Visit to the shaman (1)

Portly shaman Mor Sawaeng

"Oh, that's shingles," my massage therapist, a middle-aged guy who hails from Esan, pronounced assertively. For months, he had been poking about my body as it lay on his bed, marvelling at how many spots show up.

Inevitably, he asks what they are. "Pimples," my partner calls from the corner of the room. He rarely looks up from his phone when we are with Mor Joe, as he is known, unless directly engaged in conversation.

Boyfriend Maiyuu has turned to collecting and trading household adornments such as crystal figurines, spectacular coloured vases and even dolls, which bring in a modest income but keep him busy. Most of the business is online, though occasionally he will venture into town to vie with hordes of fellow traders for the latest consumer item which has caught the public imagination (most recently: Cry Baby dolls).

Maiyuu takes me for a massage under Mor Joe, a specialist in tackling disorders (mine is office syndrome), in the Sathu Pradit area every two weeks.

It has been a regular outing of ours for several years. The office syndrome never gets any better, but the visits to Mor Joe do offer some temporary relief. Apart from that, it's fun.

Mor Joe has a constant stream of customers, who have no doubt heard about his healing powers, which in my case he achieves largely with a hot compress and a deep knowledge of bones (so he says) rather than the firm hands of a heavy therapeutic, or deep tissue massage.

"You must be living your second youth," Mor Joe jokes, marvelling that someone my age can still develop acne spots, and we laugh it off.

On this occasion, however, he was sure that the spread of red spots on my upper frame, back and front, was more serious. He referred to shingles (โรคงูสวัด or gnu sawat), which is triggered by an onset of the varicella-zoster virus, often leftover from a childhood chicken pox infection (โรคอีสุกอีใส).

This pesky virus lies dormant in our bodies if ever we have caught chicken pox as a child. I assume I did; I can't recall.

My partner sprang to his feet and rushed over for a look. "I didn't notice, and the farang never bothers to examine himself," Maiyuu said, referring to me, as he explained why the isolated red spots - hardly an angry, weeping sore or rash, which  would be more worrying, and is more typically associated with shingles - had gone undetected.

Mor Joe, sitting in his premises

This rash of activity, if I can call it that, broke over me as they inspected my front flank. 

I also flopped over on my front at their beckoning so they could inspect my back as well. No one bothered asking if I knew what was going on; this was a job for the adults.

I had heard the Thai words for shingles and chickenpox in my travels, but as panic filled the air I had to ask Maiyuu to look them up on his phone with the English translation. The English left me none the wiser.

Shingles? A colleague at work had complained of a skin rash recently which doctors initially attributed to shingles, but on later inspection diagnosed as the fruits of anaemia. 

As for chicken pox, presumably that has come and gone. Painful and itchy in their day, I am sure, but the spots which had broken out on my body since my last visit to Mor Joe rarely bothered me.

"I have someone who can cure these," Mor Joe averred, recommending we visit an Esan friend of his, Mor Sawaeng, opposite Vichaiyut Hospital in the Phaya Thai area. "He'll blow on them."

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