Phew! That Was a Close One

Woke up this morning, and thought I had swine flu! Turns out it was just a little food poisoning. But as you can imaging, there's nothing quite like waking up, feeling like shit, and thinking "wow, now I'm gonna spend the next 7 days quarantined in a foreign hospital".

Now, since this blog aims to keep it real, speaking truth to power, this posting is going to contain some graphic descriptions of what it's like to think you have swine flu. I feel this is necessary as a public health message. After all, if you know me you know how seriously I take my public health messaging. This is real life, people! At least, it's a real life. Hmm, maybe Clinton was right, and it does depend on what the meaning of is is. And since this story (dare I say this tragedy?) actually took place earlier today, maybe I should say 'this was real life, people'?

Let me set the stage... I woke to a hot and balmy morning in Hong Kong, at approximately 5am. Immediately, I knew something was not right as I had a severe stomach cramp, along with mild nausea. I don't know about you, but I normally don't wake up this way. As I lay contemplating this unfortunate turn of events, and whether I'd have to call in sick in the first week of my internship, things started to go downhill. Considering how the day started, you can image that that ride was none too pleasant. For the next few hours, I alternated between sitting on or crouching over my toilet.

In normal times, these... activities? would be unpleasant. They're even worse when you've been exposed to a barage of public health messages talking about swine flu, which tell you to get yourself to a doctor immediately! And looking at quarantine for 7 days? Not a fun prospect, no matter how necesary.

Of course, the fact that I could barely crawl to the bathroom and back meant I really wasn't going anywere. I kept a positive attitude, each "session" in the bathroom followed by the thought "alright, that can't possible keep happenng, not could it?" Oh, it could. Around 9am I decide that I'm close enough to death that I should probably head downstairs to the clinic to start a panic in the hostel. But this requires timing. After all, there's only a few minutes after the purge that I feel good enough to move. So, methodical guy that I am, I formulate a plan. I'm on the 8th floor here. The clinic is on the ground floor. The elevator is a little slow, and when it has to go to another floor first, it can take up to a few minutes. A few minutes that I may not have! Cool cucumber that I am, wait fo the next round in the bathroom. After a few minutes of misery I finish up. I know I've only got a few minutes at best, so I rush around my room gathering my money and identication, my laptop and power, and anything else I'd want to have with me for my pending trip to the quarntine ward at the hospital. It was like watching Batman puttering in the Batcave, except I think it's a bit more well-lit in here. And as expected, time ran out. No time for me to head downstairs as the horror struch again. But I was secure in my knowledge that phase I had been completed, and now it was simply a matter of time before I implemented phase II.

After my next visit to the torture chamber that my bathroom had become, I quickly threw on my trusty Converse All Stars (cause what better shoe to wear running to a health clinic? Always, always represent), donned my trusty hospital mask and headed out the door. I could only hope that the elevator would be there waiting for me. With the Mission Impossible them running through my head (that's not really true. I've actually had the Helloween album "Pink Bubbles Go Ape" running through my head. Love that album) I hurried down the hallway, hoping against hope. That hope turned to despair as I saw a group of hostel workers exit the elevator ahead, and I knew I was too far away to catch the lift. As I sit waiting for my ride, I wondered if I'm gonna be able to hold it together. Trooper that I am, I just sucked it up and kept things under control!

The door opens to the now familiar "baht-bao" (at least that's what it sounds like to me. Can my Cantonese-speaking friends chime in here?) and I hurry in. On my way down, I wonder what I should tell the people downstairs. Should I go into panic mode and say "get me a frigging ambulance! We have no time!"? Or perhaps I should play it cool and say "hey, I'm not feeling well, so I thought I should see a doctor. Just in case". Luckily there's a clinic on the ground floor, so after I went with option 2, they just said to go down there. Of course, it had been a few minutes, and I was fading fast.

I hurried down to the clinic just as the bad was really coming back. I tried to convey the seriousness of the situation, but I'm not sure they believed me. I had to make another trip to the bathroom at this point (it had only been about 5 minutes. Seemed like forever), that's the schedule I was on. After suffering a bit more, the doctor (a nice young lady... "Hello there") saw me. I was like "I think I have swine flu. What do we do". Luckily, she disagreed. I wondered how she could stay so calm when faced with my obviously impending death. But calm she remained. She gave me a shot of some medicine for the stomach issues, as I couldn't eat or drink anything. By this time, I had been sick so often I was pretty tapped out. It was at that point where I was seriously considering just throwing back a bottle of water just so I'd have something in my stomach to vomit. She didn't seem to think that was a great idea, and I defered to her judgment. This time.

After being assured that it wasn't swine flu, I pretty much just wanted to return to my room to suffer in private. However, as I'm staying alone, the doctor was loathe to let me leave. Solution? I mentioned that I could call my friend Lin, who is staying down the hall from me, and ask him to pick up some stuff from the trusty 7-11 down the street. I was obviously in no shape to walk, but hopefully whatever hit me hadn't hit him (in truth, I had actually wondered if he was feeling as sick as I was, since we had eaten dinner together last night. Luckily, it was just me). So, nice doctor-lady let me go back to my room to rest.

With my fears of swine flu erased, I simply waited things out. After a few hours, whatever it was pretty much ran its course. I'm in the post-illness stage now, of barely being able to move. But at least I'm not sick anymore. It was a pretty miserable morning for me. Not to mention that I'll have to miss tomorrow's work, also. Let's hope we can just pick thinkgs up Monday morning.

Moral of the story: don't order the soup. Which is sad, because it was really good. Unfortunately, I think I have a psycosomatic aversion to soup, so I'll probably avoid ordering it anytime soon. Sad. But hey, at least it wasn't swine flu!