philippines - the disease begins (dec 10th through 16th)
(photo gallery of the philippine trip here)
(yes, it’s long, but the picture at the bottom is worth the whole post)
december 10th, 2008
don’t complain about going to the airport in america. we had to get up at 5am to make a car to the airport at 6:30 for a flight at 10:30. they say traffic is so bad here that you have to leave four hours before your flight! and we’re flying domestic too.
update: it took 30 minutes to get to the airport. we were 3 hours early for our flight. they let us jump on an earlier flight, so we got to boracay much quicker than we otherwise would.
pro-tip: travel with backpacker’s backpacks when you have kids. you’ve got to carry them most of the time, through security, etc. and it’s much easier to do this when the bags you are carrying are literally attached to you. plus if you get one big enough, your kid will have a seat-back if you let them sit on your shoulders.
it’s a short, largely uneventful flight to boracay from manilla. once we get here, however, the world explodes in activity. like some sort of a.d.d. bomb – porters are everywhere looking to get tips for helping you. to the uninitiated, you’re likely to go along with it (i was at first) – the problem for us is that we only had large bills – and you can’t ask these guys to break a 1000 for 20 pesos.
anyway, we get off of the plane and then take a bus that takes us to a barca – these rickety old boats. my mother would have had a coronary if she’d seen us carrying her grandchildren onto this thing – i had on the enormo-pack that kara had prepared. the thing sounds like it is driven by a vw motor – and the ferry just shoots us from the airport to boracay island, just across the channel. from there we took a truck through what was a jungle – past these starkly poor shanties with more poverty-stricken barefoot children. i wish owen and dylan were old enough to appreciate these moments for the enlightening ones they are.
we’re staying in this charming hut – thatched roofs, mosquito nets, bamboo floors (and not the kind you may be thinking of – this is stripped and cut bamboo – pretty raw but definitely charming.
pro-tip: ask if your accommodations have cribs. ours did and we didn’t know that and we lugged around dylan’s travel bed with us. it’s a cute crib too – made out of bamboo trunks. wouldn’t meet the us standards, for sure, as it’s a bit rickety and definitely flammabale and the spacing of the slats could fit a baby’s head through it. thankfully, dylan doesn’t move when he sleeps.
the white sands beach is amazing and the water is completely clear and this wonderful shade of movie-blue. it is the stuff of resort commercials and lost episodes.
owen has been watching an incredible amount of curious george lately and as such, wanted to build a sand castle on the beach. i’ve got to say, we have an intellectual child, for sure, but not an adventurous one (which is likely the better deal). he wouldn’t come down to the water – he’s afraid of it.
kara bought a sarong and turned it into a makeshift baby sling – and get this – the hotel workers said to her they’d never seen that before – the quote: “when we ride motorcycles carrying our babies, it’s too hard. that looks easier.” we didn’t expect that.
on the way home from dinner, owen was close to melt-down mode, kara had dylan slung up for most of the day. we decided to take a bmx taxi. they wanted a hundred pesos (2 dollars) and i didn’t have a 100 peso bill, so we told them no thanks. as we walked away, he rode up and said: “50 pesos.” deal. i thought it was a short trip – i don’t remember the walk being so long, but this kid worked harder than anyone i met to make a dollar. it took him twenty minutes – he avoided every pothole and took us up to thehighway (hi mom! it’s not what you think) and then down to our hotel. i felt so bad that i gave him 200 pesos and a beer. was worth the 5 dollars to me, but yeah, i’m a sucker.
december 11th, 2008
(no photos were taken during my sickness — this is all text, baby. rocking it old-school!)
don’t know if it was the beers, the food or some avian creature that must have spit in my face, but holy hell, i got sick quick from last night to now. and let me tell you – getting sick in a foreign country sucks as much as that balut i had. thankfully kara packs like a champ and brought all sorts of medication from home.
so, i sit here in bed, stranded from the internet and all things comfortable, sleeping when i can, shaking/shivering, taking multiple showers and dropping advil the way kate moss sucks down coke. fever is breaking, i think. but the aches that come with the flu are far worse than the fever and then there’s the emotional crappiness of it being magical and tropical outside and i can’t go do anything.
