Parasites, viral nasties, food poisoning – getting sick in Thailand is commonplace for travellers. I knew this, but still wasn’t prepared for it when it happened. Here’s the article which hijacked my week 3 of the Nomad Trials, Thailand…Viral Edition.

Day 1 : Little bit of Karma

Crumpled up with a high fever, headache, cramps and aching from my toes to my eyebrows; I was not in a good way.

I had been at a Buddhist meditation class with Aussie friend, Sharon, learning how to still my mind (think Homer Simpson dialogue for full duration). The teacher, David was so calming, and so insightful that I wished I could have stayed but a client call was looming.

Feeling a bit sheepish about foregoing the chance of Nirvana for a quick buck, I slithered out, apologetically. David smiled, warmly, totally unphased and unjudging. Of course:)

On the way there, it hit me; a wall of sweat, nausea and cramp. Karma? Or the street-food omelette I had picked up on the way there?

For the rest of the day I tried to ignore it, drank plenty and got on with things. By day two though, It had doubled in severity and I needed help. My travel insurance broker told me to go get checked out and I looked for the nearest hospital.

Day 2 : Sardines and a Doughball

I caught a Grab bike (like Uber only cooler) to the Maharaj Nakorn Hospital, and took a ticket to join the ranks of about 200 Thai locals lined up waiting to be seen, with my puffy fevered face, looking like an uncooked doughball in the crowd.My Thai was still clearly insufficient. I gestured ‘sick’, ‘fever’ and ‘doctor’ - (may have used the Makaton for ‘Miss Polly had a Dolly’) to explain my condition with some success. I was there for 5 hours, but with negative results on the Dengue fever, I took myself off home, my fevered brain singing. At least I knew now how to get there if things got worse - (well that and how to call for the doctor to come quick, quick, quick...) The hopelessness of the day was softened by my friend, Sharon arriving with snacks and some dry humour to mop up the self-pity, but it kept coming and going - one minute fine and the next, dying in a corner.  Another really bad night over, I was instructed to go to the Private Hospital nearby - and to demand treatment.

Day 3 - ‘...On fifth day, if you unlucky, you die’

The sparkling clean Chiang Mai Ram Hospital was lit up like a football stadium, and sported a super happy receptionist. This was short lived, however, as it became clear that we did not share an understanding of nursery rhyme Makaton. She called for English-speaking backup, and a guy, maybe in his early twenties appeared.  I had scared my children that morning with a facetime call, but he wasn’t to know that I didn’t usually have the face and hands of a 90 year old smoker, puckered from dehydration. I explained the cramps, fever, stiff neck, etc and was ushered into the waiting room of a specialist. What he specialised in, I have no idea. He could have been a Muay Thai expert - it would have made little difference.  ‘The insurance say not to pay anything’ my daughter told me on the phone.  But the hospital cashier disagreed - albeit in a very agreeable and super-happy way. More tests, no treatment and another 3000 baht down, still fevered and without an end in sight, I was not good. My kids were now convinced that instead of taking my 80-year-old ashes on a pilgrimage to Machu Picchu (I chose that just to annoy them:), they’d be picking up my puckered remains from Chiang Mai in a binbag.  I headed back home, exhausted.

Day 4 : Help Arrives! Sort of...

Sometime in the early hours of my 4th day, a doctor and two assistants, all quite ample in figure, appeared at my teeny tiny room, negotiating each other like gumballs in a jam jar as they set up their equipment in the few feet of space around my bed.  Feeling both awkward and past caring in equal measures, I simply watched as they bumped around each other to raise my arms, roll me over and pinch me in different places. After initial observations, the GP finally spoke. ‘You need more Dengue test’. Enough with the Dengue already, I thought. She explained further. ‘We don’t know Dengue until fourth day. Blood platelet count drops, then..’ - - she looked me straight in the eye - ‘on fifth day - if you unlucky, you die’. I sh*t you not. For added dark mirth, they tried to set up a drip, by leaning out of the hotel window and trying to attach the saline bag to a rail on the outside of the building, dropping the tube momentarily on the floor to a bit of muttering (perhaps the Thai equivalent of ‘Buddha kissed it; devil missed it’).

However, after four failed attempts to find a vein, they gave up and simply told me I was severely dehydrated and needed to drink as much water as I could, leaving me with a pile of antibiotics, antihystamines, painkillers, electrolytes and expectorants - as well as a Mystery Gift jab in the bum. So if I had a cold, a bacterial infection, an allergy - or something that responded to the mystery serum - I’d likely survive now... On the back of this I expect, I received a call at 1am that morning to go back to the hospital for an emergency Dengue test. A few hours later, relieved of yet another 2000 baht, I left to walk back to my room, convinced that if I could just spent a few days in bed without all of this medical intervention, I’d probably get better. It was 3am in the morning, and still pitch black as I stumbled back. The air was cool, and the normally constant stream of cars had died down to the odd thuk-thuk. Groggy from pain-killers, I failed miserably to avoid the cockroaches that scattered out from under my feet in random directions as I walked home, and didn’t even flinch at the rats pouring out of the hundreds of bin bags lined along the pavements, as I noisely crunched my way past them. I counted countless stray cats and dogs as I scanned the pavements for snakes spotted on the same path not days before. The smell of rotting fish and old skewered meat which had been pulled out from the bags by rummaging animals followed me home.  Actually maybe it was me, I thought...

