Hi everyone, and welcome to the last few days of our time in Bolivia. Today was the last day at our centres, and we have just the weekend and Monday and Tuesday left - we fly early morning on Wednesday, the same long route home, via Santa Cruz, Sao Paolo, and Madrid to snowy England.
I have mainly this week been in hospital, so have missed every day at work, unfortunately. I'll have time on Monday to go and say goodbye to people though so all is not lost, apart from all that planning we did last week on our health workshop they'd asked us to prepare - oh the irony. Tom and Diana still did it without me (I had written a song about hand washing and tooth brushing - in Spanish!, with chords on the guitar and everything and was pretty excited about performing it... maybe one day in the future it'll come in handy).
To cut a long/boring story short(er) - on Monday night I got quite ill after dinner, and by 1am had a fever and was quite close to passing out, which is what happens when you're really dehydrated from diarrhoea (or vomitting - but it was the former in my case - sorry for the details). My stomach hurt a lot and I couldn't even drink a tiny bit of water without it hurting even more and not staying inside me. Nikki who I share a room with is very good at looking after people, and we decided to call David and decided I should go to hospital, so he and Mauge drove round to get us. I felt really bad about disturbing them as it was 1am but it did seem fairly serious to me. The first clinic put me on a bed and ignored me, so we went to another nicer hospital who put me on a drip and put blankets on me. The drip was weird when it first started and made all my insides go really hot. By 4am it was finished, and we left and I thought wow that was a first and hopefully a last. But by Tuesday afternoon it all happened again and it was impossible to eat or drink anything, so off we went again and there I was for 2 nights, in my own private room with air con and a tv and ensuite bathroom. Apparently it's where the president stays when he's ill in Cochabamba - exciting. Didn't see him.
Nikki stayed the first night with me which was really sweet of her, and David came to check on me regularly, and Zaida too - she liked the flat screen TV with all the channels, which inspired me to watch it for a while - I found Star Wars in Spanish which was nice - C3PO still sounded annoying to me though. The extremely expensive gastroentorologist saw me for all of 1 minute on Wednesday and said I should stay another night, and then saw me for another 1 minute on Thursday and said I could go. He charged £80 for those 2 minutes of wisdom. On Thursday afternoon a lady with a clipboard came in and said why hadn't I gone yet - I pointed at the needle in my arm attached to the drip, and said I didn't think I could with that still attached to me. Then I couldn't understand the rest of what she said so phoned David and he spoke to her. All in all I don't have a full understanding of what was wrong with me, but they mentioned parasites and gastroentiritis, and when I googled gastroentiritis that sounds about right, and it can be caused by a parasite.
The nurses were nice as far as I could tell. They got me up at 7 on the first day and pushed me into the shower after sellotaping a plastic bag round my hand, so water didn't go in the drip bit. That was weird. As is trying to have a shower and dry yourself with just one hand.
So my food diary for this week was: Tuesday - 6 crackers, tiny bit of watery soup. Wednesday: 12 crackers (3 for each meal and 3 at tea time), small bit of jelly, watery soup, cup of black tea (no milk). Thursday: 6 crackers and watery soup, then more crackers and watery soup at home. Friday (today): ditto, plus - exciting - a little bit of chocolate brownie tonight that Zaida has made. And it all stayed inside me since Wednesday and stopped hurting as of today.
Good things about this week -
1. I now realise how dangerous dehydration can be - did you know diarhoea and dehyrdration is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) killers of children in developing countries. I wouldn't have understood this before, but now I do.
2. I got a LOT of sleep, most of it pretty good quality.
3. I watched some TV with Spanish subtitles so learnt some new words. Also my medical Spanish is now fairly good (suero is drip, and aguja is needle).
4. I looked at the nice view of the mountains for quite a long time.
Not so good things about this week -
1. Someone died opposite me in the emergency room on Tuesday night.
2. I got prodded with needles 4 times - the nurse got cross with me for wriggling around so much but it's like an allergic reaction, I really hate them. The first night they took a while finding a vein which was nice.
3. I felt ill for most of the week and I missed my last week at work.
I think I'm better now though. And another thing I think is quite weird is that I have never ever ever been ill like this before even though I've gone to quite a lot of developing countries for quite a lot of time. I've never even really been ill at all when travelling, let alone badly ill. I was quite proud of my stomach for this, and maybe that's why this happened. Lesson learned - I probably shouldn't have eaten that weird fried green vegetable last Sunday when me Nikki and Zaida when to a little festival in Tiraque.... I thought it was safe as it was a vegetable, but I think the oil it was fried in must have have fried a lot of other things in its time. The festival by the way was a festival of guinea pigs - oh how cute I hear you say... no it wasn't - they're not cute when they're fried with their arms and legs and head still on, all lying there fried in batter on a bed of rice and vegetables with their teeth still in their mouths - that is not cute I tell you!
We didn't eat them.
