Sickville

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This is a town that noone ever wants to go to, but that many travellers accept is a potential, unplanned detour that can mess with the best laid plans at any time. It's a strange place in some kind of parallel universe that exists alongside the world we know, though while you are in Sickville you can often lose your sense of interest in and energy for this 'real' world.

I, rather unexpectedly, found myself descending into Sickville around the time we reached Varanasi. Though I tried hard to remain in Varanasi and enjoy walking and boating along the ghats of the Ganges, Sickville grabbed a firm grasp on me and I was soon pulled hard and fast into its central piazza.

I can't really say too much about the days I spent in Sickville (apart from the really gross stuff that noone especially needs or wants to read about) as much of it is a bit of a haze. I think the story will be much more interesting from Hero's perspective - but I can tell you a few bits and pieces of what I do recall:

* A vague recollection of a doctor coming and saying something about his heart
* A lovely nurse with perfect teeth sitting cross-legged on my bed giving me multiple very good injections
* A very strange sense that I was vomiting (a lot) from multiple different stomachs or beings but that, curiously, all the other 'matter' was being channeled through the one place rather than from multiple beings
* Having intense all-over body pain, and although I was feeling it (excruciatingly) I was often a distant observer, noting the various sensations with curious interest. For example, the flesh and bones from my lower back down to my thighs felt as though it had been pulverised, but it was also throbbing as though countless fingers were poking at my battered body. Also, the pain in my knees was so intensely sensitive that it was agony for them to touch anything, but with the nausea in my tummy I had no option but to lie on my side. I found all of these such observations somewhat fascinating and marvelled at them, in between having very strange dreams and not being able to focus my attention on or be interested in anything. I believe all this was probably caused by the high fever I'm told I had.
* Days later, lovely Laura carrying my pack while I trudged, unseeing, to the rickshaw that would take us to the train station en route to Delhi. I dreaded this overnight train trip, and it was horrendous
* In the later stages, mentally creating a new list of things that are not my friends, including, but not exclusive to: food, liquids, tablets, train travel (in fact, movement of any kind), vomiting, and light
* And perhaps the clearest memory I have, or sense rather, is of Hero's beautiful eyes, face and voice - she was so wonderful that week in looking after me and taking care of everything. And although my strongest memory of Deb is of her sternly telling me that she had just told my father that I had not been drinking enough oral rehydration solution (as though I was being a wilfully disobedient student in need of chastisement!) I also know from what she and Hero have told me that she also did much to help me get better, so I thank them both (and Doc Jeffie from afar!) deeply for playing doctors and nurses to me :-)

Thanks to them, a bunch of injections and a veritable pill-party concoction, a week later I am well on the road out of Sickville, and am happy to now have returned to London, where I hope to rebuild my relationship with food and water.

A note on vomiting:
Just to clarify, when i say 'vomiting,' I am not referring to your run of the mill, have a chuck and then feel better kind of vom. Oh no. These are the relentless bouts of automated whole-gut-clenching-locked-into-bile-retch of the sort that means you can't breathe until your body eventually releases the stomach muscles, for just long enough to desperately inhale before the next onslaught. The sort of situation in which, had I been in a state to actually care about life, I may have been inclined to wonder about the potential hypoxic damage this vomiting could be having on my brain. Too much information? Sorry...

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