The Humilities and Advantages of Falling Ill: In transit, Siem Reap to Bumrungrad International Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand

(Note: this is a continuation of the below story, documenting my falling ill and subsequent visit to a hospital in Thailand)

Ratha doesn’t sleep. As Sophal snores lightly on the tiled floor of my room, Ratha is tense, poised, back against the white stucco wall of my bedroom, long arms draped gracefully over kneecaps topping lanky legs, watching every shallow rise and fall of my chest with intensity. His eyes are wide, fearful, piercing through the dark of my room, eerily glowing in the moonlight filtering through my curtained windows. Twice an hour he dutifully rises, soaks the towels and shirts that cover my body, before resuming his post at the wall opposite me, watching, waiting for any sign that my condition is worsening, ready to jump into immediate action

Delirious dreams drag me from the tangible world of logic and reason and drop me into the aorta of an eerie, bustling megalopolis, yet I’m spontaneously, completely alone, walled in by a sea concrete high-rises, while hundreds of thousands of streets lead infinitely in every direction, packed to the hilt with smiling faces on motos and bikes that pass in a blur, only an infinite march of slightly upturned, knowing, mocking, cheshire cat smiles discernible amidst the mayhem. I wrestle with my quasi-nightmare, throwing sheets and pillows haphazardly around the bed, fighting this invisible force with every iota of strength pulsating in my tired being, until respite comes, jolting me awake and back to the cause and effect physical world around me.

The micro-organisms feasting happily on my intestinal lining finally wreck their full havoc; I hobble into the bathroom for my first brutal encounter with the overwhelming reality of dysentery. My body’s digestive tract has been completely decommissioned; nothing is to be absorbed for quite some time now, and as I haplessly attempt to quench my thirst, it becomes increasingly clear that the fluids which are becoming more and more critical must find another way to my cells.

Dawn creeps into my room, finding me dehydrated and delirious, my torso still on fire and my temperature still hovering at 40 degrees. Ratha’s usual gentle face has distorted into a perpetual grimace, his eyes red from lack of sleep, brow furrowed almost past the point of recognition. Before long the first rays of sun meander across my room and illuminate his tired eyes. Sopheap arrives, and we discuss my situation briefly. The international hospital in Bangkok is one of the best in the world, he says. I nod weakly. Thirty minutes later, we climb onto the back of a tuk-tuk bound for Siem Reap International Airport.

Siem Reap at dawn, seen from the back of a tuk-tuk, is stunning, and I feel slightly revived by the magnificent ride, coupled with the brisk, cool current of fresh air. We arrive at the airport, and I bid a distressing farewell to my companions. Although I know I must leave, it kills me to do so. I stumble into the airport terminal, unsure of what the next few hours of transit will bring.

The flight from Siem Reap to Bangkok is very short; between 35 and 50 minutes. Yet, one is still engaging in international travel, and must deal with the necessary hurdles. Security, immigration, customs, etc. These take time. I arrived at the Siem Reap airport at 7:30 a.m., and would not arrive to the hospital until mid-afternoon.

The Siem Reap airport was built with great expectations that have yet to prove realistic; countless rows of seats are empty, and the cavernous interior harbors only small groups of sunburnt, smiling tourists exuberantly trading stories of their southeast Asian adventures before returning to their western lives. Several of these good natured souls throw a smile or a friendly word towards me, in an attempt to raise some friendly banter between fellow travelers. Prostate on the airport floor, head rocked between my hands, red eyes trained skywards, counting the lazy rotations of the wooden fans overhead in an attempt to trick my brain into ignoring the agonizing contractions of my lower digestive tract, my response is somewhere between snarling and wheezing. As I stumble onto the plane, they all now keep their distance from this strange, diseased interloper in their midst. Every time the line of passengers stops, I collapse onto anything capable of supporting my weight, and as my eyes dance across the floor struggling for clarity and fighting a wave of unconsciousness, a circle widens as passengers inch away, fearful of this terrible and maligned ailment. The plane ride continued in this nature, a strange dance, as my neighbors edged as far away as possible in their seats, eyeing me with great suspicion and muttering among themselves of their now treacherous voyage to Bangkok in my midst.

Of course, dysentery isn’t contagious, so I didn’t feel too bad, not that I was particularly capable of these emotions at the time. By the time we landed, I hadn’t eaten a full meal in over 36 hours, and had not retained water since 5 p.m. the previous day. Imagine; your mouth feels like a bag of cotton balls and every inch of your body screams for the water in the bottle resting in your lap, yet you know you can’t touch a drop of it, lest you submit to a core rocking excursion to the toilet.

This was my internal quandary as we landed. Standing became exponentially difficult, and I leapfrogged my way through the prodigious Bangkok airport, finding an area to lie down for several minutes before being scolded in a flurry of Thai by a security guard, then walking aimlessly until nausea and weakness once more overwhelmed me. I cleared immigration due to the courtesy of a sympathetic Thai immigration officer, cleared custom with my single bag and stumbled into the first taxi I saw. Forty-five minutes later, the impressive heights of Bumrungrad International Hospital towered over me.

Finding a doctor in what is considered one of the best hospitals in the world turned out to be ironically challenging. I’m in Thailand, therefore every hospital worker is speaking English as a second language, with greatly varying degrees of proficiency. I knew I needed an IV and a bed, but I didn’t want to storm into the emergency room and be held up for hours filling out forms in some sanitized hard plastic chair. I entered the first lobby I saw, and in a very matter of fact tone, stated to the receptionist that I was quite sick and needed to see a doctor. Next to her name tag was the inevitable “Trainee” tag. She took one look at my face and sent me scurrying to a different floor, to another trainee, who sent me to a different department in a different building, and so forth. This exasperating game of hospital pong continued until finally I found a more experienced staff member, who realized something was wrong, plopped me into a wheelchair and swept me into an examination room.

Dr. Narendar Malhotra was my savior.

Dark, intelligent eyes are shadowed by the modest white turban that rests upon his head, and a thick beard garbs his chin and cheeks. He speaks softly, comforting me with a quick arabic accent as he pats my shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you admitted and intravenously hydrate you, then you’ll feel much better.”

He helps me back into my wheelchair and I am whisked away again to another distant wing of this enormous hospital, now into my room for the time being, introduced to the four walls I will know intimately, the clock with the golden hands whose slow march I will count endlessly, calculating angles between hours, minutes and seconds to pass the time as it ticks away. It is my home, and as I am helped into a delightfully soft bed, I begin immediately drifting out of consciousness. A sharp prick wakes me, followed by the unique and indescribable feeling of blood being drawn out of my body. Soon, the nurse switches the fresh vial of blood for one containing a clear substance, injecting it into the IV, down the tube leading into the leftmost vein on the top of my hand, from which it courses wonderfully throughout the rest of my body, bringing beautiful, euphoric, sublime pleasure to every cubic inch of tissue, quickening pulse, dilating pupils and erupting the custard colored walls around me in a phantasmagorical galaxy of technicolored stars. Through fading vision, I see a large bag of fluid connected to the tube, and so begins the gloriously rhythmic mechanical tap-tap-tapping of the IV as it administers dextrose, sodium and glucose dissolved in water to my body at 150 milliliters an hour. The euphoria lends way to fatigue, followed by overwhelming exhausting as my eyelids almost audibly drop over my eyeballs, sending me into blissful, dreamless, sound sleep.