I felt very alone in a suddenly hostile place, and wondered for the first time if I actually was going to croak here.  Better than an Elvis death, I thought to myself.  But there was no humour there.  I started thinking of home and how this would not have happened on my little Scottish island cocoon...

Day 5 - An Aussie and a Buddhist Save the Day

‘The Insurance broker says you MUST NOT pay for treatment mum. DON’T PAY. OK?’ My daughter kept insisting on the phone.  But not paying for getting sick in Thailand is not easy. There is something oddly jarring about how Thai’s enforce their rules with such politeness and warmth that you are unaware you’re complying. For the fourth day in a row, I was so gently - and with the broadest of smiles - guided to the cashier, flanked by the same diminutive bowl-cut-haired male heavies. Like slowly being push-hugged into oncoming traffic by Tellytubbies. My purse was empty and I didn’t even have money for a ride home.  My phone was dead and as I prepared to walk back, the heavens opened outside.  I mean like a giant sky-sized bucket had just been kicked over.  I was this close to having a hairy tantrum on their super shiny floor, mortifying every Thai in the hospital in the process. Suddenly, a welcome face appeared through the automatic doors; Sharon, bedraggled from the rain - accompanied by David the Buddhist teacher. I gave them a hug like they were the first people I’d seen in days. Sharon smiled ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ Apparently they’d been going round the hospitals trying to find my puffy pale face in the crowds to no avail. I felt a wee glow, and thanked them both. ‘This is what we do here’ David said. ‘We look after each other. It’s the Thai way. Now let’s go eat’. I gratefully slid into his car and we headed for some food. Over some Khao Pad Gai, David put a different slant on my view of the last few days. I talked about the drama of sitting for 5 hours in a public hospital filled wall to wall with sick patients. He explained that the overcrowding was due to community spirit rather than concentrated sickness. ‘Of 200 people, maybe only a quarter of them are actually sick, with the rest being friends and family, coming along to support them and keep their spirits up. People don’t suffer on their own. It’s different to Western countries where we fear putting others out. Life is experienced as a group, a family; a community, through thick and thin’. He explained further, ‘For this reason, people tend to go to friends and family first, then the pharmacy. The pharmacist is pretty close to a doctor, knows the area and the people, and will recommend treatment according to their knowledge of what’s doing the rounds. Friends and family fill in the gaps with local information and treatment is really personalised.’ ...and this holistic approach is reflected throughout the whole community; you ask when in need and give freely in return - and the system nourishes itself. I’ve spoken to a lot of ex-pats now who have fully embraced the local community, and find this to be the case for them too. There’s little distinction of where you’re from and what you have; with little attachment to ‘things’, a weaker sense of ‘yours and mine’, so there’s less crime, (let’s not be too Pollyanna - it exists, for sure, David told me) but on the whole everybody keeps the metaphorical ‘community garden’ flourishing regardless of whose patch it is. We also talked about the strays, affected as I was by these poor souls, and how sad it was to see so many out on the streets. David explained that Thai’s respect all life, which is why strays are often fed by street vendors, left to live without fear of being killed or mistreated; I observed this myself as we were even asked to step carefully around tiny worms/snakes on the floor tiles of a museum we had visited after the rains one day. With this information, I pondered on confessing that I had probably obliterated about 50 cockroaches on the way home earlier that morning. And maybe even, from my dark place, not completely hated it. Inside voice, I decided.

Day 6 - 7: A little wiser, a little stronger

Whilst David’s outlook didn’t quite erase the nightmare of the last 7 days, it did help me to get a more balanced perspective on my experience and reminded me of what I love about this place. They say that it’s in the flaws and cracks of a thing that its beauty becomes apparent - and I think getting sick in Thailand actually gave me a better balanced view of what it would be like to stay here. It took a full week to get the virus out of my system, and to stop looking like an angry prune. Stirring after a peaceful non-fevered night for the first time this morning, I woke to the sound of the amazing dawn chorus that accompanies every daybreak here. The night-time Geckos, toads and crickets fall silent just before sunrise, and then daybreak splits open to a cacophony of bird calls, really enthusiastic cockerels, and magical Buddhist chanting, carried from the temples through the still morning air. It’s a truly amazing sound that sets you up for the day. I hadn’t heard it for a while.  I think I had chosen not to. I look down from my window at the clean streets - every shred of rubbish, gone - as it is every morning.  Everything feels brand new again.  Thai’s believe that each moment exists in its own right, separate and unique, and sometimes - just for an instant - you get a glimpse of that impermanence, and it’s incredibly freeing. I washed, dressed, packed my laptop ....and put my rose-tinted spectacles squarely back on my face, where they belonged... ...careful to pack my anti-bac gel, just in case. It’s all about balance...