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.
Tag: Hope
Flag Day Announcement… VI
Last week, I received the exciting news I had been anticipating since last September when sixth tour bidding opened for me: the title, location, and timing of my next diplomatic assignment.
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.
Release
Four and a half weeks after my accident, I was discharged from the hospital. That was one week ago. After being released, I spent a couple nights in Bangkok on my own, flew back to Burma, and returned to work.
Sixth Tour Bidding: Showing Up
When the U.S. government closed for more than six weeks this autumn, it completely blew up the Foreign Service bid-season timeline for summer 2026 bidders. Summer 2026 bidders are those of us completing our assignments next summer who need an onward. Our bid cycle was meant to begin at the end of September 2025, with bids due in October and handshakes coming out in November.
But as the shutdown dragged on through October and into November without appropriations, bidding—an activity not deemed “excepted”—was at a full stop. Posts and bureaus weren’t permitted to interview candidates, and bidders couldn’t express interest in projected vacancies. In an attempt to create parity between excepted employees who were working without pay and non-excepted employees who had been furloughed and weren’t allowed to sign on during the lapse, the organization even took the portal used for most bidding activities offline, cutting off bidders’ visibility on capsule descriptions for open assignments.
Claustrophobia
My accident—the day I was hit by a truck and my life took a hard right turn—was just over three weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime has passed, yet it’s also difficult to believe I’ve already lost so much time. During a one-year tour, each week makes up 1.9% of the assignment. By that math, I’ve already lost 5.8% of my time in Burma (along with post allowances like danger and hardship pay), and the count keeps climbing because of this accident.
Over the 20 days I’ve now spent hospitalized in Thailand, the overall ordeal has felt a bit like Groundhog Day, even as the details of my daily lived experience have shifted subtly over time.
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.
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.
Wrong Lane
After more than six weeks of the longest government shutdown in history, things were finally starting to brighten up towards mid-November. After a sudden medevac to Bangkok, my husband V had successful gallbladder removal surgery and returned home to Rangoon. The U.S. government reopened and federal employees received our three missing paychecks in quick succession. The bid season relaunched, sparking renewed excitement about our potential next tour. V and I spent a day off together in observance of a Burmese holiday—swimming in our favorite local pool, then enjoying a quiet evening at home relaxing with our cat. All seemed to be getting back to normal.
Then, the following Saturday night, we had one of the worst nights of our lives—sudden, unexpected, and completely out of the blue. It was the kind of night that shifts your reality, stripping away any illusion that you are in control and leaving you in a world so different from the one you knew just moments before that the surreality comes in continual waves of disbelief.
Sixth Tour Bidding: Not So Fast
When I first wrote about sixth tour bidding in late September, I described it as a “ready or not” situation; bidding had snuck up on me quickly at less than two months into a one-year tour. But just two days after the cycle opened, everything ground to a halt. October 1 marked the start of the new fiscal year, and without an approved federal budget, the government shut down. And so, at least for now, this bid season has become another exercise in “hurry up and wait.”
Celebrating Thadingyut (သီတင်းကျွတ်ပွဲတော်)
Last weekend marked Burma’s sacred holiday of the Full Moon of Thadingyut (pronounced like tha-TIN-jut). The date of Thadingyut varies each year because it follows the traditional Burmese lunar calendar, which is based on moon cycles. Usually Thadingyut falls in October, but it can also occur in late September.
We had a three-day weekend in honor of the occasion. While most local people celebrated by visiting family around Burma and observing Buddhist traditions of thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to relax. I had a nail appointment, spent several hours swimming, and caught up with friends throughout the weekend — a Friday evening out at a new American-style 1950s diner; fabric shopping on Saturday afternoon with colleagues to commission a Burmese dress set, followed by an embassy Oktoberfest gathering that evening; and a Monday afternoon luncheon hosted by our neighbors next door. But the most special part of the weekend for me and V was finally visiting Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon’s golden temple, on Sunday evening.
A World Away
At my most recent pedicure, I chose a deep cranberry shade—even though my toes still spend most weekends poolside or in strappy sandals. The signs of autumn flooding my social media feeds and podcast ads from home feel distant here in Burma, where my tan is still going strong. There are no cardigans, pumpkin spice lattes, or even jeans for me. I’ve worn a long-sleeved shirt only once since arriving in Rangoon. But if I close my eyes, I can almost smell the fall leaves of Virginia and the crisp evening air tinged with woodsmoke a world away.
Sixth Tour Bidding: Ready or Not
It seems too soon to bid for my next assignment. I’ve been in Rangoon less than two months. Neither our HHE nor our consumables have arrived. We haven’t even bought a plant for our new house, which we just moved into a few weeks ago. And yet, unbelievably, I’m already almost one-sixth done with this tour. Ready or not, the next bid season started yesterday!
There’s a Gecko in My Curtains… and Assorted Thoughts on Settling In
Shortly before we arrived in Rangoon, we were a little disappointed to learn we would be in temporary housing for approximately four to six weeks. Although we had known for a long time that the housing board had assigned us a house near the embassy, our short-term home would be an apartment.
Our disappointment stemmed mainly from wanting to settle into this tour as quickly as possible — a feeling tied to the idea of setting up our own home. We had not expected such a lengthy make-ready of our house; the previous occupant departed over three weeks before we arrived. Yet, this isn’t totally uncommon during the busy PCS season when the embassy has many officers moving in and out simultaneously.
Since this is the first time we’ve done a one-year tour, each week represents a surprising 1.92% of our total time in Burma. Spending up to one-tenth of such a short assignment in temporary housing felt less than ideal. But as it turns out, the experience has had its benefits as well.
Collecting Postcards 