Nothing sucks more than being sick, especially when you're travelling, especially when you're travelling alone.
I boarded a night bus for Ica, heading south from Cusco, having partied a little too hard and spent the last few days drinking lemon and honey.
I spent much of the journey liberally blowing my nose, much to the annoyance of my fellow passengers and finally passed out at around 3am. At 6.30am I felt a light tap on my shoulder and the kind attendant was telling me we had reached my stop. I knew this from the way she was urgently pointing at the door, I also knew this because her mouth was moving. I did not know what she was saying, not because she was speaking Spanish but because in the few hours I had been asleep I'd gone deaf.
Just imagine, a banging headache, a throat like sandpaper, the sun beating down on your back, a bustle of people starting their days around you inbetween uncertain stares and nothing but muffled silence.
Furthermore I was couchsurfing with a guy who wouldn't be home until 6pm, I hailed a taxi and asked for the hospital.
By this point one ear had gloriously popped and I could make out general sounds and conversations even if I was shouting back at people like a cantankerous old biddy. The 'hospital' was an emergency clinic made of concrete slabs and a dust floor. Luckily I looked so lost and in need I was helped straight away. I was able to roughly translate the words 'pain' and 'no listening' and a look down my throat proved I was blocked up with bacteria. The doctor wrote a long list of drugs on a piece of paper, told me to go across the road, buy them and return. Return for what? I wondered.
At the pharmacy I handed over my cash and received a bag filled with a few pills, vials of clear liquid and syringes. Brilliant. Back at the 'hospital' I was taken round the other side of a curtain that was used to give privacy to someone having what looked like kidney dialysis to a stained bed covered in nurses coats and handbags. As I leant over and revealed my left cheek I questioned whether this was the right thing to do. Would I get better or would I get AIDS? I risked it.
With 10 hours to kill before my couchsurfing host would open his doors to me I checked in to a mouldy hotel (with cable TV), blagged a cheap rate for half the day and cried. I cried uncontrollably for about and hour and half, before I realised Girls of the Playboy Mansion was on E! and everything didn't seem so bad.
My couchsurfing host was a dream, I slept for days at his house and he took me each day to get more injections (3 bum injections in total) and soon I was feeling better again.
SURVIVAL TIP:
Don't let it get this far! I hate going to the doctor for silly little bugs and think your body should and will fight it off naturally. However when travelling you're always moving, not meeting your normal sleep and dietary needs and the stress of having injections in a dirty clinic is never good! Plus you never know in these sorts of places, if Cheryl caught malaria, so can you! So nip it in the bud quick!
I boarded a night bus for Ica, heading south from Cusco, having partied a little too hard and spent the last few days drinking lemon and honey.
I spent much of the journey liberally blowing my nose, much to the annoyance of my fellow passengers and finally passed out at around 3am. At 6.30am I felt a light tap on my shoulder and the kind attendant was telling me we had reached my stop. I knew this from the way she was urgently pointing at the door, I also knew this because her mouth was moving. I did not know what she was saying, not because she was speaking Spanish but because in the few hours I had been asleep I'd gone deaf.
Just imagine, a banging headache, a throat like sandpaper, the sun beating down on your back, a bustle of people starting their days around you inbetween uncertain stares and nothing but muffled silence.
Furthermore I was couchsurfing with a guy who wouldn't be home until 6pm, I hailed a taxi and asked for the hospital.
By this point one ear had gloriously popped and I could make out general sounds and conversations even if I was shouting back at people like a cantankerous old biddy. The 'hospital' was an emergency clinic made of concrete slabs and a dust floor. Luckily I looked so lost and in need I was helped straight away. I was able to roughly translate the words 'pain' and 'no listening' and a look down my throat proved I was blocked up with bacteria. The doctor wrote a long list of drugs on a piece of paper, told me to go across the road, buy them and return. Return for what? I wondered.
At the pharmacy I handed over my cash and received a bag filled with a few pills, vials of clear liquid and syringes. Brilliant. Back at the 'hospital' I was taken round the other side of a curtain that was used to give privacy to someone having what looked like kidney dialysis to a stained bed covered in nurses coats and handbags. As I leant over and revealed my left cheek I questioned whether this was the right thing to do. Would I get better or would I get AIDS? I risked it.
With 10 hours to kill before my couchsurfing host would open his doors to me I checked in to a mouldy hotel (with cable TV), blagged a cheap rate for half the day and cried. I cried uncontrollably for about and hour and half, before I realised Girls of the Playboy Mansion was on E! and everything didn't seem so bad.
My couchsurfing host was a dream, I slept for days at his house and he took me each day to get more injections (3 bum injections in total) and soon I was feeling better again.
SURVIVAL TIP:
Don't let it get this far! I hate going to the doctor for silly little bugs and think your body should and will fight it off naturally. However when travelling you're always moving, not meeting your normal sleep and dietary needs and the stress of having injections in a dirty clinic is never good! Plus you never know in these sorts of places, if Cheryl caught malaria, so can you! So nip it in the bud quick!
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