Five visits to the hospital in three weeks.
Yep, you read that right.
I have had some pretty mixed luck regarding health recently. Read on to learn what has been going on in this realm of my life in Thailand.
The Illness
It all started two days before the school term began. The night of Tuesday May 14, I got a pretty awful sore throat. Wednesday, I felt so sick. It seemed like a cold to me, so I wasn't too concerned.
The fact that I was wearing a scarf in the extreme heat says a lot about how much my throat hurt.
I went to school on Thursday, as I felt a bit better and did not want to take one of my sick days on the very first day of school.
Big smile behind the face mask!
The next day was my birthday, and the best gift was that I felt much better. The cold seemed to be passing so quickly! Lucky me...
I exercised on Saturday and on Monday, a holiday, in the middle of the day. The heat index was brutal, to say the least.
After my workout that Monday, May 20, I started to feel very strange. Home in my apartment, I felt like I was going to pass out. I was light-headed, dizzy, nauseous, and my stomach was in knots. I tried eating a little, it did not help. I laid down for a few hours and prayed that it would pass. It felt like symptoms of heat exhaustion, which certainly made sense given that I worked out in such intense heat... even though I had done this many times before and I was fine. The feeling passed enough that I was able to sleep for the night.
The next morning, I went in to school, and the teachers could see that I did not look well. I felt feverish, faint, and weak. They told me that I could go home and be in my air conditioned apartment until I had class. I taught all of my classes that day and the next, but I could tell that I was not getting better.
Thursday May 23, I felt very unwell and requested the day off. The director of my school okayed the one day off and said that I needed to return on Friday, so this is what I did. By the end of the day on Friday, I felt like I was going to pass out in front of my students, so I went home before my last class. I knew something was very wrong.
Friday night, I noticed that my sore throat had returned with a vengeance. I realized that, because I had been consistently taking Tylenol to regulate my temperature/reduce my fever, I had not noticed my sore throat for awhile, but it was definitely still there.
On Saturday May 25, I bit the bullet and went to the hospital (conveniently directly across the street from my apartment).
This picture was taken in front of my apartment building, hospital directly behind me.
The doctor took one look at my red, inflamed, white-spotted throat and immediately ordered a blood test. She determined that I had a bacterial infection that was causing all of my symptoms: sore throat, fever, congestion, dizziness, fatigue, and weakness. She prescribed an antibiotic and ordered three days off from work.
Very grateful to have an answer as to what was going on with me, I went home and began the antibiotic treatment.
Four days in to the five day antibiotic course, I wasn't feeling much better. I seemed to be going generally in the right direction, but very slowly, and my days off of work had run out. So, I went back to the hospital again on Wednesday May 29.
Fortunately, the hospital is actually really nice. The people who work there are very friendly, the facilities are clean, and I rarely have to wait longer than 10-20 minutes to be seen!
The doctor looked at my throat and did more blood work. She determined that I was indeed responding to the antibiotic, but it was taking more time than expected (perhaps because I had the infection for two full weeks before beginning the treatment). She ordered two more days off school, so I could have the weekend to rest and recover as well.
To my greatest joy, by Friday I felt so much better. The antibiotic course had finished, and I was finally beginning to feel like myself again.
This feeling of relief was unlike any I had ever experienced. I truly thought that I wasn't going to get better, that I would need to quit my job and return to America for medical treatment. My heart was breaking with this thought, but it seemed like my health would not return, so I had to be realistic. When I finally did feel better, I had a newfound appreciation for living in Thailand, and getting to continue my dream job teaching my sweet children here.
I am now 2.5 weeks out from this illness, and I no longer feel any of the symptoms. I can teach again. I can exercise again. I can enjoy Thailand again. I can enjoy life again.
The Allergic Reaction
Following my recovery from the illness, I was able to live my life as normal again. This was the best gift I could imagine.
Living my life as normal included going to the Saturday evening market that I love so much. I even made new friends, a teacher couple from a different school in my province! My first foreigner friends in seven months. This was a dream.
