Night and day of purgatory.

Night and day of purgatory.

550pm 10.9.8

I had the most painful night of recent memory on the 4th.


For the last few days, I’d been having a really bad cough, which once had some blood in the sputum. And I determined it HIGHLY unlikely that it was from TB, as I’ve had TB, as I haven’t had time for TB to develop in India, and I’ve only had the cough in India. I was pretty sure it was an infection (see a previous post), that had developed from an allergy. The cough would wake me periodically while I slept, and making my sleep restless.

But this I had gotten used to… the new part started with bed bugs, my apparently weekly visitor. As I was sleeping I felt some bites on my feet, so I got up, and checked the bed… finding bites on my feet but no culprits, and finding culprits ON MY PILLOW and then finding bites on my face in the mirror. Not having any of my typical sleeping gear (sheets, pillow and light blanket/towel), I frantically and dazedly (mind you in the middle of the night) searched the mostly clean blanket that came with the room for bed bugs. Finding none, I folded it up and laid it on the tile floor, as far from the bed as possible (which was under the TV).



Now, I was also thinking from the time I came into my room about mosquitoes, and I’ve discovered that if you keep the windows closed and the fan on, you’re less likely to be bitten… so now without a blanket to keep me from the chill of the fan, I made the decision to keep the window closed and the fan off… making the room a bit stifling, but not overly so.

And I went to sleep.

Then I woke up to what I’m guessing were mosquito bites, though they could have been other non-bed bug-bug bites. Some thing I’ve learned lately is how a bed bug bite looks… it tends to have one small nodule surrounded by an increasingly large red bump. The bites grow for the first two days and then start dissipating over the next week for me, leaving the nodule for a week longer (unless I pop it). Mosquito bites tend to be irregularly raised shapes that go away in a day or two.

When I woke up I also began to sneeze a little, and noticed the right side of my lower lip was swelling. Assuming that I was probably sneezing from the blanket, and that my lip was going to go away eventually, I tried sleeping in a chair after calling Michelle. Michelle suggested an epipen, as my mouth by now was itching and my body was itching, but not knowing if it would help much or for long or if I really would need medical attention afterwards, I asked her to contact our allergists and find out.

She called me back and from our allergists secretary’s response, I decided that the epipen wouldn’t help much. And as the epipen was my only allergy medicine, I was pretty much left to heal in time.

At this point I forget if I was vomiting yet, but around this time I began to get incredibly dizzy, vomiting and having diarrhea. Much like what had happened in Kolkata, when I suspected it was my anti-malaria medicine. Conveniently, today happened to be a Thursday, which is the day that I take my Mefloquinonine.

Because I didn’t have many minutes, I got off the phone with Michelle, and asked her to call me back in an hour… She didn’t call me. I forget why exactly, but later that day she ended up in the ER due to sickness also.

Well, at this point, I tried to sleep in the chair… which was somewhat successful between vomiting, but which eventually caused me to lay back down, but on my dirty clothes, in case I wasn’t thorough enough with my check of the blanket for bugs.

In my delirium I was wondering why God keeps giving me bed bugs and banes to my sleep, and I decided that it was because I value sleep so much. And most people can attest to that… my college fraternity’s nickname for me was Rip Van Winkle even… and I also decided that I’ll have to work on how much I value sleep.

In the morning, I tried to call Anthony, but his cell was blocking calls… so I tried to call Father Arul, but it was mass time. By this point I had made the decision that I had to go to a doctor, though I was hoping not a hospital. So I went downstairs after I vomited (making it unlikely for me to vomit soon), and asked when was checkout, and they basically said 24 hrs from check in, so I went back upstairs and tried to sleep. Eventually Fr. called back, I told him I couldn’t come to Kutta and I needed to go to a doctor. He contacted Anthony, and eventually Anthony came, got me into an autorickshaw, and to the hospital “casualty” department (AKA. ER).

The ER was quite quick, as it took about 2 minutes for me to be seen by the first doctor (a surgeon even) and then a minute after he left by the chest doctor (I had taken this as an opportunity to check on my cough). And then I had to vomit after we agreed I had to be admitted until at least evening.

I decided that the general ward would be fine, and then I asked how many people would be there (about 3 others), and agreed again.

In the first few minutes after being wheeled into the ward on a wheelchair, I was stuck with an IV port, had blood drawn, given the MOST PAINFUL injection I recall, injected with a few things in my IV port and then connected to an IV. The painful injection felt like they were sticking the needle even further in, and when I turned to look, they nurse had obviously already administered the injection and had been done for a few seconds… It burned for thirty minutes or so.


(injection of burning sulfur)

And then still dizzy, I went to sleep. Later Anthony came back and brought some food and one of the kitchen guys. This would be the MO of Anthony throughout my visit to the hospital, of bringing someone from one of the businesses in the building of the hotel I stayed in and the hotel I ate at. (By the way, when an Indian says hotel, he can also mean restaurant).



Over my time in the hospital, it became apparent that I’d have to stay overnight as I was still very dizzy; which was the first night I’ve stayed in a hospital in my adult life.

At the end of my hospital stay, I gave away some prayer cards that were touched to mother’s tomb, and some rosaries I had received the day before from Father Bosco… which to my surprise were even popular among the Hindus. My doctor (a Hindu amidst mostly Christians at the hospital) took four!

Then it took almost 2 hours to check out, during which time I went to eat with Anthony and another hotel guy, and came back.


That’s also another thing about the hospital, you only get food if SOMEONE brings outside food to you… I suspect if you had to, you could hire one of the staff to do it for you… but this is definitely a luxury that I think all hospitals should have… FOOD. Lucky for me, Anthony took great care in providing food and making himself available if I needed anything.

(my view)

He was quite a blessing, and when I tried to give him some money for the food he bought, he refused, only allowing me to pay my hospital bills, which included and xray and several tests, and came to a total of 52ish dollars!

Crazy.
710pm