The List

I say every so often, mostly as a joke, that I have a list of things that I absolutely MUST experience here in the Philippines. Some of the things are legitimate (visit Corregidor Island and the Bataan Death March site, visit the site of the battle where Magellan died, eat balut, etc.) but a few things just get added on once they've already been accomplished, like get pickpocketed. One of my students suggested to be, jokingly of course, that if I had not had getting picked on my list, then it wouldn't have happened. :-) But, a new bizarre add to The List just made its appearance: spend two nights in the hospital.

The story begins, I believe, a week ago, Friday, February 13th. I had just attended a conference on ecological responsibility in Makati and was making my way home in the hot afternoon sun. I chose the wrong method of transportation and wound up taking myself quite far out of the way. So this exposure weakened my immune system, which was then assualted full-bore by a virus carried by a visitor from the regional office in Singapore, who happens to be staying in the guest house next to me. By his experience, it should have been one of those twenty-four-hour, what-was-that-I-don't-care-because-I'm-better-now sorts of things. But for me it was rather different.

Compounded by an insanely-cold cinema on Saturday night, Valentine's Day, I was already well on the way to Sickville by the time I got home late Saturday. Sunday I was into a full-blown head cold with body aches and fever. As I tried to sleep it off, the fever kept breaking throughout the day on Sunday, lathering my body with sweat and creating the ultimate physical problem that resulted in hospitalization--dehydration. I simply was not able to drink enough water to combat the loss of fluids through sweat, and in truth even water would not have fully done the trick.

I went to the ER for a checkup on Monday night and got and even more fearsome word, that I might have contracted Dengue Fever, one of the dreaded, and quite often deadly, tropical diseases around these parts. I was told to come back to the hospital on Wednesday to have blood work done again to see if the measurements would have fallen into critical levels, so I went home and shuffled around like an old man. Every muscle ached. It was hard to raise my arms to elbow level, let alone above my head. So friends began to look after me, come visit me for lunch, and so on. By Tuesday night I made the decision to cancel the rest of my classes for the week, which sent torrents of well-wishes pouring in from my students, seeing as how this was the first many of them heard about my illness.

When I went back to the hospital on Wednesday, we got the Run Around Sue treatment for a bit, which certainly didn't help my mood. When we finally got to see a doctor, she took one look at me, heard me speak about three sentences, and confined me to the hospital with severe dehydration and, ultimately, a urinary tract infection. They set up an IV with fluid replenishment and did another blood test. They were not able to definitely rule out Dengue Fever until Thursday morning, which was a great sigh of relief. I did feel almost instantly better and by Thursday I felt I could go home, but the doctor wanted me to stay because of the low saline content of my blood. So stay I did, fitfully trying to get comfortable in a hospital bed, trying to eat, and being unsuccessful, Filipino hospital food. Eventually I gave up and just ate the fruit and crackers that people had brought me. By that time, even the smell of the food from the dietary area was turning my stomach. I was visited by the president and by one other faculty colleague, as well as several times by my girlfriend, all of which warmed my heart.

Getting discharged was a difficult matter. The doctor said on Thursday that she would release me on Friday morning, but apparently she did not communicate this to the nurses, for they did not seem to know about this. It seems she has residency at several hospitals and clinics in the area, as to most Filipino MDs. But eventually she came by around 4 and released me even faster than she had admitted me. I am due to go back next Friday for another pee-in-the-cup routine, but other than that it appears that I am up and out of the woods and on the way to full recovery.

Thanks be to God that it was not Dengue, which would have confined me to the hospital for a minium of six weeks and destroyed my plans to go to the States next week. Thanks be to God for caring friends and coworkers who went out of their way to comfort me. Thanks be to God for medicine, and for the ability to pay for it. And thanks be to God for recovery. One more thing checked off The List.