That Ear-Nose-Throat Doc will never be the same!

We had a dramatic 2 am hospital admit on Wednesday after K passed out on the toilet. Classy, eh? She didn't injure herself. To the contrary she just grew very, very fond of the cool tile floor in short order. But Rozie thought more conventional care might be called for, so she haled a tuk-tuk and what a ride it was. A three-wheeled, open-air vehicle, with no muffler or shocks to speak of is quite the emergency vehicle. We already knew where to go, having been there each day this week to have any one of the three of us (K, Elizabeth or R) have our white blood cell and platelets counted for the dengue fever check-ups.

The hospital docs didn't have an additional diagnosis until the next day when K passed out and convulsed in the middle of a nasal swab exam. (That's when they try to stick a pipe cleaner up into your brain through your nose -- VERY unpleasant.) That ENT doc will never be the same, let me tell you :-) K tried to warn him by saying, "Uh, dizzy" and repeating with more emphasis, "DIZZY" but perhaps he doesn't know the English word dizzy and I guess she should have said, "Caution! About to convulse."

When she came to, there were about five people in his small office. One of
them waving a really large, Q-tip, that had been dipped in something quite
acrid. (Can you say, "Hand me the smelling salts. Krista has the
vapors."?) She wanted to say, "Uh, look, I've been through this before. If
you'd just let me lie down on the tile floor everything will be fine."


At any rate, that got their attention. After a bit of anti-convulsion
medicine (that is some good stuff, she was practically dancing back in her hospital room) the doc got back the results from the latest blood test to confirm that K had dengue AND typhoid fevers. K was relieved to
know that she's not just a big, wimpy hypochondriac. Rozie was less thrilled
to find out K had yet another disease. According to R's Chinese medicine doctor (rumored to also treat the King) we have the worst of the 4 kinds of Dengue as it is.  The Chinese call it "red spot" dengue, because it attacks your blood vessels and causes a rash of little red spots all over.  Once the fever breaks, the red spots spread until your hands and feet are bright crimson, swollen, and then they start to itch like you can not even believe!  It almost makes your miss the "bone crushing" stage of the illness.  The good news is we'll never get "red spot" again - the bad news is that we could get any or all of the other three, and they would be all the worse for having followed red spot.

But after round the clock care by a team of almost-english-speaking nurses, our "family doc", a gastro-enterologist, a dermatologist, and that poor ENT, and including four days of IV drip and some serious antibiotics, they let K go today. With another week of oral anti-biotics the typhoid should be cleared our of her gut completely, so she won't become another "Typhoid Mary" carrying around the disease unknowingly.  Meanwhile, we are about as weak as kittens while the rest of the dengue works its way out, and until our immune systems are able to turn back on R is absolutely paranoid. (You should have seen her jump when K tried to order a raw salad for her first meal out of the hospital!) But it should only be another 2-3 weeks or so, maybe... and we've been told that the shadows in R's vision should go away eventually too.

Are we having fun yet?