For the past six months, I have been cooperating with the reckless driving case against the truck driver who hit and severely injured me last November. While as a victim I have appreciated having an opportunity to be heard, the process has — perhaps unsurprisingly — required me to repeatedly present my trauma for examination, documentation, and validation, often with unclear results.
Category: Burma
Sixth Tour Bidding: Postscript
In January, while V and I were on R&R in Vietnam, I received the excellent news that my assignment following the end of my tour in Rangoon would be as consular chief in Sarajevo. I could not have been happier, as Sarajevo had been my top choice during bidding the previous fall.
After receiving the handshake, I wrote here on the blog that I would tell the story of how it went down; four months on, I am finally getting around to that.
Year in Review: 2025 Blog Stats and Recap
I have both been writing this post for months and procrastinating finishing it. I normally publish my annual recap and blog stats in January, or at least earlier in the year.
But I hesitated to relive the personal and professional difficulties I experienced in 2025. A stressful international move, a life-threatening accident, family illness, job insecurity, work-related chaos, and policy whiplash were all lowlights in 2025. It’s a lot of work to dig through it all and think about how to organize and convey the details in a way that’s interesting to people aside from me.
Upon reflection, though, in characteristic form, I decided that feels like all the more reason to write this post — even if it took me a while to find the words, and even if no one else particularly notices whether I keep up what has quietly become an annual tradition. I would notice. And as the memories slowly fade around the edges, I think in the future I would regret letting a year like this pass without summary.
Before the Tipping Point
March felt like something of an in-between point on this tour: past the halfway mark, but still before it was time to worry about another PCS move.
The weather carried the feeling of a perpetual lazy summer. I was no longer struggling with a walker or wheelchair, and spent much of my time focused on physical therapy. I was endlessly grateful to have regained some mobility and freedom.
We were done with our January and February trips to Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, and soon it would be time for our big April R&R trip back to the United States. But for the moment, it was simply good to be at home.
A Rolling Portrait: Yangon Circular Railway
In March, the embassy’s Community Liaison Office (CLO) organized a weekend day trip to ride the Yangon Circular Railway.
Often called the “Circle Line,” the train travels on an approximately 28-mile (45 km) loop track around the city. It is supposed to be one of the most atmospheric and socially revealing railways in Southeast Asia. It’s not only a commuter railway and a relic of British colonial infrastructure, but also an informal street market, a lifeline for people who need to travel inexpensively, and a beautiful way to understand how the city is laid out.
A New Normal
As I mentioned in a previous post, February was the month where life started to slowly feel like it was getting back to normal again for us in Burma. We returned from our R&R in Vietnam and Indonesia with some fresh perspective and gratitude, ready to hit the reset button.
As we reached the halfway point of our tour and I was finally able to leave my walker and cane behind for good, we focused on making memories and ensuring my accident neither became the legacy of our time in Rangoon nor overshadowed the time we had left.
A Moment of Silence
It was a year ago today (March 28) that a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Burma (Myanmar), leveling buildings, destroying infrastructure, and killing and displacing thousands.
A few hours later, on the other side of the world, March 28 dawned in northern Virginia. I arrived at FSI early in the morning before Burmese language class and sat down to do my homework. Checking the news for any Myanmar-related stories I could do a report on, I stumbled upon news of the disaster that had happened in Sagaing, near Mandalay, while I was sleeping.
On My Own Two Feet
I’m pausing my recounting of our January R&R travelogues to share an update—and a few reflections—on my recovery from my truck vs. pedestrian accident last November. Although it occurred three-and-a-half months (15 weeks) ago, the importance of rehabilitating my injuries during the remainder of my tour in Burma still looms large.
Both/And
My truck-versus-pedestrian accident was 10.5 weeks ago — almost two and a half months. One of the most difficult aspects of my recovery, aside from the physical injuries themselves, has been holding space for very different, simultaneous thoughts and feelings about what happened and how to move forward.
So Glad You’re OK
I came home to Burma the Friday before Christmas and stepped back into my Rangoon life from the before times. Only I didn’t look the same on the outside, and I didn’t feel the same on the inside either. I had been medically evacuated and hospitalized in Thailand for over a month after being unexpectedly hit by a truck while crossing the street in front of my house. I’d broken my pelvis in three places, along with cracking two ribs, breaking a toe, and suffering a bilateral concussion and extensive road rash.
My traumatic injuries were still healing when I returned, and I was only 50% weight-bearing on my left side. Returning to my house and my work, nothing fit quite the same—it was like trying on someone else’s clothes. I had to contend with other people’s reactions to my visible injuries and the shock of what had happened to me, while sorting out my own feelings and struggling with my new limitations in real time. And as I settled back into post and the external cuts, wounds, and bruises slowly began to fade, I heard one thing over and over again: “I’m so glad you’re OK.”
Ableism and Access: Return to Burma
About 10 days ago I returned home to Burma. I’d spent a month hospitalized in Thailand after being hit by a truck while crossing the street in mid-November.
While I was in the hospital, I wanted nothing more than to come home and “get back to normal.” But the two days I spent in a hotel between my discharge and my return home illustrated how difficult navigating the real world would be as long as I could only bear about 15 kg of weight on my left leg. Most able-bodied people simply never notice the ways in which the world is inaccessible to those who move through it a bit differently.
The Land of Smiles
Taking an international flight in a wheelchair is something I never imagined I’d experience. Yet when I arrived in Bangkok a little over two weeks ago, that’s exactly how I traveled—having not taken a single step except for the small ones over the seam between the breezeway and the plane, the only gap the wheelchair couldn’t bridge.
The morning three days after my truck vs. pedestrian accident, motorpool drove me from our house to the airport. An embassy nurse and my husband accompanied. I was pushed in a wheelchair through check-in, immigration, security, and Rangoon’s mostly-empty international departures terminal. I was the second passenger to board the flight, transferred into the tiny, narrow wheelchair that fits down the plane aisle. I settled into a comfortable business-class seat and never got up during the 70-minute flight. When we landed in Bangkok, an ambulance—and finally, answers about my injuries—waited just beyond baggage claim.
Postcard From the 16th Century Bayinnaung Kingdom
Before too much more time elapses, I decided to deviate briefly from the heaviness of the present-day story about my recent truck vs. pedestrian accident and highlight a trip V and I took in October to the ancient city of Bago, about two hours northeast of Rangoon.
I’ll give an update on my hospitalization in Thailand and recovery from the accident soon.
Aftermath
Coming home from the embassy that Sunday morning after my accident ushered in not only new levels of physical pain, but a lingering stretch of complicated, disorienting emotional terrain.
Butterfly Effect
The night I was hit by a truck earlier this month while crossing the street is blurry in places, with some parts missing entirely. I think of the first 48 hours afterward in two distinct phases: the initial hours of confusion, memory loss, and non-linearity; and the remainder marked by pain, overwhelm, regret, and the slow, devastating realization of what had happened.
The day and night of the accident had been completely ordinary. Ordinary, until a second before impact, when I turned my head expecting only traffic coming from the right and instead saw the truck barreling toward me from the left, traveling on the wrong side of the road. Everything after that is blank for maybe half an hour, followed by other gaps and hazy fragments during the three or four hours I spent in the hospital.
Collecting Postcards 