An Early Goodbye

This past Tuesday morning I ran into a bit of trouble, which is why I haven't posted in several days. I got a very bad case of Salmonella food poisoning, and ended up in the hospital on Wednesday morning. I think I contracted it on the bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap (in Northwest Cambodia, where I was going to continue my research). Pretty quickly I knew something was wrong, because on the bus I felt extremely cold and couldn't stop shivering. By the time I arrived in Siem Reap I had a horrible headache and felt like I was going to throw up. I went to the hotel to take a nap and when I woke up I felt even worse.

That night was terrible. I would get so cold and shiver and then really hot and throw the blankets off. I was also terribly thirsty, but didn't know what to do because I didn't have anything to drink in the room. I started hallucinating that I was drinking out of the toilet, and that was when I knew I had to go to the hospital because something was really wrong.

Thank god I had a girl with me, who was suppossed to be my research assistant but ended up being my nurse instead. She took me to the local hospital early Wednesday morning. Let me just say that I am using the word hospital very loosely - it was nothing close to western expectations of what a hospital should be. Needless to say, I was absolutely terrified at this point. I was thinking to myself, "you have finally gone too far". I was in a country with very poor health facilities in the best of circumstances and now I am in this rural area with a hospital that is open-air, with bugs and lizards everywhere, and nobody speaks English.

That was really fun, the nobody speaking English part. When I first got to the hospital there was only one doctor there, and he didn't speak English or even Khmer! He only spoke Chinese! (I swear I am not making this up). So Samphors, my research assistant/nurse had to translate from English into Khmer, a nurse was there who could translate from Khmer to Chinese so the doctor could understand what I was saying. Then the translation would go from the doctor back to me in reverse. I know you are all thinking that I studied Chinese for 7 years, and that is finally going to pay off, right? Well, I never learned words like "hallucinating" or "nausea" or "headache", so my Chinese was pretty useless. Plus. I was barely coherent because I was in so much pain.

The Chinese doctor, without even touching me or even taking my temperature, decided that I had malaria and wanted to start me on a "IV Serum". I don't even know what that is, but trust me, I was in no hurry to find out. I am pretty much panicing at this point, but thankfully we were then told that an English-speaking doctor was coming to the hospital. I was very relieved but also still pretty scared, as I had almost no faith in the quality of treatment I was going to get there. In my head I was trying to think how quickly I could get to Bangkok and the US Embassy, which would have involved about a 4 hour drive on un-paved roads. I really could not have done that trip, so thank God it didn't come to that.

The English speaking doctor arrived, took my temperature, and ran blood tests. I had a 103 degree fever and the blood tests showed that I did not have malaria, but salmonella food poisoning. Because I was so dehydrated he admitted me to the hospital and hooked me up to an IV and I think I got about 5 injections of something. I left on Wednesday evening and was still in pretty bad shape until this morning (Friday). Today is the first day that I can really move or eat without pain. The doctor said that this was normal for as bad a case of food poisoning as I had.

Well, after all this I decided to come home a week early. I just didn't want to push my luck by staying, and I probably wasn't going to get much research done anyhow. So I bought a ticket yesterday to fly home, and today I began my journey. I left Siem Reap and flew to Bangkok, where I am now. It was definitely bittersweet to leave Cambodia this way, and especially to say goodbye to my wonderful research assistant/nurse. I really don;t know what I would have done without her!

I booked a room in a really nice hotel here in Bangkok, as I just wanted someplace I could relax and unwind after these stressful and scary days. I really think I am going to be ok now, but I couldn't say that until just recently.

But now I am just counting the hours until I am home again...