brainylady

Holiday salvaged!

We're going to stay in Thailand till the end of the month after all. I checked with the airline about changing our tickets, and it's cheaper just to stay. Anyway, I'm feeling better. I went to the Bangkok Hospital this morning, which was amazing -- like a hotel-hospital hybrid. Our taxi pulled up to the enormous revolving door, where two young men in black suits stood at the ready to open the doors. We walked into the reception area/lobby, where young women in light-pink suits milled about, guiding people along. Plus there were lovely young female nurses everywhere in tailored bright-white suits and starched little nurse's caps. It felt like a movie set about a futuristic hospital.

I saw a doctor, who told Bill and I that we had done everything wrong in our attempts to deal with my infection. First, he said, it had gotten so bad because I had waited so long to go to a hospital. I explained that I had gone to a nursing station on Koh Tao on Saturday, where a woman had used a big needle to open all my sores -- he said that was wrong, that I should have been given antibiotics instead. I told him I hadn't been in the salt water once the infection started -- he said I should've put my feet in the seawater. So then I explained that Bill had been down to the hotel kitchen yesterday for a small bowl of salt, which he dissolved in warm water for me to soak my foot in -- the doctor said warm water only makes bacteria spread. I told him that we had poured hydrogen peroxide over the infected areas last night -- he said hydrogen peroxide was "inappropriate treatment." I boasted that Billy had gone out to a pharmacy last night and brought back antibiotics (cloxacillin) for me -- the doctor said that's the wrong kind of antibiotic. Good god! By that point, I was just laughing. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd said, "No, these actually are not feet, and you were wrong to think that they are."

So I was treated, fitted with snazzy stockings (see below), given a shot of antibiotics in my butt and four little bags of prescription pills, wheeled around by a handsome young orderly in a white suit, and sent on my way with orders to rest and to stay inside (because it's the rainy season and there might be a flood, said the doctor -- I can't blame him for thinking I was an utter moron, can I?). Like my white fishnets?



I have to go back to the hospital on Thursday. Then I think we'll fly up to Chiang Mai on Friday and stay there for the rest of the month. So there you go: everything is going to be OK.