De-Nile of longed-for Pleasures
This is where the narrative takes a bit of a "wobbly", gentle reader.
On the way to the airport from Athens on Friday morning I felt it, the first gripping, colicky pain. It passed, and apart from feeling a desire to inspect the plumbing at Marco Polo Airport on our arrival, all seemed well. However by the time we had boarded the plane this nasty infection (for so it seems to have been) was causing me considerable pain and many times I almost passed out on the flight.
However I did open my eyes to take in the aerial view of Cairo as we approached, and was intrigued at how brown it is. I don’t just mean brown and dry, as in lacking vegetation, although that’s naturally true. But every edifice seems, from the air, to be brown, just a different shade.
We were met by a kind Egyptian man from the tour company on our arrival, and he helped us through immigration without a hitch. Though we’d been advised to leave the purchase of visas until we arrived, I will be eternally grateful to Boak for getting them from the Egyptian Consulate in Sydney before we left, even though they were a little hard to find in Surry Hills. Mahommad then met us at the baggage carousel and cosseted us safely to the Conrad International Hotel beside the Nile in the centre of Cairo whereupon I collapsed on the bed and Boak soon followed, being by now similarly afflicted.
Shortly after, a knock on the door signaled the arrival of a beautiful floral arrangement in colours much happier than I was feeling. “Welcome to Cairo” from Jenny Bowker!! I immediately phoned her and we made Plan A. After our planned weekend of sightseeing (Egyptian museum, Khan Bazaar, Citadel, Pyramids, Sphinx..) we would share a drink at her house on Sunday afternoon before flying south to Luxor very early on Monday morning to join our Nile Cruise.
By now I was shivering with a high fever, but thought that, being a tummy bug, it would be self-limiting and as soon as it was out of my system I’d be OK again.
After a very long night we decided, on Saturday morning, that we both needed a doctor, and the hotel called one in. I received two jabs in the buttocks, Boak one, and shortly afterward two bags of medicines arrived at our door. We slept most of that day, when we weren’t almost passing out on the bathroom floor. Boak improved slowly, but I deteriorated.
I’ll spare you the gory details, gentle reader, except to say that by 11pm I was seeing “red”, quite literally, and in the morning Boak called the doctor again. He jabbed me again (in all I was punctured 15 times – and I hate needles, so you can tell how ill I was that I was able to accept being treated as a human pincushion with equanimity). His verdict was that I needed immediate hospitalization and within the hour I was admitted to Intensive Care in a hospital somewhere in Cairo.
What a strange, lonely experience that was, both sickening and comforting at the same time. It’s not easy to write about this time yet because I’m still feeling very weak and quite nauseous, and thoughts of that time don’t help.
The white-gowned nurses, cheerful gentle Muslim girls (with very little English), had a gentle touch, and when I first crawled onto my bed they very quickly (Boak says within 3 minutes) had me hooked up to a heart monitor, had taken blood to test, had tested my blood glucose, and inserted 2 cannulas into which iv antibiotics and glucose were pouring. I was given a hospital gown to wear, which was not changed until Boak asked for another one for me 3 days later. There was no shower or bath, and no bed sponging happened. The toilet was not a nice place (used by everyone who worked on the ward as well as patients), and to use it I had to first attract the attention of a nurse to disconnect my drips (I taught myself to disconnect the heart monitor), then walk past 2 old men in the beds in the neighbouring bays. Not great when you’ve been admitted with acute diarrhoea!
The pains continued, like relentless unproductive labour pains, and nothing the nurses gave me seeded to subdure their spasmodic grip.
When Boak (now on the improve) arrived back with Jenny Bowker in the afternoon I was overwhelmed! Her lovely friendly, kind face was such a tonic! But the best news was to discover that the doctor treating me was her own doctor – Dr M – and that he also looks after most of the embassy staff. She reassured me that I could have complete confidence in him, something I really needed to hear. God was taking care of me, and Jenny was an angel!! We both appreciated having a friendly Aussie (who spoke enough Arabic) to guide us through the maze of behavioural expectations as well as to support us, and she was so good to Boak who was, I’m sure, feeling almost as alone as I was (though in infinitely more salubrious surroundings!)
