Dysentery
Some of you know that I went to India (New Delhi) for work, and that Brian took me to the ER as soon as I got off the plane. What you may not have heard is the details of that fun trip.
The trip was great, I got to see the Taj Mahal (pictures) and all around Delhi, and I didn’t have any problems until I got on the flight back home. And needless to say, I’m not giving exact details in this post – go look up Amoebic Dysentery – when you have a strong stomach. It’s a gastrointestinal disease that can be caused by all kinds of nasties, but the basic effect is the same: it’s deadly without treatment because of the dehydration. Luckily, I got treatment in a first world country, because by the time I got back to the states, I needed it.
I felt mostly OK on the flight to Frankfurt from Delhi – was feeling a little dehydrated, but I kept chugging water and keeping on top of it. My flight got delayed in Frankfurt due to the snowpocalypse in DC, and I didn’t actually make it home when I was supposed to. We were on approach 10 minutes away from Dulles and the airport closed. We were then rerouted to Chicago along with another flight from Heathrow in the same situation. I waited in line to only be told that I can’t get on a flight to DC until Monday afternoon (it was about 7pm on Saturday when we landed in Chicago). United picked up the tab for one night in a hotel, and said I could try to get standby on something on Sunday, but they were all booked.
Got to the hotel, had dinner and a lot of water, felt OK. No pain, but my insides weren’t working quite right. Wake up early on Sunday and decide that I’m exhausted, I have cramps (not the girly kind) and I don’t feel like dealing with this at the airport, so I called down to the hotel and got another night (at a discount!). I tried to sleep more, and at this point, I’m starting to feel a little dehydrated. So I walk (3 miles) to the nearest Walgreens to buy some snacks (Goldfish, saltines) and water and gatorade (the gatorade was an attempt to get electrolytes – doesn’t work so well for future reference). At this point, I was cramping pretty badly and didn’t feel like eating, so I was forcing as many saltines as I thought I could eat down my system, drinking the gatorade and water. I slept on and off all Sunday, debating with Brian (over the phone) if I should go to the urgent care or ER in Chicago. I was pretty darn adamant about not going, because I kinda knew that I needed fluids and that would involve an IV, which I wasn’t going to go through without Brian there.
By Monday morning, I was bleeding and miserable. I could barely walk the cramps were so bad, and I could not eat or drink *anything* – not even water. I was so nauseous that looking at the water bottle made me feel ill. Unfortunately, trying to puke didn’t work, and didn’t help. I called Brian to let him know what was going on, and to look up the urgent care centers in the area. I made it to the airport, got on the plane, and got off the plane, still miserable. Brian picked me up at Dulles and we went to the urgent care where they said it could take up to 3 hours to see me. We looked at each other and decided that the ER was the place to go (good decision, probably shoulda done it in Chicago).
The ER admitted me, stuck an IV in me with lots of fluids, and some anti-nausea medicine. They wanted me to pee in a cup – which was kinda a problem… I had gone after getting off the plane in Dulles, and hadn’t had *any* fluids since then, and was already kinda dehydrated. After about 2 hours on the IV fluid, they finally got what they wanted. They did a CT scan of my intestines and (surprise) I had an infection. They started me on IV antibiotics and admitted me to watch me overnight. There was some not-so-mild panicing as they told me they wanted to draw blood in the morning and couldn’t do it through the IV thing they already stuck me with. I ended up not sleeping at all in the hospital because of that, because I wanted to be awake when they came so I could tell them no.
They gave me several more bags of fluid and anti-biotics, and the morning doctor (much nicer) told me if I could keep solid foods down, I could go home – I just happened to have a completely unopened bag of goldfish in my backpack and asked how much did I need to eat to go home. I ended up having to eat the hospital breakfast – at least I got to pick what I ate – knowing me I would’ve gotten something that I wouldn’t have touched normally and then I’d have been in a pickle. I asked for Cheerios, they found me corn flakes – 1.5 times the normal serving size.. I ate it as fast as I could.
Then, as Brian was coming in for visitor hours, the nurse was giving me discharge papers and lots of prescriptions, and we stopped by CVS to get them filled: 2.5g/day of two kinds of anti-biotics (flagyl and cipro), an anti-diahrreal, and anti-nausea as needed – I ended up only getting the anti-biotics filled.
I took the eating part slow, eating “light” stuff and finally attempting beef about 2 weeks later. About a month later, my digestive system isn’t completely normal, but it gets there every day – and I had more side effects and problems from that much anti-biotics than I did from the actual dysentery, but I kept taking them until the end, and boy was I glad!
I don’t know what I did in India to catch the nasties, but it was obviously something I ate or drank that was infected. I was really good about drinking only bottled water, but I could have swallowed some from teeth brushing or I ate some food that wasn’t cooked right, etc. Brian has now stated that he never plans on going to India because of this, but I still don’t think it’s a big deal. I’ll probably go back given the opportunity – I mean, my visa is good for a whole year!
Possibly Related
An important point to remember when eating in 3rd-world countries (or anywhere, really): those dishes are still WASHED in the local water.
Getting infected with this, that, or the other ick is pretty easy no matter how careful you are. It’s just a risk we take when we travel.
If it makes Brian feel any better, I knew a group of people that went to the Sundance out at Pine Ridge, SD on the Lakota reservation and caught dysentery, so you can catch it just about anywhere, even here in the US.
Oh, ugh. I’m sorry that you had that experience, but at least you were back to the States for care when you did. I’m glad you’re feeling better.
Whew, it’s sounds horrid, all of it! Glad you are one the mend. Perhaps next trip you can bring a course of antibiotics and anti nausea meds with you?
Doctors don’t like giving out antibiotics that strong unless there’s a good reason. There’s also no guarantee that antibiotics will help – a lot of the nasties that cause this are viruses or protozoa and taking antibiotics will just make me miserable and cause more antibiotic resistant strains of stuff to develop. They didn’t give me the antibiotics until they had a sample and knew what the exact cause was.