owen is being a champ, he brings me crackers and tells me to feel better. talk about disarming.
hours have passed – the fever is not dropping. hit 103.5 at some point so we called a doctor. get this – they do housecalls here. she mentioned i might have the dengue fever. how nuts is that? they drew blood, kara had a laugh and all-in-all, a visit from a doctor to my thatched hut cost me 2300 pesos. yeah, that’s roughly 50 dollars. including blood work to see if my cpcs are low or some such like that. they forced me to drink a lot of water, i’m nauseas now, but my head doesn’t hurt nearly as much.
going to go try and sleep it off…
december 12th, 2008
trouble in paradise. i broke my fever and achiness yesterday around 4:30 and then fell asleep at 6pm. when i woke up about midnight, the fever and aches were back. talk about frustrating. i nodded off here and there for a few hours, but mostly was awake the bulk of the night.
pro-tip: research the damned diseases you can catch in foreign countries before you leave.
kara is the real hero though – none of the kids slept well and i wasn’t much better than our 2 and a half year old. i developed some super abdominal pain late in the evening that was pretty crippling and let’s just say there were many trips to the, well, you can guess. owen woke up at 4am and has been up since. he was yelling at us from his sleep-loft in our hut. we made the mistake of putting totoro on to just quiet him down so kara could get some sleep. dylan, on the other hand, wouldn’t settle down and was screaming quite a bit last night. between me needing water and getting out of bed more than once, owen asking for crackers and oreos at 4:30am and dylan crying, kara got really no sleep. i feel guilty to be part of it, but i was pretty much an invalid last night.
it’s depressing, really. we’re sitting here in paradise and kara can’t even go in the water. owen refuses to go anywhere near the ocean – so kara can’t go swimming with him. i’m determined to figure out a way to get her to go swimming, as the water is an amazing temperature and blue color. i’ll keep you posted from sick-bay.
kara got out into the water eventually – we waited until dylan fell asleep for his nap and put a movie on for owen. she got about an hour and a half to just try to enjoy the island.
december 13th, 2008
today, i will spare you the details. let’s just call it mega-rhhia. i didn’t really spare you the details, did i? we called the island resident doctor again and she came back out to re-diagnose me with this new detail.
the island labs are all closed, so they’re just putting me on antibiotics empirically. nothing much more to update. kara is still being a champ, owen is still bringing me crackers and dylan is still cooing naively to the situation around him.
i’ve definitely been bedridden most of the day. could be worse. i could be in some place less beautiful. i’ve totally lost my appetite and my mouth tastes like metal.
kara took dylan to the beach and he loved the water. she has the awesomest bathing suit for him – kinda looks like one of those old-timey suits that dudes wore in the 20s. i think she’s relieved that we have (maybe) at least one water-baby in the family.
oh well, back to the meds.
december 14th, 2008
woke up with no fever (again)! we rushed to the airport to get back to manilla. this consists of the reverse transfer from when we came starting with a covered truck ride to the port through the windy, hilly streets of boracay. we passed two kids, no older than 4 or 5, just walking barefoot on the street. presumably, the older one pulled the younger one to safety. was one of those sights that is going to sit with me for a while. no one else in the truck, the driver included, seemed to notice. owen kept repeating, ‘i don’t like this part.’
the boat we took was much larger (thankfully for my condition – i didn’t have much strength really) than the one we took coming in. the best part? they were showing the new rambo. holy hell, that movie looks terrible. and stallone looks like some sagging version of himself 20 years ago. his nose even droops now.
we took advantage of the porters this time and had tip money prepared so i wouldn’t have to carry the bags, just owen. our flight back to manilla was delayed 30 or so minutes so we sat in the world’s smallest airport (was like a modern hut on an airstrip really). i kept drinking gatorade. owen fell asleep on my shoulder long enough to board the plane.
and! once we were in flight, my wonderfully persistent fever returned! along with the stomach cramps. we decided then and there to complete my international travel checklist – i’d be going to ortigas medical city.
