Dengue Fever!!

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Just letting you know that I made it to Bangkok OK. I was going to write earlier but things have been a bit hectic. I arrived at the hostel I was supposed to be meeting Scott in and went up to the room and there was just a scrawled message from him saying that he had a fever and was going to the hospital, but no more info. The people in the hostel were really helpful though and called the hospital to confirm he was there and wrote all the details down in Thai to give to a taxi driver. I got to the hospital and someone showed me to his ward, full of old sick men. He was in a bed in the corner attached to a drip! It turned out that he had been diagnosed with dengue fever, but a more serious strain called dengue haemorrhagic fever. He had woken up at 5am covered in sweat and stumbled down to reception, where the hostel people put him into a taxi to the hospital. The fever was stage 1, but stage 2 was heavy bleeding through nose and mouth, stage 3 was little red spots on arms and legs, and stage 4 was possible death! I stayed at the hospital until about 11pm then got a taxi back home. It was a good job I was there as the hospital assumes people have relatives to help them, e.g bringing food and even toilet paper!

The next day (Tuesday) I went back to the hospital and it turned out they thought it was malaria instead. They did tests and ruled that out and then decided it might be enteric fever (never heard of it) or a virus. He was let home but has to go back on Friday for further tests. He can't really do a lot as he is too weak. I have been going to the stalls and getting take-away food for him, and even found a take-away pizza yesterday! I lied earlier, the hospital does bring food around, but it is just soggy rice slop and some nasty meat or fish, all of which has no flavour - very alien for Thailand!

So, we haven't really been doing much. I am going to just spend today shopping on Khao San road (I might as well as things are so much cheaper here, so I might as well stock up on clothes). I might go to the floating markets tomorrow too. Not sure if Scott will be up to it though.

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