The Faint Stench of Death...and Onions
February 27, 2014 (Thursday)
One of our LL brothers was leaving the next day, and he hadn't really gotten to see anything in India besides the airport, the guest house, and two hospitals, so we planned a night of sightseeing in Delhi. Staring at the same walls for months on end, we were all pretty psyched to just get the f*ck OUT. That afternoon, I had finally found a way to deal with the boredom of doing the stationary bike -- by grabbing a pair of Vic Firths and playing super-hyped air drums to my fave playlists while pedaling -- so I had 90 minutes of the best workout the guest house could possibly provide me. And riding that surge of endorphins, I was feeling better that evening than I had since getting the frames put on December 17th. Isn't it ironic...dontcha think? [in hindsight, anyway]
One guy was feeling crappy, another didn't want to venture out in frames, so the remaining four patients, two caretakers, two PTs, and the assistant guest house manager piled into a couple cars and headed off to Delhi, bringing a wheelchair and two wheeled office chairs in the trunks. We drove by Embassy Row, then took a circle of Connaught Place:
Then we stopped at The India Gate. After that night I can definitively tell you this: one LL patient in public is a curiosity. Two are a rather bizarre sideshow. Four guys with bilateral fractures (2 of them in frames), a wheelchair, a couple of office chairs, a pair of crutches and five assorted attendants is the whole three-ring f.ucking circus.
We wheeled around the Gate for a while, with all the "WTF" stares and people pointing and quizzical looks one would expect. While we mostly kept to our group, our resident social butterfly kept getting into conversations with random groups of people. Mr. Butterfly bought some of the street food and offered me a bite. Curious, it tried it [Ruh Roh?] It wasn't very cold out or anything, and we were not outside for more than an hour probably. But on the way home, one of us patients got seriously nauseated. It wasn't me, but [Warning Sign?]
As had become the routine for our farewell sendoffs, we had ordered a couple cakes from a bakery for the pitiful little party at the house. [Bad idea?] So those were awaiting us at "home". We also stopped on the way back to order some dinner from Schwarma House. [Fatal Mistake?] Hey, it's good enough for The Avengers, right?
Finally getting back to the Guest House, my legs felt like they had doubled in size...and not in the
intended way. All that sitting in the car just gave me the feeling that I had a couple boulders attached at the knees. Getting inside, we had another one of our Pitiful Parties, sans booze this time. Schwarma Schwarma, Cake Cake, Pictures Pictures, etc etc. Nothing really tasted weird or felt "off", but [F*ck, This Is not Going To End Well, Is It?]
The next morning, I was half-delirious when my buddy stopped in to say goodbye before leaving for the airport [for his flight back to...um, let's say..."Namibia". Or you pick a country. It's Mad Libs Diary Day]. I was coherent enough to say goodbye, but all I really remember about the rest of that day was feeling f*cking FREEZING COLD. Then BURNING UP...then freezing again...then burning...lather, rinse, repeat. I remember Harry giving me a thermometer that day (Friday) and it read like 99-something, so I didn't think it was gonna be a major thing. That night was mostly delirium, but I do distinctly remember looking out the window and seeing Martin Luther King juggling some chainsaws while riding a unicorn across our backyard.
On Saturday morning, I took my temp again and it was 104.3. One Hundred F.ucking Four Point F.ucking Three. In my life experience, that's not a body temperature, that's the goddamn frequency for an Oldies radio station! Harry got me into a car and we went to Paras Hospital to see an internist. He asked a few questions, took temp and BP, and wrote a few scrips. About the same as one would get at a busy county hospital in a low-income area of the US. The humongous difference though? I paid in cash. The amount? Six hundred rupees (about NINE BUCKS! YOU CAN SUCK IT OBAMACARE! And the prescriptions were only SIX BUCKS! YOU CAN SUCK IT TOO, BIG PHARMA!). We ran into Dr. Sringari in the hallway and he ribbed me in his usual affable, jovial way: "Not feeling good? Too much party? Heheh" Not the biggest show of concern, but he would kinda redeem himself later on.
