Christopher's Visit to the Hospital

4:30am. I woke up and vomited.

No, I'm not pregnant. It was another bout of food sickness, which I've experienced many times already on this trip. And normally, my body has a routine. It involves about half an hour of nauseous pain and diarrhea, then I vomit, feel better, and go to bed.

But immediately I knew that this was different. I stayed awake and in pain. Then, a half hour later, I threw up again. And again. And again. Until there was basically nothing left to throw up.

8am came, and Dave went off to work. 10am came, and Gigi and Andre came out. Yesterday night the three of us had all planned to go to New Delhi Train Station and hop on a train to anywhere for the weekend. No thanks, guys. I think I'm going to vomit again.

11:00am. I'm starting to get worried. It's not the pain; it's that I couldn't keep any liquids in my body. My mouth was beginning to feel sort of dry.

So after calling my parents back in the States, I decided to wait for another couple hours. If I couldn't fall asleep or keep liquid down, I would go online, print out my insurance info, and go to the nearest hospital/clinic.

12:15pm. Sleeping was not going to happen, and now my mouth was really dry and I had a slight tingling sensation all over my body. Time to limp over to the internet cafe and then head off to the hospital.

They say that bad things come in threes, and there is actually some mathematical models ('Gambler's Ruin') which support this claim. In my experience travelling, I can say this is an iron law. Just as I walked into the internet cafe, the power to Delhi's Lajpat Nagar districts 1-3 went out.

I'm feeling really bad now. Time to go straight to the hospital.

12:17pm. I hail the nearest bicycle rickshaw. I'm now literally crouching, hobbled over in pain. "Hospital," I tell the driver, mimicking an injection. "Ten rupees." He nods and we're off.

12:30pm. After a fifteen-minute drive through pothole-ridden Delhi dirt roads on a suspension-less rickshaw that made my nauseous stomach feel like it would openly revolt, we arrived.

At McDonalds. He smiles at me.

I stared at him incredulously. If a limping foreigner approached your cycle rickshaw, said "hospital," and made mimicked an injection, WHY THE *$(#@* WOULD YOU BRING HIM TO MCDONALDS?

But I was getting sort of confused at this point and had no energy to argue. So I got out and walked, asking various people where the hospital was. Naturally, they gave me conflicting answers.

12:45pm. After fifteen minutes of walking in the hot Delhi sun, I could barely speak because I had no saliva left in my mouth, and I started to have trouble walking straight. A Good Samaritan saw me, hailed an auto rickshaw, and told him to take me to the hospital. "

12:55pm. Arrive at the hospital. Two nurses are needed to hold me up because I can barely stand. I fill out a little form.

For some strange reason, in the developing world, people have a tendency to play songs at full blast from their phones so that everyone can hear. This happens everywhere-- buses, trains, malls, restaurants, etc.

And at 1pm in Delhi's Mool Chand hospital, someone believed that this was the appropriate time and place to play Backstreet Boys' song As Long As You Love Me as loudly as possible.

No amount of antibodies could stop that pain.

1:15pm. After check-in I got really confused, and the best I can compare it to is being drunk. Looking back, and the next few parts sort of seems like a vague dream. But later the doctor told me that after they injected the IV I fell asleep/fainted on the bed.

After some time, I woke up because my phone was ringing. It was my parents, calling to check on me. I didn't really feel confused any more, so that was good. Already they had poured two bottles of IV into my thirsty veins.

The doctor came in. "You suffered from severe dehydration. Your pupils were dilated, your blood pressure was very low, and you were very disoriented. I suspect your kidneys may have suffered damage, and you may have to stay another 2-4 days for testing. You may never be able to drink alcohol again."

I didn't have the energy to care. I fell asleep again.

After a long time, the nurse came back.

"How are you feeling?" Good.
"You fainted earlier. Do you remember me?" Yes.
"Because you asked me where I was from and said I was very pretty." What?

I doubt this claim. It's one thing to flirt with a nurse when you're recuperated and bored of sitting in a hospital bed. It's an entirely different thing to flirt with a nurse when you're rapidly losing consciousness. I couldn't tell if she was smiling when she said it because she had a mask over her face, but she did laugh. So I'll leave it to the reader, and their knowledge of me, to determine how plausible her claim is.

Anyway, the nurse told me that I could probably leave the hospital that day (thank God). A few forms later, and about five or six hours after I entered the hospital, I was on my way.

The total cost? A whopping $16.

When I got home I felt a lot better, but I was still really tired and thirsty. So I treated myself to a banana shake (yes, it's safe). Then I called my friends and family back in the States to let them know I was OK. Then I went to bed for a long, long time.

And the best part? I dreamt about the Backstreet Boys.