After the Saturday evening market, we sat by the river at a lovely guesthouse with tables and chairs open to public use. We ate dinner and got to know each other. Because I was no longer used to spending time outside (I had basically been bed-bound in my apartment for the past three weeks), I forgot that insect repellent is an essential staple of my wellbeing here... I will never forget again after what happened this night.
I am no stranger to mosquito bites. I get some pretty much every day here. Mosquitos find foreigner blood especially delicious. But this was a whole new game. The bites swelled up into huge welts. They were extremely itchy and painful. I barely slept that night. No amount of tiger balm or itch cream or Tylenol quelled the itch and pain of my lower legs.
I went in to visit the nurse at a nearby pharmacy first thing in the morning. She could tell that I was having an allergic reaction to whatever bugs bit me. She gave me an oral steroid and an antihistamine to counter the reaction.
I also obtained some calamine lotion. The combination of the three itch-fighters worked enough so that I was not crying in itchy pain all day. Don't get me wrong, I was still very uncomfortable, but the bites were no longer taking up all of my attention. I barely slept that next night, either.
The meds took the swelling down enough to reveal the ridiculous truth: I had over 100 bug bites on one leg and over 80 on the other.
A quick visit to the place that we had spent the evening revealed the other enlightening truth: the evil entities that had devoured me and one of the other foreigner friends I made were biting gnats. It turns out that gnats bite in a different way than mosquitos do, resulting in a more painful bite. It also turns out that I am allergic to gnat bites even more than I am to mosquito bites - not in an anaphylactic shock type of way, but in a swelling to the point of severe itch and pain kind of way.
It took a few days for the bites to relax, and boy am I grateful that they did. Now, I don't leave the house without a hefty coat of insect repellent applied. Lesson LEARNED.
The Injury
Following the gnat attack, I had to visit the hospital again for a routine medical check (necessary to renew my work permit). Everything was well and good in this visit. So now we have accounted for three of the five hospital visits... I'm sure you're just dying to know what the other two were for!
Well, wait no longer...
On Friday, June 14, I was coming home from dinner with friends, heavy water bottle-filled tote bag in tow. As I was walking up to my apartment, my bag slipped... and snagged the tip of my left ring finger as it fell to the ground. Suddenly, I had one of my grandma's arthritic fingers - the tip was completely bent to the side. I had a nauseating feeling in the pit of my stomach and my first thought was, "I may have just broken my first bone." Out of instinct, I grabbed my finger with my right hand and popped the tip back into place (and I do mean "popped" - a loud pop). I rushed up to my apartment, threw down my things, and immediately put my finger on the cold heavy water bottle from my bag. It hurt quite badly but I could bend it, so I assumed it was not broken.
After a painful night of a throbbing fingertip, I couldn't bend the finger as much as I could the night before. The swelling had increased, and boy did it hurt. I was very stubborn about going to the hospital again. I tried finding a finger splint in two pharmacies and a doctor's clinic, but I was sent away by all of them and told I needed to go to the hospital. Reluctantly, I went...
... and lo and behold, I did indeed fracture my finger. It only looks like a tiny bump on the bone in the X-ray, but a tiny bump is enough to induce significant pain.
The ER doctor splinted my finger and told me to come back the next day to see an orthopedist. He prescribed me a very strong painkiller and a muscle relaxer, to reduce the pressure of the muscles on the healing bone.
Little miss Muscle Relaxer the next day (that's me) greatly enjoyed staring at the fish in the "Wattana Ocean" while waiting for her orthopedist appointment. (Wattana is the name of the hospital.)
The orthopedist was happy to see that I could bend my lower finger joint without pain, so he decided that I do not need the splint and can instead just protect the broken part with gauze. He believes that, because this is a non-displaced fracture, it should heal quickly, probably in a couple of weeks (so fast for a fractured bone!!). I will have a follow-up appointment with him in a week.
For now, I enjoy all of the bones, muscles, organs in my body that are working as they are meant to. I enjoy not being sick, not being itchy, not being in pain - although that's primarily due to the drugs at this moment, but I'll take it!
This concludes my post about my mixed health in the past month. It has certainly been a roller coaster, but man am I grateful to be where I am now. Life happens, it's all part of being human.
May you be well! And may we all steer clear of hospital visits for a little while...
🏥
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