At the hospital & Now Recovering.....

---

.....I believe i left off right after the Meditation course in Thailand. It seems a long time since this happened, so many things went on...After the meditation retreat, i travelled up north to Chiang Mai with Denis a very nice kind-hearted french friend that i met at the meditation course. We spent some days visiting temples, walking around and just getting a bit of the flavor of this cultural capital in Thailand....

After few days, we decided to split, i got an invitation to WWOOF at a new place in Takek, Laos just south of Vientiane the capital so i got excited about the possibility to take care of this property in the jungle, spend some time alone, because the owner was travelling all the time, practice some Yoga, meditation, everything seemed just perfect...the second day i got there i started to feel a terrible pain in my back, just like something was breaking inside, a pain up & down my spine and the lower back, i didn't know what was going on, the place seemed like paradise to me, though, i was feeling horribly stressed out and in pain...That night and the two following days i spent most of the night with very high fever, and having all kinds of nightmares. During the days, i felt extremely exhausted so i slept all day long, i thought it was probably something i had eaten so i was drinking lots of water and waiting to get better, until the 3rd night where i did reach a serious point of sickness, during the night, i tried to get up and go to the toilet but my feet failed me, as i tried to run back to bed, i blacked out and fell to the floor hitting my forehead against the floor very hard, then the upper part of my eyebrow started bleeding and so it went on all night....I wasn't now just high in fever but with a wound bleeding and a terrible headache from the fall....

Next morning, i decided that i really needed to go to the hospital and there i went. Luckily i met "Bun", the co-owner of the property i was living at, he used to live in France for a longtime so he could speak very good french and he took me to the hospital and kinda talk to the doctors explaning what symptoms i had. I ended up being hospitalized for 6 long exhausting days. After 'Bun" left me there, i felt literally left behind and totally alone and so i was, all of a sudden, i had 4 or 5 nurses all speaking to me in Lao, asking me questions, teaching me words i couldn't understand, i was in a hospital bed with 5 other people, with a needle in my vein and Serum dropping down. I have never felt so crippled in my life, it was an odissey just to get out of bed and go to the toilet, carrying the plastic bag of serum with me and the metal pole holding it....

Because of having hit my forehead so bad the night before, i started experiencing a terrible migraine that kept me 30 hours awake. I wasn't even able to close my eyes, i tried asking the nurses for a pill to either put me to sleep or take away the headache but no success at all, the language barrier was stronger. I was desperate, exhausted, i had spent the longest 30 hours of my life, i had fever, backpains and a non-stop desire to vomit every 5 minutes....I can't even continue talking much about this without feeling all that desperation again inside of me. I lived a nightmare during 6 long days eating very little, i don't know how i got the strength from to kind of recovering and ask the doctor to let me go 2 days before my time. I couldn't take it anymore, all i was dreaming of was being able to eat again, and being able to stand up without having to carry that metal pole and having that uncomfortable needle stuck in my vein....Up until this day, i never understood if i had caught malaria or anything else....

I really don't know why all this happened and what i learned from it, i guess some experiences are more difficult to understand than others. I did try to remain positive and accept the things the way they were but sometimes i am just not that strong, i am weak, vulnerable and i break into thousand pieces...I remembered very well a comment i made in one of my journals, saying that i had experienced the deepest loneliness, well i took that back during one of those nights...being in the hospital in such pain without being able to communicate much, not having a friend or just someone to talk to and spending most of the day looking through a window, that was deep sad loneliness....

....I finally left the hospital stumbling a bit, still dizzy and feeling weak but my goal was just to leave and go as far as possible from this place, the place itself and seeing myself in that condition was actually making me sicker....I went back to the house, spent the night, tried to eat something and slept. Next morning, i packed up my things and went to "Bun's" minimarket in Takek to say good-bye....He was a very kind and gentle man, he used to send me food and drinks to the hospital every morning with some laotian people(which i gave all away to the other patients, i couldn't take a bite for days). He took me to the bus station, then i went off to Vientiane the laotian capital....

Now, i am still here & thankfully alive, i have found a dorm bed in a guesthouse, i have been eating more and more each day, recovering, trying to have fruit everyday and take it very easy. Most of symptoms dissappeared and i could say that i am almost ready to continue my trip...I am still debating what to do and where to go next, for the moment, i have been reading 2 fascinating books so different from each other but at the end so similar:

THE POWER OF NOW - A guide to spiritual enlightement


THE ALCHEMIST


...This is life at the moment, i continue learning, reading, thinking....on and on....

Love,
Andres

---

Comments

[chepis]

aaaaayyy
ay mi amor! que durezaaaa suena como una historia de pelicula! que experiencia!!! gracias por mantenernos siempre en contacto con lo que te pasa... me alegro que te hayas recuperado de la enfermedad, pecao mi amor, y tras de eso se cae! que pecaito!!!! contanos por donde sigue tu camino!!! un abrazo grande y mucha luz

[damon]

you truly captured enough of that experience to make it real for me; what a journey inside.