treatment at the City Hospital would cause me a lot of inconvenience. In order for my folks to better care for me during my hospital stay, I asked leave and went back to my hometown in Zhuxi.

The day I went back to my hometown, Father, without delay, had me checked into a ward at the County Hospital. I was diagnosed as suffering from an allergic reaction, and the treatment started on the same day.

Treatment at the hospital was very complicated. First thing in the morning, I had to undergo phototherapy, which was intended to sterilise and disinfect the affected areas of my skin. Phototherapy was followed by a TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) bath, which lasted about 20 minutes. After the bath, injections were waiting for me. I had to get two shots a day. So swollen did my hands become eventually that the nurse had trouble finding a proper spot to jab the needle in. The phototherapy, the bath and the shots were not the end, though. After they were all applied, I had to rub some ointment on my body.

During my hospitalisation, I still managed to do some work. After I got the jabs every day, however, I started to feel drowsy. Worse still, I got tired very easily during the course of a day. On many a day I even went to sleep around 10 pm. As you know, back at school, we do not call it a day until 10.30 pm, and we do not fall asleep until after 11.

The entire treatment cost my family an arm and a leg. Financial loss aside, it wasted a lot of my precious time. In a sense every minute counts to me around this time, because I have been preparing for a critical exam called NMT, which is due to take place in early June 2022.

My allergen, according to the doctors, might have been soybeans or mould. I think I need to take time, despite the tight schedule, to work out more to get my immune system boosted.