Speaking of being sick: I just had to cut a trip short due to an insurance fuck-up. I was incredibly ill in Vietnam, having picked up a bacterial infection and rotavirus at the same time. It started when I was visiting a friend in Long Xuyen. I fell ill one day and suffered diarrhea, vertigo, and a pins and needles sensation down the left side of my body. I almost thought I was having a stroke. Considering I was in a city which isn't exactly on the tourist trail, my friend took me to a pharmacist for medical advice. I've done this before in South America but doing it through an interpreter was bullshit. I ended up swallowing some metronidazol, some drug for pancreatitis, and an antispasmodic. This made me feel slightly better so I followed the regime of four more doses and pretty much felt okay.
A week later in Ho Chi Minh city I became incredibly ill again. I had no neurological symptoms, but I had the worst diahrrea I've ever had. On the second day it got so bad that I was pretty much shitting what felt like stomach acid every 15 minutes. So this time I went to a hospital. I ended up on fluids, a long course of ciprofloxacin, and an antidiarrhea drug (not loperamide). The side effects from the antibiotic pretty much kept me in bed for a week before I could move.
I got to Thailand, and after a month I was still feeling shit, so I took my medical records and test results to a gastroenterologist at an international hospital. He was convinced that the ciprofloxacin had wiped out all of the healthy bacteria in my gut. So he recommended taking a probiotic. A week later, I was feeling a little better so I bought more probiotics and took my flight to London. I was planning on staying there for a bit before visiting friends around Europe that I'd met on previous travels. Anyway, I had to change my insurance policy because I was now in a "different region" and my condition suddenly became pre-existing. I got sick again just before I was going to go to Spain to visit friends in Bilbao.
Being Australian, I could have seen a doctor for free through the NHS but, when I tried to register, I was told I'd have to wait a couple of weeks to see the doctor. I could have went to a private clinic but the fee was 150 pound just for a consultation. I was worried that something was really wrong so I decided to cut my losses and return home given that the cost of any private treatment was going to balloon out with the length of testing and treatment.
I've been tested here and I have a bacterial imbalance in my gut but I'm slowly getting better. It's been three months since it began and I'm just now getting over it. It was a bogus trip. I've spent a lot of time in Central and South America, including rural areas, but I've never been sick like this. I couldn't even drink beer the last two months I was away.
Thank fuck I'm on the mend.