that’s just what they call it – it’s just one big building. it’s a nice hospital though (it’s where i’m typing from now… but i’m getting ahead of myself). ram, our forever patient driver, took us back to the apartment where we could drop off our bags and then took us to the hospital. conveniently, it was very close to our apartment – like 2 minutes away.
owen kept saying he wanted to come with us, which was a bit heart breaking, but we distracted him with some shiny objects and his lola. dylan, well, he cooed naively to the situation around him.
i got admitted to the er pretty quickly – i was worried it was going to be like a san francisco hospital where you wait forever just to get admitted to the er based on your priority of injury, etc.
i spent two hours in the er, they shoved an iv into me (twice) took a bunch of blood and then gave me a thimble (not really) to collect ‘samples’ in. i’ll spare you the details. the first thing i did was ask for a rubber glove.
after a few hours in the er they decided to admit me to the hospital proper. i’m on the fifteenth floor with a pretty sweet view of manilla. especially at night.
my fever cranked back up to 103 to 103.5 – which basically compresses my head. coughing hurts. stomach cramps are nowhere to be found.
past that, not much more to report – kara went back to the apartment to try and rearrange our travel plans (we are supposed to go to japan tomorrow, not going to happen). the doctors keep checking in, keep medicating me, keep changing the iv bags.
the upside? they televize english soccer live here around midnight and since i have a fever and can’t sleep, i got to watch some games.
hopefully i get discharged soon. i want to get to japan as quickly as possible now.
december 15th, 2008
fever broke (again!). kara surprised me with a visit and helped me set everything up (ipod, speakers, laptop, etc.) that i was too tired to do last night. as she was leaving the apartment, owen stopped her and wanted to come with kara. kara told him he had to stay with lola, so he did the next best thing and wanted to send along ‘everybody’ (which means all his stuffed animals) and his books. effectively, he wanted to send along everything that comfort him to help his papa get better. it’s hard not to get emotional about it. i love you, little guy.
kara instead just took totoro and his monkey pillow.
doctor came to check on me – and they think they’ve beat this thing. i’m so skeptical, as i’ve had three days of this crap when the fever breaks and we celebrate the small victories only to have it return with a vengeance. we’ll see. they could discharge me as early as tomorrow. they’re running some cultures and some more blood tests later.
current diagnosis: typhoid fever.
oh, and the bill so far? 15000 pesos, or $315 usd.
december 16th, 2008
woke up today with no fever still, so i’m being discharged. final diagnosis is acute gastroenteritis. i’ve never been so excited – i feel like this vacation can continue. now i have to try and get our tickets rebooked for tomorrow with no charge.
my final bill? roughly 28,000 pesos, or roughly 600 bucks. i realize the dollar to peso is strong, so don’t use that argument, but rather explain to me why we paid 8dollars for a tylenol – as single tylenol – when owen was born. i don’t get it. i think i’m subsidizing something, i wish i knew what.
they finally removed the iv from me (i think i got like 8 liters of liquids pumped into me, plus whatever i drank). i learned that when you have a case of the liquid gnarly (or ap, whichever you choose) you can lose up to 9 liters of liquids in one day. i thought i had done a good job of hydrating myself, but at this point i don’t see how it is possible to keep up with the loss.
the doctor actually told me to stay away from foreign flavors – which is fine, i think the hospital has tentatively turned me off to filipino food. hospital food everywhere sucks. he also told me: no dairy products (i.e. no cheese or butter) and no oily foods (pretty much everything i love). i guess i’ll stick with grilled chicken. and that likely means, yes, we’re going to tgif near our apartment. don’t hate me and don’t dare call me a typical american. you eat chicken ass and balut and then get megarrhia. there. that sounded preemptively mean. i love you.
we have to pack and get everything ready for getting up and out of here at 4am tomorrow to make our 7:45 flight at the airport to japan.
in other news, owen just changed his first diaper (sort of). pics below. i now have some blackmail material against him for when he’s older. the one of him putting butt paste (that’s the actual product name) on dylan that is of particular scandalosity.
