Last week I signed up to get my open water SCUBA certification with Oli, our friendly dive master. We are home to the only dive school on the lake, backed by the globally respected PADI credentials, and it happens to be the first or second-cheapest place in the world to get certified ($240), so I figured it would be really fun to do it here. Oli gave me the book and I began studying excitedly.
Sunday night rolled around, and it was time to go over the equipment hands-on. Our first three dives would be in the morning, so the three students needed to get familiar with the equipment ahead of time. Setting up the gear only got me more excited to get in the water the next day and take my first few breaths underwater.
But all day, my stomach had been feeling a little weird. No problems, but just...off. I ate a full dinner (Sundays are pizza nights) and stayed up a bit, but decided to go to bed early to get rest for early SCUBA in the morning. It wasn't meant to be though, and I was up all night in the bathroom getting increasingly more sickly and dehydrated by the hour, and then the minute. It was reminiscent of a few years back, when I spent a similar night in my college dorm bathroom and eventually felt so weak and dehydrated that I woke my roommate to look after me in case I lost consciousness.
Around 6am, I was again at that point, so I woke Julia - a med student and friend who has been staying at the Iguana longer than I have. She had some water and helped me get to a place where I at least wasn't getting sick any more. Finally, I was able to get some rest while she went up to the clinic that she works at. I was brought soda and tea to replenish my electrolytes, and by the time I got out of bed the clinic was closing. Most people figured it was a 24-hour stomach bug that they'd seen in the past. It was true, I had stopped getting sick - but I definitely wasn't feeling better yet. I had a few bites of toast, fed the cat that I look after, and drank a bit more.
Not too long after, I was getting nauseous and sick all over again. This time was much worse, because I was already dehydrated, but at least it was during the day, and this time I had many more people looking after me, including an Australian nurse who had a small pharmacy of anti-nausea and other helpful drugs with her. I was able to keep them down for almost 15 minutes, but not long enough for them to have the desirable effect so that they could start rehydrating me and giving me other helpful drugs. At that point, it was either Keep trying to do the antinausea and hope that we could get it under control, or Go to a hospital. I elected hospital, once again mirroring my experience from college in which I ended up at the ER with an IV stuck in my arm. That sounded like it would be helpful at this point.
So they hired a private boat for me, which cost me about 400 quetzales (about $50), which I figured was worth it. Monyca, a friend and fellow volunteer, accompanied me to the hospital. It was about a 25 minute boat ride across the lake to Santiago, between the volcanoes in the pictures that I've shared. From there, we took a tuk tuk....think of a taxi that is made from a motor scooter with a small cab built around it. At the hospital, Monyca helped me explain what was wrong and they got an IV in me and some antinausea medication, then potassium and other helpful nutrients until I was feeling much better. It was up to me whether I wanted to go home and come back the next day for tests, or just stay overnight. I decided to stay overnight with the IV and medical assistance close-at-hand, so they put me in a room and kept me on IV all night. They took samples in the morning to determine what the issue was, and then prescribed some antibiotics and released me in the afternoon. Monyca came back to pick me up and help me pay for it with money that the Iguana lent me. All in all, with the overnight, the antibiotics, and the private boat to-and-from the hospital, it cost me about $200. Not too bad. And I'm feeling a lot better now, though I hadn't eaten for almost 2 days.
Others volunteered to cover my shift tonight and for the next day or two, so I'll be taking it easy and making sure I'm back to health.
We're still not sure where I got the infection...everyone eats and drinks the same things here, so that is an unlikely source. In any case, I'm not the first person around to get this sickness, and the med students deal with situations like this all the time - so I wasn't overly worried, even if I was incredibly uncomfortable. It may not have been necessary to go to the hospital, but it was best not to find out.
Anyway, that wraps up my story of how I took a boat and a tuk tuk to the hospital. I'm okay!
Sunday night rolled around, and it was time to go over the equipment hands-on. Our first three dives would be in the morning, so the three students needed to get familiar with the equipment ahead of time. Setting up the gear only got me more excited to get in the water the next day and take my first few breaths underwater.
But all day, my stomach had been feeling a little weird. No problems, but just...off. I ate a full dinner (Sundays are pizza nights) and stayed up a bit, but decided to go to bed early to get rest for early SCUBA in the morning. It wasn't meant to be though, and I was up all night in the bathroom getting increasingly more sickly and dehydrated by the hour, and then the minute. It was reminiscent of a few years back, when I spent a similar night in my college dorm bathroom and eventually felt so weak and dehydrated that I woke my roommate to look after me in case I lost consciousness.
Around 6am, I was again at that point, so I woke Julia - a med student and friend who has been staying at the Iguana longer than I have. She had some water and helped me get to a place where I at least wasn't getting sick any more. Finally, I was able to get some rest while she went up to the clinic that she works at. I was brought soda and tea to replenish my electrolytes, and by the time I got out of bed the clinic was closing. Most people figured it was a 24-hour stomach bug that they'd seen in the past. It was true, I had stopped getting sick - but I definitely wasn't feeling better yet. I had a few bites of toast, fed the cat that I look after, and drank a bit more.
Not too long after, I was getting nauseous and sick all over again. This time was much worse, because I was already dehydrated, but at least it was during the day, and this time I had many more people looking after me, including an Australian nurse who had a small pharmacy of anti-nausea and other helpful drugs with her. I was able to keep them down for almost 15 minutes, but not long enough for them to have the desirable effect so that they could start rehydrating me and giving me other helpful drugs. At that point, it was either Keep trying to do the antinausea and hope that we could get it under control, or Go to a hospital. I elected hospital, once again mirroring my experience from college in which I ended up at the ER with an IV stuck in my arm. That sounded like it would be helpful at this point.
So they hired a private boat for me, which cost me about 400 quetzales (about $50), which I figured was worth it. Monyca, a friend and fellow volunteer, accompanied me to the hospital. It was about a 25 minute boat ride across the lake to Santiago, between the volcanoes in the pictures that I've shared. From there, we took a tuk tuk....think of a taxi that is made from a motor scooter with a small cab built around it. At the hospital, Monyca helped me explain what was wrong and they got an IV in me and some antinausea medication, then potassium and other helpful nutrients until I was feeling much better. It was up to me whether I wanted to go home and come back the next day for tests, or just stay overnight. I decided to stay overnight with the IV and medical assistance close-at-hand, so they put me in a room and kept me on IV all night. They took samples in the morning to determine what the issue was, and then prescribed some antibiotics and released me in the afternoon. Monyca came back to pick me up and help me pay for it with money that the Iguana lent me. All in all, with the overnight, the antibiotics, and the private boat to-and-from the hospital, it cost me about $200. Not too bad. And I'm feeling a lot better now, though I hadn't eaten for almost 2 days.
Others volunteered to cover my shift tonight and for the next day or two, so I'll be taking it easy and making sure I'm back to health.
We're still not sure where I got the infection...everyone eats and drinks the same things here, so that is an unlikely source. In any case, I'm not the first person around to get this sickness, and the med students deal with situations like this all the time - so I wasn't overly worried, even if I was incredibly uncomfortable. It may not have been necessary to go to the hospital, but it was best not to find out.
Anyway, that wraps up my story of how I took a boat and a tuk tuk to the hospital. I'm okay!
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