Hey Folks…

    So A few days ago I was showering after a jungle excursion and I got the chills. Sometimes this is acceptable when taking a cold shower at 8pm, but these chills were a little too ‘chilly’ if you know what I mean. A few hours later I was alternating between chills and heat attacks with a fever we later discovered was 104. I spent the whole night hallucinating and sweating, but I was a little too stupid to tell anyone. The next morning, my coworkers came to investigate my absence from our mutual day offs hiking adventure and found me half asleep with the worst headache of my life and the afforementioned uber fever. They took my temperature, gave me water, and we thought it would pass, until my boss got back from his trip, heard my symptoms and rushed in with a questionnaire! After a series of steps, he concluded we had to go to the hospital in Khon Khaen, a large city about 2 hours away. Apparently 104 + Headache brought me into the realm of Dengue fever, Scrub Typhus, some kind of water fever, or the slim possibility of Malaria. No matter what he said, it was better to be in the hospital before it got worse (if it did), rather than after, because of the distance. So off to the hosital we went, me in agony in the backseat of the truck, and my boss driving like a madman (or a Thai, same difference).

    At the hospital I was subjected to all kinds of tests and pokes and prods and things, but I wasn’t very aware of them. Eventually my boss had me graduated from the emergency room to the hospital proper, awakened enough to try and call the few numbers in my phone, but nobody picked up. Apparently I left some pretty awful sounding messages. Throughout the night I remember being attached to a tube, recieving several xrays, blood tests, tests of other bodily functions, a mammogram like thing with jelly and a ray gun pointed at my belly, and lot of prodding and my organs while the doctor inquired if it hurt. It hurt often.

    I awoke in the morning to a huge room, a big IV, a TELEVISION, and a massive headache. The doctor told me I inquired a water infection somehow, and possible theories involve accidental shower water ingestion,
or maybe rinsing my toothbrush in the sink once by mistake. I spent the next 2 days in the hospital on medications and anti-biotics, with daily organ jousts from the doctor involving the same “Hurt: yes or no?” query, and lots of television (they have 3 old soccer games a day on ESPN… yay!). Anyways, I’m out now, and all is well. I feel alot better. Interesting observations were as follows. Thai nurses ask you if you spea  Thai so they can talk about you and laugh when you say no. Thai nurses also laugh when they try and put your useless form into pajamas and see the harriest legs they’ve ever seen. Thai doctors say wee-wee and poo-poo. I’m dead serious and its always hilarious. “How many wee-wee today? How much poo-poo?  What color pee-pee? What color poo-poos?” Priceless. I neverheard any clinical terms for any of those bodily functions, or their organs of origin. I’m keeping the organ names to myself :) …

    Thai nurses also like to harass you constantly all night long with 3am tests and 4am blood checks, and then ambush you at 6am by asking you if you wont sprong or something of that sound without clarification  Obviously, like I was, you will be too asleep to even understand what is happening, much less
make the huge translation extrapolation. So you say yes to shut them up, like I did. then you fall asleep, and wakeup to the most shocking and awful attempt to spongebath you at 6:20am, while you still just want to sleep. I could barely fight them off. I insisted on taking a shower. They pointed at the IV and said “no work”…. I took the IV into the shower like an old friend and proved my point. However, this did not stop them from trying again the next day (but at least I was prepared this time). So, all in all, I was a bit scared, but this ending up being a bit of a fun experience anyway. It gave my Mother and Erin a chance to call me with phonecards too, since it costs them $5 for 4 hours, unlike $10 for my 30 minutes.