How to Piss Off a Doctor

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I spent about four hours yesterday afternoon at a hospital in Ha Long City.

Waking up in the middle of the night on the beach in Ha Long Bay, I felt dizzy and disoriented, which was weird since I was not drunk (weird that I felt strange, not that I was sober).

By morning I was feverish and chilled despite the intense heat, and could barely raise my voice to ask a tent-mate for help. However, once she understood that I was ill, Breanna rushed off to get ice and cold cloths, provide me with pills from her stash, and inform our tour manager.

After enduring four hours by boat to get back to our disembarkment point in Ha Long City, I had proceeded on to vomiting and was unable to keep down the rehydration packets that I'd been guzzling.

I asked to be taken to a doctor. Since I hate seeking medical help except in extreme conditions, and since the prospect of seeking any medical assistance in Vietnam was scary, you should know that it was pretty bad.

Fortunately, a guardian angel had come along on the trip with me, in the form of a girl named Michelle. She volunteered to go with me to the hospital and stay with me until I was well enough to leave for Hanoi. Along with our Vietnamese tour company office go-to man, Mr. Zong, they took me to the local hospital.

After having seen the horrors of some backwater African hospitals, this was reassuringly less disgusting. Although once I was in my shared room with a tuberculosis patient (I'm pretty sure), a group of Vietnamese women came to stare through the window in the door at me, and I'm pretty sure they were still around when the nurse pulled up my shirt and bra to attach the EKG monitor.

Flashing the locals was not a big deal to me at the time, I was so out of it. But in the daze of my delirium I could still make out some conversations Michelle had via our translator Mr. Zong with the doctor.

"Why does she need an x-ray? She doesn't have any problems with her chest."

"Why do you want to give her something for her throat? She doesn't have any problems with her throat."

"What is that needle you are about to stick in her arm. Don't do that!"

"Can we just get an IV drip and see if she gets better?"

"Can we get some face masks to put over our mouths and noses?"

Essentially, the doctor did not know what might be the problem and wanted to run every test in his gamut. I also imagine it would bring in some nice cash for the hospital. I would hate to think that anyone would take advantage of a sick woman who could barely talk, but then again I'm not sure if the Hippocratic oath is around in Southeast Asia.

Meanwhile, the TB patient next to me was hacking away while someone did what we're pretty sure was the equivalent of "bleeding" or leeching her back.

Finally they agreed to give me the saline IV, and I had a nervous moment when the shaky-handed nurse stuck a needle in me in a rather brutal fashion.

When the doctor turned up a couple of hours later with a smorgasbord of unlabeled pills for me, Michelle once again stepped up to the plate, so much so that the doctor threw up his hands and I was pretty sure wanted to kick us out. We had to explain that in the US, patients usually get an explanation of their treatment and are allowed to decide whether they want it or not.

She went on to negotiate the bill, get a copy for my insurance, and arrange a hotel for the night with Mr. Zong.

I don't know what I would have done without her. It was frightening enough to be sick in such a strange place, but it kept occurring to me, "What if I hadn't been on the tour, or if someone hadn't been willing to stay with me?"

The long shot is that I am on my way to recovery. For those of you who are interested, we still don't know what it was; probably an onset of heat stroke and some traveler's, erm, bowel troubles (which manifested themselves much later). I have just eaten my first real meal in two days - a bowl of delicious Pho (see picture), and am settled down in an A/C double room with Michelle. Will see how I'm doing tomorrow.

I won't lie that there were quite a few moments, in the worst of my sickness, that I just wanted to go home. When I got back to the hostel in Hanoi today, the cream in the coffee was that I couldn't find my backpack in the left luggage room. At that point I actually started looking up plane tickets back to Hong Kong and the US. Fortunately it had just been punted up to the very top back corner of the luggage rack, so I will not have to re-stock everything that I so carefully put together over the months preceding my trip.

My boyfriend, when he heard about all this, said, "Oh, no!" But he then reminded me of an article we'd once read about things men don't want to do with their girlfriends:

"No, honey, I don't want to go backpacking around some third-world country, catch some exotic disease, and get treated in a hospital where they are still mastering medieval medicine."


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Photos

My First Meal
It's not mom's chicken noodle soup, but pho is pretty great stuff.

Comments

[amber]

Oh yuck! Sorry you ran into trouble so early on, but glad it wasn't too serious and that you're on the mend.

[Liz D]

Thank the lord
Thank the lord that your bag was not stolen, and that Michelle was there to help you. You survived your first tricky challenge. Hats off to her for running interference with the hospital doc. I think you will have more challenges, and your stuff may get stolen at some point. But this was a good learning experience -- you can survive things like this. But you should also be careful. Hang in there, Miss Becky.

[Helen]

Not what you were expecting..
OMG you poor thing! That must have been pretty scary for you, what a nightmare! Nice of Michelle to stay with you throughout your brief stay in hospital that must have been quite a weight of your mind while the Dr’s played at being Dr’s. His name wasn’t Mengeles was it??? Stay safe. H.

[drofykceb]

Michelle
Nah...she lives in San Francisco, though. She moved on into Laos yesterday, so I'm wishing her the very best!