Over the next couple of days Jenny kept in touch with us both and brought me treats like cranberry juice, home-made sour cherry jelly and a fresh pomegranate. Dr M visited twice a day and while they continued to run cultures, an abdominal ultrasound and such, he exhorted me to eat lots of good food. Now, I’m usually quite adventurous in my food tastes, but ICU food in an Egyptian hospital had absolutely no appeal. Laughing Cow cheese wedges, bread rolls, stringy cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, natural yoghurt (at room temp), olives, tomato wedges, and a sweet white gelatinous dessert with coconut sprinkled on top. Some of these I ate happily (and indeed would have relished under other circumstances), but many left me nauseous. When Dr M directed that I be given better food, I asked for soup, expecting some whizzed veggie concoction. However cubed carrots and zucchinis swimming in a sea of stock and boiled to within an inch of their lives does not a soup make, in my book.
To be fair, my taste buds have been shot to pieces as a result of all the drugs I was bombarded with. The food was wholesome, and served by concerned nurses who tried their best to interest me in it.
Dr M was very worried and labeled my infection “severe”, so he used a scattergun approach to treat it rather than waiting for lab results and bombarded me with many kinds of antibiotics(a final definitive diagnosis is still to come, in fact). I’ve had many different kinds of antibiotics, and have to continue on oral antibiotics for about 2 more weeks.
Plans for “The Nile in Style”, the tour we’d signed up for, went out the window, as the day for our flight to Luxor came and went.
The pains subsided around midnight Monday night. What a blessing! Dr M had been murmuring about a colonoscopy, and I was NOT going to have one of those here! Not on your Nellie! Never! Ever!
Late Tuesday I was transferred upstairs to a “normal” room. For 3 days I had clutched my mobile phone, a lifeline to friends and family, and waited for that little trill that told me another txt had arrived. I cried so many times when I read the messages of love, and if you sent one I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You now know how precious these txts were to me.
Jenny told us about how often watermelons are injected with water to make them weigh more heavily, and after days of IV rehydration and encouragement to drink at every possible opportunity I started to feel a bit like an Egyptian watermelon myself!
On Wednesday a nurse arrived in the afternoon to take me (mercifully, by wheel chair) to the Medical Centre next door for a repeat ultrasound. I needed to cover up my (skinny) legs with jeans, as we passed many men on the way, and I kept my eyes averted as I waited in the reception area. So many eyes on me because I was the only Anglo Saxon and my fair hair made me very conspicuous. After that I was free to go!
On the way to the airport from Athens on Friday morning I felt it, the first gripping, colicky pain. It passed, and apart from feeling a desire to inspect the plumbing at Marco Polo Airport on our arrival, all seemed well. However by the time we had boarded the plane this nasty infection (for so it seems to have been) was causing me considerable pain and many times I almost passed out on the flight.
However I did open my eyes to take in the aerial view of Cairo as we approached, and was intrigued at how brown it is. I don’t just mean brown and dry, as in lacking vegetation, although that’s naturally true. But every edifice seems, from the air, to be brown, just a different shade.
We were met by a kind Egyptian man from the tour company on our arrival, and he helped us through immigration without a hitch. Though we’d been advised to leave the purchase of visas until we arrived, I will be eternally grateful to Boak for getting them from the Egyptian Consulate in Sydney before we left, even though they were a little hard to find in Surry Hills. Mahommad then met us at the baggage carousel and cosseted us safely to the Conrad International Hotel beside the Nile in the centre of Cairo whereupon I collapsed on the bed and Boak soon followed, being by now similarly afflicted.
Shortly after, a knock on the door signaled the arrival of a beautiful floral arrangement in colours much happier than I was feeling. “Welcome to Cairo” from Jenny Bowker!! I immediately phoned her and we made Plan A. After our planned weekend of sightseeing (Egyptian museum, Khan Bazaar, Citadel, Pyramids, Sphinx..) we would share a drink at her house on Sunday afternoon before flying south to Luxor very early on Monday morning to join our Nile Cruise.
By now I was shivering with a high fever, but thought that, being a tummy bug, it would be self-limiting and as soon as it was out of my system I’d be OK again.
After a very long night we decided, on Saturday morning, that we both needed a doctor, and the hotel called one in. I received two jabs in the buttocks, Boak one, and shortly afterward two bags of medicines arrived at our door. We slept most of that day, when we weren’t almost passing out on the bathroom floor. Boak improved slowly, but I deteriorated.
I’ll spare you the gory details, gentle reader, except to say that by 11pm I was seeing “red”, quite literally, and in the morning Boak called the doctor again. He jabbed me again (in all I was punctured 15 times – and I hate needles, so you can tell how ill I was that I was able to accept being treated as a human pincushion with equanimity). His verdict was that I needed immediate hospitalization and within the hour I was admitted to Intensive Care in a hospital somewhere in Cairo.
