Emma’s Year in Indonesia

Today is another recovery day. Roz’s holiday here had been going great for the first week. We’d been to quite a few places - Water Palace, Malioboro, Borobudur, Kaliurang and I’d shown her around UGM. Paul had also arrived in Yogya, and we’d all gone out for dinner for a couple of nights. It turns out Paul is living in a kos that’s only about a 10 minute walk away from mine. Which is great. But on Saturday things ground to a halt after I either ate something dodgy or was exposed to some bug somewhere. I then spent Saturday night trying, without luck, to stop my body doing everything it could to purge itself of its contents. I spent the next day in bed, unable to eat or drink or get up. After throwing up something like 16 times I was so dehydrated I was seeing black spots. Later on Sunday afternoon, Roz started doing the same thing and I developed a fever. So we had yet another sleepless night, and the next morning got Phil to take us to the doctor at the hospital. We wound up being admitted, as we were terribly dehydrated and still unable to eat or drink.

We were at the Bethesda hospital, a Christian one about 10 minutes drive away from where I live. They were really full so we could only get second class rooms (travel insurance goes a long way here normally) and started off in seperate rooms. These rooms were small boxes that the bed could hardly fit in. The walls were only partitions, so it was very noisy, and there was only one little fan in the room and a toilet at the end of the corridor. Later in the day we were moved to a different room, which was much better as we were sharing a room and had our own bathroom and a window that let a bit of a breeze in. The nurses were lovely and I think we were visited by just about all of them, wanting to know who we were and why we were here. We didn’t think we were going to be admitted, so all we had on us was our wallets, phones and cameras. We spent a few hours amusing ourselves with those until Phil and Bec came and brought us some books to read.

Luckily we were discharged the next day. I was relieved to get the drip out of me, as the needle was inserted in my wrist and was really painful after a while because everytime I bent my wrist it would move the needle around. We still need to take a round of drugs to be able to eat, and can only eat small amounts, but we’re gradually getting better. Hopefully we’ll be able to do a few more things before Roz goes on Saturday. At least she’s not too fazed by this turn of events in her first overseas trip.