Once Fern was admitted to the hospital we had a lot of things to think about and not very much solid information. The surgeon initially wanted to do a biopsy of the mass, which would be a fairly invasive procedure itself, but since Fern was showing signs of infection he decided to give her a steady IV antibiotic first, which, if the obstruction was the result of inflammation, should cause the mass to shrink as the antibiotics did their work. If it didn’t shrink then he would need to do a biopsy. Fern would not be able to eat or drink anything during this time to avoid having pressure build up behind the obstruction, which could result in a potentially lethal rupture.
Fern laid in bed hooked up to all sorts of tubes and machines with no food or water. She happens to have small veins in her arms which became overwhelmed by the large quantities of fluids going into them and they had to give her a new IV every day or even twice a day. Sometimes they would attempt to get one in but they would fail. They woke her up every hour to check her blood pressure and temperature. Between the physical discomfort and the hourly check-ups she didn’t sleep much. It’s hard to imagine how this scenario could possibly encourage a person’s body to heal.
I basically became a resident of Pattaya, as opposed to a tourist. I became very comfortable with the cheap locals’ form of public transport – the baht bus – which is like a modified pickup truck that you jump onto, and I spent a lot of time walking between the hotel, the hospital, and various places to get food. I don’t know how many times I ended up at the mall – for the grocery store or to get a SIM card for my phone or, believe it or not, just to get something to eat from one of the kiosks in the air conditioning (it was brutally hot outside). Mostly I tried to spend as much time as I could at the hospital keeping Fern company while maintaining my own sanity, and going for long walks definitely helped me.
After six days without food or water and another CT-scan she was showing signs of improvement and the doctor decided that no biopsy or surgery were necessary. He believed the “mass” was inflammation from an acute infection, or enteritis. But Fern still had intense pain as well as intermittent fevers so she needed to continue to stay at the hospital for the IV antibiotics, pain management, and so they could continuously monitor her progress. They extended her stay there several times. It crushed her spirits each time they told her she couldn’t leave yet.
As Fern got to know her team of nurses and derive a little bit more strength from their compassion, I got to know the staff at our hotel. Every couple of days I extended my stay there and every day they asked me how Fern was doing and when she was coming back. One of them offered me rides to nearby places and insisted on picking us up from the hospital when she was finally released. They were a family of sorts, and it was heartwarming to be in their presence during a difficult time.
12 days after we went to the emergency room and 24 IV attempts later Fern was released from the hospital. Her body and soul were depleted and we both knew it would take some time for her to rebuild her strength. We stayed for several more days in Pattaya, giving Fern time to get used to moving around again and eating normal food again. Our Thai visa would expire a week later which wasn’t enough time to experience much so we got a quiet apartment in Bangkok for a week, which happened to coincide with Thai new year (which lasts about a week) so things were actually eerily quiet in Bangkok because everything shuts down and people leave the city to go visit family. Fern steadily improved and got out more and more. We walked around during Songkran, getting doused with water by strangers and having talc powder smeared all over us. There are some religious meanings to the ritual but a more universal one is that they are washing away a person’s bad luck from the previous year, making room for the good in the next year.
It took some time but Fern is doing fine. We got a ridiculously cheap flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and decided to work our way back toward Thailand so we could explore it more. My preconceived notions about the kindness of Thai people were definitely confirmed and it made us want to spend more time there.
It’s amazing to me how malleable human beings are. On one level, we’re all essentially the same and yet we fill such a bewildering variety of niches in the world. On another level, each of us has the capacity for all of those possibilities within us.
That could have been me telling someone they might have cancer.
That could have been me working at the hotel and hoping for the best for a customer that I could barely communicate with.
That could have been me trying to hit Fern’s vein and knowing it wasn’t going to be easy.
That could have been me telling her that she’d be confined to a bed for a few more days.
That could have been me in that hospital bed.
No matter what we get accustomed to in our lives, no matter how much we think we know exactly where we’re headed and even who we are, all of that can change in a heartbeat. A new set of circumstances can awaken parts of a person that may have gone dormant from lack of use. Suddenly something that may have seemed unimaginable becomes the norm and a foreign path, illuminated by beacons of familiarity, becomes home.
jim@snorkelbandits.com