Purple Tern, according to its own self-appointed mission, is supposed to document the full-time experiment of this first post-work year, as we see how far we can get with a finite amount of all the things that are needed for a big OE: money, strength, health, and the tenacity and determination required to subdue all the forces in the world that conspire to stop you moving.

It's a live experiment, and the documentation exercise doesn't work without ruthless honesty.


Until this month, it had been a remarkably successful year. Our MM2H visa was approved. We had a great time travelling in Sarawak and Thailand. I plucked up the courage to start my anti-cancer drug, and have not dropped dead from a blood clot (yet). I learnt to cope with the side-effects. And the side-effects of the side-effects... We enjoyed our stopover in Kazakhstan. We had a fantastic time visiting family and friends in the UK. Our 10-week odyssey from London to Baku is up there with the best experiences of my life. And we easily found a really great place to live in Kuching.


But in what I now think of as Black September, I struggle to be cheerful.

The first challenge is the "snag" I referred to at the end of August.

The worm was in the apple then, and it hasn't gone away. The name of the worm? Insurance...

When you're diagnosed with cancer, many, many thoughts swarm through your head. Why me? Will I die soon? Will my insurance cover the treatment? Will this mess up our chances of staying on in Malaysia?

Over time, these questions resolve themselves. Why not me, after all...? No, there's a good chance of surviving this type of cancer, said the doctors, if it's detected and fixed at an early stage -- take the drug, live reasonably carefully, and there's every possibility you'll be OK. Yes, the insurance will cover the treatment (albeit not without some fits and starts and alarms and reversals). And no, this doesn't stop you getting a long-term visa (because the authorities are really only interested in communicable diseases).

I was really lucky, I ended up thinking, to have had such a small, easily fixable, relatively consequence-free cancer.

But insurance companies take a very different view.

Two have so far outright refused to cover me.

A third left the door open, then opened the door some more, then slammed it shut in my face this week.

Did you not anticipate this difficulty, and do some prior research, you might ask. And yes, we did. We had conversations with insurance folks in KL that gave us to believe there would not be a problem. Yes, we could expect exclusions. But no, there was no suggestion that no cover would be available at all.

Well, so far, this prognosis has not proved accurate.

I must admit this has been a blow to the gut. There's a kind of humiliation about it -- as though you're somehow tainted, and ought to walk round with "WARNING: UNINSURABLE!" tattooed in red on your forehead.

There's a whole load of practical issues, too, of course, as it raises the question of how long we can stay here if I'm effectively a walking medical time-bomb. People generally don't get healthier, after all... (One company said they'd insure me if I was cancer-free after five years. Yeah, thanks. Who knows what other stuff will have happened to me by then?)

And then there's that insidious little voice in your ear that asks: What if the insurers are right...? What if they're actually better informed? What if the doctors were just being nice, and jollying you along? What if you really are very likely to have recurrences of cancer, and face premature death? That kind of gnaws away at you...

It's amazing what we've discovered about insurance in the course of all this. I wish we'd known some of it earlier.

For instance, here's a little bit of gratuitous advice from PT: if you have private health insurance as part of your job, take out supplementary insurance as well, while there's nothing wrong with you...

I didn't. But that's water under the bridge.

I'm a problem-solver by nature -- and actually, despite my Eeyore qualities, I'm quite a hopeful and resilient person.

I wrote, back in April, very prophetically as it turns out:

"Not all months will feel so euphoric. May the good ones feed the springs of hope that will tide us over the leaner, harder months:

"'Hope' is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all..."

I will get over this.

There's one more insurance door I can knock on (if that stays shut, then I will wipe the bastards' dust from my feet, and move on).

We can pay whatever we would have paid as premiums into a separate savings account, so that if something does befall me, I won't feel quite so guilty about it (of course, that scheme depends on my not getting sick before that account has built up...).

And I can remind myself that living for the day in hand, and living your best life in it, is still what matters.

(Insurance companies claim to offer you "peace of mind", but at the end of the day, they make you anxious and fearful about the future, and distract you from the real sources of peace.)


I will get over this.

But at the moment, I'm very up and down, prone to tears, struggling to stay focused.


Things are not helped by two other issues going on at the moment.

One is the smoke pollution, which I've already complained about very bitterly.

As I write, it's no better, and there's no end in sight. Being unable to get outside and walk is a major mood depressant.





The second never-rains-but-what-it-pours factor is that the other Tern has developed a fitness requirement that (temporarily, we hope) dictates a very restricted diet (low-carb -- not low-GI, which is easy, but low-carb, which is astonishingly difficult, given that carbs hide in plain sight absolutely everywhere). So an inordinate amount of time this week has gone into research, calculation, menu-planning, and food-preparation.

Given that we're normally entirely spoilt by an endless supply of ready-made, cheap, delicious local food, this has been quite an unwelcome change.



There are, of course, silver linings to both these issues. Being house- and mall-bound has made us focus on more intensive exercise routines. Becoming more carb-aware will ultimately pay off, even when we're not quite so restricted. (These things are all the more important, of course, when you're UNINSURABLE...)

And for the big one, I need to somehow find peace and perspective.

Despite all the mistakes and setbacks and confusion and carelessness, I need to remember that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well". May it be...