The next 36 hours of that weekend I would not wish on anyone. Interspersed amongst the constant cycle of freezing-to-death and burning-up came (it seemed) hourly trips to our (already disgusting) bathroom [I told y'all how my roommate and I had to share it with the 5 live-in and 3 daytime staff guys, right? Not to mention the upstairs patients who came down to workout/hang out] Anyway, I was in that f*cking hole so much I should have just brought my pillow and blanket. QUESTION: if it's called "The Runs" when you have two functional legs, whaddaya call it when you have to scoot yourself around on a rolly-chair? "The Wheels"? "The Scoots"? "The LL Intestinal Hell Shuffle"? Sunday morning, I took a chance that I could stomach food for the first time since that night of the party, so I took a bite of breakfast. For some reason, our chef Kishoor had decided to pack his normally decent egg salad sandwiches with enough incredibly-pungent Indian onions to brings tears to the eye...the eye of a f.ucking hurricane. I spit that sh!t up so fast, it made vapor trails coming out of my mouth. One small grace was that week stayed pretty much vomit-free.
I thought the fever "broke" (that's what Moms say, right?) on Monday, but the normalcy I briefly felt, cycled back into alternating burning-up and freezing-cold yet again that night. I had taken all of the fever meds they had given me Saturday (OK, so maybe I just got what I paid for with that six bucks), so I made do with Tylenol (and whiny calls to fam and fiancé back home). By Wednesday, I still was not much better, so I got schlepped to the hospital again. This time, a different internist came down to Doc Sringari's secondary office for my exam and checked me out there. Dr. Sringari sat in on this one, asking InternistGuy some questions, seeming involved -- pretty much making up for our previous meeting -- and maintaining the impression I already had: that he's ostensibly a caring doctor. But he was also concurrently working on a PowerPoint presentation about OSHA stuff for his new venture...so that went right along with the impression we had been developing that he's an impossibly BUSY doctor.
Had blood and piss tests taken, plus sent home with a container for the TestThatShallNotBeNamed. Had to pay around INR5000 for everything, plus the taxi. Harry had paid for the car the first time and said I was to foot the bill this second time, but I just gave him the money for both. Whether it had been paid for by him personally or the Guest House budget, Faker don't like owin' nobody for nuthin'. That third goddamn lab test was just a horror. First attempt was accidentally thrown away by (caretaker) Deepu when he was cleaning. Couldn't f.ucking BELIEVE I had to do it again. Sunny, probably going way beyond the call of an Assistant House Manager's duty, took that doodoo sample -- that I put inside a Ziplock in another Ziplock in another bag in another bag in a cardboard box -- off to Paras...on his motorcycle LOL. That's some sh!tty f*cking work, right there (try THAT, Mike Rowe!). He picked up some meds to replace a pack I lost, too. Say what you will about Sunny -- there have been so many accusations and things surrounding him that we have heard about. Personally, he always got me anything I asked for -- this laptop, ATM withdrawals, leg covers, internet service -- in a prompt manner. I know some of our guys had mad issues with him while there -- and I kept those in at the back of my mind -- but it's hard to accept things so contrary to one's personal experience, joono?
As usual, this story started its life as a leaflet (in my head) and has evolved into my typical tome. Soooooooo, by the eighth day of the ordeal, I FINALLY started to turn the corner and was back to life that next weekend (March 8/9). I had stopped lengthening the first few days I was sick, the only days (besides the day before frame removal) that I didn't turn since my first mm on Christmas. Pretty ironic that whatever did cause that f*cked-up experience in India, it's probably only there in India that I would have been able to have a staff of caretakers around 24/7 to help me out while I was sick. Being laid up like that here at home, I would have been by myself most of the day. The moral of this excessively long tale?...um...well...let's see...OK, I got it!:
Don't hang out with guys from [Namibia]. They'll always try to f.ucking poison you before they skip town.
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Topic: Bigfaker - External Tibs - Dr. Sringari/Dr. __ - "We're Off To Slap the Wizard!" (Read 20282 times)