That was my week. I had more updates but they fell by the wayside for now. I'll try to fit another blog in before Wednesday morning 5am. Bye for now x ps here was the view from my hospital window:
I have mainly this week been in hospital, so have missed every day at work, unfortunately. I'll have time on Monday to go and say goodbye to people though so all is not lost, apart from all that planning we did last week on our health workshop they'd asked us to prepare - oh the irony. Tom and Diana still did it without me (I had written a song about hand washing and tooth brushing - in Spanish!, with chords on the guitar and everything and was pretty excited about performing it... maybe one day in the future it'll come in handy).
To cut a long/boring story short(er) - on Monday night I got quite ill after dinner, and by 1am had a fever and was quite close to passing out, which is what happens when you're really dehydrated from diarrhoea (or vomitting - but it was the former in my case - sorry for the details). My stomach hurt a lot and I couldn't even drink a tiny bit of water without it hurting even more and not staying inside me. Nikki who I share a room with is very good at looking after people, and we decided to call David and decided I should go to hospital, so he and Mauge drove round to get us. I felt really bad about disturbing them as it was 1am but it did seem fairly serious to me. The first clinic put me on a bed and ignored me, so we went to another nicer hospital who put me on a drip and put blankets on me. The drip was weird when it first started and made all my insides go really hot. By 4am it was finished, and we left and I thought wow that was a first and hopefully a last. But by Tuesday afternoon it all happened again and it was impossible to eat or drink anything, so off we went again and there I was for 2 nights, in my own private room with air con and a tv and ensuite bathroom. Apparently it's where the president stays when he's ill in Cochabamba - exciting. Didn't see him.
Nikki stayed the first night with me which was really sweet of her, and David came to check on me regularly, and Zaida too - she liked the flat screen TV with all the channels, which inspired me to watch it for a while - I found Star Wars in Spanish which was nice - C3PO still sounded annoying to me though. The extremely expensive gastroentorologist saw me for all of 1 minute on Wednesday and said I should stay another night, and then saw me for another 1 minute on Thursday and said I could go. He charged £80 for those 2 minutes of wisdom. On Thursday afternoon a lady with a clipboard came in and said why hadn't I gone yet - I pointed at the needle in my arm attached to the drip, and said I didn't think I could with that still attached to me. Then I couldn't understand the rest of what she said so phoned David and he spoke to her. All in all I don't have a full understanding of what was wrong with me, but they mentioned parasites and gastroentiritis, and when I googled gastroentiritis that sounds about right, and it can be caused by a parasite.
The nurses were nice as far as I could tell. They got me up at 7 on the first day and pushed me into the shower after sellotaping a plastic bag round my hand, so water didn't go in the drip bit. That was weird. As is trying to have a shower and dry yourself with just one hand.
So my food diary for this week was: Tuesday - 6 crackers, tiny bit of watery soup. Wednesday: 12 crackers (3 for each meal and 3 at tea time), small bit of jelly, watery soup, cup of black tea (no milk). Thursday: 6 crackers and watery soup, then more crackers and watery soup at home. Friday (today): ditto, plus - exciting - a little bit of chocolate brownie tonight that Zaida has made. And it all stayed inside me since Wednesday and stopped hurting as of today.
Good things about this week -
1. I now realise how dangerous dehydration can be - did you know diarhoea and dehyrdration is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) killers of children in developing countries. I wouldn't have understood this before, but now I do.
2. I got a LOT of sleep, most of it pretty good quality.
3. I watched some TV with Spanish subtitles so learnt some new words. Also my medical Spanish is now fairly good (suero is drip, and aguja is needle).
4. I looked at the nice view of the mountains for quite a long time.
Not so good things about this week -
1. Someone died opposite me in the emergency room on Tuesday night.
2. I got prodded with needles 4 times - the nurse got cross with me for wriggling around so much but it's like an allergic reaction, I really hate them. The first night they took a while finding a vein which was nice.
3. I felt ill for most of the week and I missed my last week at work.
I think I'm better now though. And another thing I think is quite weird is that I have never ever ever been ill like this before even though I've gone to quite a lot of developing countries for quite a lot of time. I've never even really been ill at all when travelling, let alone badly ill. I was quite proud of my stomach for this, and maybe that's why this happened. Lesson learned - I probably shouldn't have eaten that weird fried green vegetable last Sunday when me Nikki and Zaida when to a little festival in Tiraque.... I thought it was safe as it was a vegetable, but I think the oil it was fried in must have have fried a lot of other things in its time. The festival by the way was a festival of guinea pigs - oh how cute I hear you say... no it wasn't - they're not cute when they're fried with their arms and legs and head still on, all lying there fried in batter on a bed of rice and vegetables with their teeth still in their mouths - that is not cute I tell you!
We didn't eat them.
That was my week. I had more updates but they fell by the wayside for now. I'll try to fit another blog in before Wednesday morning 5am. Bye for now x ps here was the view from my hospital window:
Hello there I hope you are better now lucy . The queen has also had a bout of gastro . Not sure where Queen got her bout from , not a green fried thing from a GUINEA PIG FESTIVAL. I closed my guineas ears whilst reading out your blog . Have a save trip home . Its very cold here. Long socks required xxxxx
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