Well, the good news is I’m still alive.
On Sunday I woke up with an insane headache. I though “Okay, we did have a couple of drinks last night but not THAT many…” During my usual mailchecking session at Phil’z Coffee I suddenly began shaking and shivering. So I went home and found out that I had 39°C fever. Within a few hours the fever went up to 41°, I got very weak, began sweating like a bastard and felt like puking all over the place. To top it off a roaring, rattling cough started building up. Considering my temperature I decided to take an ice cold shower. So I stumbled my way to the bathroom, holding on to the walls. I could barely walk, it sucked that nobody else was at home. After that shower the temperature went down a bit for a few hours. I also started taking antibiotics. But as the fever started climbing up again I decided to go to a hospital. I had Keiko call a cab for me (because I was way to confused to look the number up) and went to the San Francisco General Hospital, aka. Hell on Earth. Wow, there was a big room full of really messed up folks, some moaning or even screaming in pain (I remember one black dude with an incredibly swollen abdomen going “HEEELP ME!! HEEEEEEELP ME!!” no shit… and you could tell from his voice that he had serious pain). So after some waiting and watching the room with all the bizarre creatures turning around me, I got to talk to a nurse. She evaluated my cause and told me that they could not see me because I was not an emergency and they already had a waiting list for 6 to 8 hours. 6 to 8 hours!!! Wow, I am pretty sure that some of the patients in the waiting room didn’t even live long enough to get seen by a doctor. While she explained that to me I felt a stomach pain arising but the fever was dropping rapidly. So I decided not to go to the UCSF but just to take a cab home, have real bad night and see how the next day would be. And so I did.
After not much sleep and a lot of coughing spasms I woke up pretty exhausted and still feverish. Throughout the whole day I stayed in my bed drinking tea and feeling like crap. Occasionally Laura came to check on me and to tell me how beautiful and hot the weather was outside. Thank you! Indeed, Monday and Tuesday were exceptionally beautiful, almost like summer. So it was perfect to stay in my dark little room.
By Tuesday I thought it would get better, but as the fever spiked to almost 40° again, I decided that I really needed to get some medical advice. So I asked Keiko where to go and she pointed me to the California Pacific Medical Center, just a couple blocks away from my place. I got there around 3pm, they took me to the Emergency Room and checked me immediately, run a few tests and finally decided to keep me for at least a night. I got a pretty cool doctor, Jay Frazer. The first statement he made to me was “Dude, your lungs sound like crap!” xD Ah yeah, I also got a chest X-ray. They were especially worried about me not having a spleen and also about the Malaria risk because of traveling to Guatemala without protection. I had to wait in the ER until 3am for my room and besides of that they couldn’t give me any medicine, not even for the cough. Why that? A. To torture me and B. because it’s best to check for malaria when the patient has fever; So they wanted my temperature to go up as high as possible to take a blood sample at the peak and check for malaria. So I still felt like shit, but eventually I could crawl into my bed in room 917B of the Respiratory Disease Section at 3am and get some sleep… until 5.30am! BAM suddenly a nurse rushed in my room and hooked me up with 2 infusions of antibiotics and with her came a respiratory specialist who put a mask on my face and ordered me to breathe deeply and steadily. Come on dudes, give me a break! 2.5 hours of sleep is not quite enough… The next nurses came around 6 to get some blood. And like that it went on throughout the day: Every 30 minutes to 1 hour someone new appeared to take blood, run tests, stick a pobe up my nose, get an x-ray, give me medicine or interview me.
Of course I was seen by a social worker (yeah, my husband beats me at home), various people who were interested in money, various nursing students (“hihihi I told you he’s cute” oh c’mon I’m really not in the mood for silly girls!!), and endless flow of nurses with different purposes from serving food to questioning me about my sexual habits and the texture of my stool, and of course also the doctor who was in charge for me, Dr. Goodman. He’s an expert for infectious diseases and he is just totally Dr. House, maybe except for the missing walking stick. He seemed like he knew what he was talking about, but he told me they needed to run more tests. So they collected a whooping 16 blood samples from me. Laura also came to visit me and brought me some stuff, which was cool. But like that I never had the chance to sleep longer than 1 hour without interruption, and that sucked. I once more realized that I am not a big fan of hospitals, but I knew it was the right thing to seek medical help. And that’s also what the Doctor told me: “Normally we would send people with fever and a cough home immediately. But your case is a little… special.”
The night was feverish again with chills and shaking and the fever still spiked, but now only to a max of 38.5°. Dr. Goodman came to see me again this morning and was pretty much clueless. I don’t have a flu, Mononucleosis, parasites or any other of the most common viruses or bacteria and they are 90% sure that I don’t have Malaria. But essentially they don’t have any idea what it is; and that’s somewhat scary. The headache disappeared, the cough is a better but still here and the fever is less but still spikes about 3 time a day. And that’s a pretty small success considering the massive antibiotics I got and all the anti inflammatory drugs. So they discharged me a couple of hours ago, giving me antibiotics for a week and Malaria medicine (just to eliminate the remaining 10% chance). And for this medication I paid $188.25; luckily enough I happened to have 191 bucks in my wallet, because I reached the limit on all of my cards and couldn’t go online to pay my credit card bill.
So I am stone broke now and have an unidentified, probably viral infection… I’m slowly starting to think that this town doesn’t want me.
Happy Valentine’s anyway.
ps. at least the money situation is solved now, my dear mom already sent me some. It’s good to have caring parents…
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