Sick

I know it has been far too long since I last posted here. I’ve been very busy over the past few months and will certainly update you in the coming weeks on my work and travels. For now I’ll focus on where I am and my most recent newsworthy experience (which people have asked me to post about).

My fellowship with AIF has ended but I’m still in India. I have relocated to Hubli, a city in the southern state of Karnataka, to be a Deshpande Foundation Sandbox Fellow for the next year. I will be working with Mann Deshi’s Hubli location on a few different projects (to be discussed in a future post).

Deshpande Foundation (www.deshpandefoundation.org) is based on Boston and does development work mainly in the Hubli area. DF’s claim to fame is its “sandbox approach” to development. This means that the organization focuses very intensively on developing a very small region, “the sandbox.” They’re hoping that if they are successful then the approach can be replicated throughout India and possibly the rest of the world.

To stay in India and work for another year, though, I needed to obtain a new visa. DF decided to send me to Nepal, and thus my story begins…

I woke up on a Sunday morning with a puffy face, dizziness, joint pain, diarrhea (not terribly unusual), and a horrible headache. Joost was there and very sweetly took care of me- went out to buy food to cook me breakfast and make me a rehydration drink. A few hours later I started having the chills and decided I had a fever. MY FIRST FEVER IN OVER 15 YEARS!

Since I was due to leave that evening for Nepal I thought I should go to the doctor. Joost and I set out for the hospital where they took a wrist x-ray (joint pain) and sent me home with some anti-inflammatory medication. They didn’t think I was sick, they didn’t listen to any of my other symptoms, and they didn’t take me seriously.

I figured I would get better so I took a paracetamol and Joost and I hopped on the overnight bus to Bombay. I arrived in Mumbai and still had the same symptoms but wasn’t feeling too terrible. Joost and I had some food and spent the day wandering around. In the late afternoon we boarded an overnight train to Delhi. By then I was feeling terrible again and developing new symptoms- my fever was 102 and I had a nice rash all over my body. I woke up in the middle of the night and started vomiting. At that point my fever was just over 104 and I couldn’t hold down any water.

Joost set out to find a doctor on the train. I couldn’t even open my eyes or talk to her and she didn’t take me seriously either. When Joost and I got to the train station we hopped in a taxi to a hospital that my good friend Rama recommended. At the hospital, the doctor in the ER refused to see me (apparently he didn’t think I was sick enough), shooed me away with his hand, and then I was wheeled off to a different doctor on the other side of the hospital.

Finally… someone who took me seriously! He immediately hospitalized me but unfortunately there were no beds available in that hospital, and there was only one bed left in their partner hospital. So they took me in an ambulance (lights and sirens- the whole shenanigans) and brought me to a private suite, the nicest hospital room I’ve ever seen in my life.

I stayed there for four days getting tons of tests done, receiving unbelievably painful antibiotic injections, and ultimately being diagnosed with nothing. I have diagnosed myself with chikungunya, even though my test results came back negative. While I was in Nepal I had a few relapses and I currently can’t really walk because of my joint pain, but I am feeling infinitely better!

Joost is sadly home in the Netherlands. It was amazing to have him with me the entire time. I don’t know what I would have done without him- he poured sips of water into my mouth on the train, carried all of my stuff for me, helped me walk from point A to point B, registered me, pushed my wheelchair, ran around Delhi changing my travel plans, brought me juice and mints, woke up early to talk to the nurses so they wouldn’t have to wake me, made sure he was with me for all of my painful antibiotic injections, offered to change his travel plans so that he could continue to care for me in Hubli, and I could go on and on and on.

The bottom line is that he was absolutely wonderful and, although a serious damper on his holiday plans, I’m really happy he was there with me (even if he insisted on taking photos like this).