What a strange, lonely experience that was, both sickening and comforting at the same time. It’s not easy to write about this time yet because I’m still feeling very weak and quite nauseous, and thoughts of that time don’t help.
The white-gowned nurses, cheerful gentle Muslim girls (with very little English), had a gentle touch, and when I first crawled onto my bed they very quickly (Boak says within 3 minutes) had me hooked up to a heart monitor, had taken blood to test, had tested my blood glucose, and inserted 2 cannulas into which iv antibiotics and glucose were pouring. I was given a hospital gown to wear, which was not changed until Boak asked for another one for me 3 days later. There was no shower or bath, and no bed sponging happened. The toilet was not a nice place (used by everyone who worked on the ward as well as patients), and to use it I had to first attract the attention of a nurse to disconnect my drips (I taught myself to disconnect the heart monitor), then walk past 2 old men in the beds in the neighbouring bays. Not great when you’ve been admitted with acute diarrhoea!
The pains continued, like relentless unproductive labour pains, and nothing the nurses gave me seeded to subdure their spasmodic grip.
When Boak (now on the improve) arrived back with Jenny Bowker in the afternoon I was overwhelmed! Her lovely friendly, kind face was such a tonic! But the best news was to discover that the doctor treating me was her own doctor – Dr M – and that he also looks after most of the embassy staff. She reassured me that I could have complete confidence in him, something I really needed to hear. God was taking care of me, and Jenny was an angel!! We both appreciated having a friendly Aussie (who spoke enough Arabic) to guide us through the maze of behavioural expectations as well as to support us, and she was so good to Boak who was, I’m sure, feeling almost as alone as I was (though in infinitely more salubrious surroundings!)
Over the next couple of days Jenny kept in touch with us both and brought me treats like cranberry juice, home-made sour cherry jelly and a fresh pomegranate. Dr M visited twice a day and while they continued to run cultures, an abdominal ultrasound and such, he exhorted me to eat lots of good food. Now, I’m usually quite adventurous in my food tastes, but ICU food in an Egyptian hospital had absolutely no appeal. Laughing Cow cheese wedges, bread rolls, stringy cold chicken, hard boiled eggs, natural yoghurt (at room temp), olives, tomato wedges, and a sweet white gelatinous dessert with coconut sprinkled on top. Some of these I ate happily (and indeed would have relished under other circumstances), but many left me nauseous. When Dr M directed that I be given better food, I asked for soup, expecting some whizzed veggie concoction. However cubed carrots and zucchinis swimming in a sea of stock and boiled to within an inch of their lives does not a soup make, in my book.
To be fair, my taste buds have been shot to pieces as a result of all the drugs I was bombarded with. The food was wholesome, and served by concerned nurses who tried their best to interest me in it.
Dr M was very worried and labeled my infection “severe”, so he used a scattergun approach to treat it rather than waiting for lab results and bombarded me with many kinds of antibiotics(a final definitive diagnosis is still to come, in fact). I’ve had many different kinds of antibiotics, and have to continue on oral antibiotics for about 2 more weeks.
Plans for “The Nile in Style”, the tour we’d signed up for, went out the window, as the day for our flight to Luxor came and went.
The pains subsided around midnight Monday night. What a blessing! Dr M had been murmuring about a colonoscopy, and I was NOT going to have one of those here! Not on your Nellie! Never! Ever!
Late Tuesday I was transferred upstairs to a “normal” room. For 3 days I had clutched my mobile phone, a lifeline to friends and family, and waited for that little trill that told me another txt had arrived. I cried so many times when I read the messages of love, and if you sent one I thank you from the bottom of my heart. You now know how precious these txts were to me.
Jenny told us about how often watermelons are injected with water to make them weigh more heavily, and after days of IV rehydration and encouragement to drink at every possible opportunity I started to feel a bit like an Egyptian watermelon myself!
On Wednesday a nurse arrived in the afternoon to take me (mercifully, by wheel chair) to the Medical Centre next door for a repeat ultrasound. I needed to cover up my (skinny) legs with jeans, as we passed many men on the way, and I kept my eyes averted as I waited in the reception area. So many eyes on me because I was the only Anglo Saxon and my fair hair made me very conspicuous. After that I was free to go!
posted by Di at 2:53 AM
1 Comments:
So glad you can laugh about your little episode Di and how lucky to have the lovely Jenny at hand.
Great you are on the mend and it's great to catch up on your Blog.
Well Done you Di... you are tougher than you think eh?? Cheers from London, Pennie Griffiths
Post a Comment
<< Home