battle scars
I am no stranger to getting sick while travelling. My first time overseas I managed to pick up some bug in France (France! Of all places!) that stayed with me for 18 months. In my travels so far this year, I luckily didn’t pick up any stomach bugs, but I didn’t manage to get off lightly.
The flu
I blame the taxi line at Sydney airport for the flu I picked up on my arrival back from New York. I arrived in Sydney around 9am after a twenty-five hour flight from JFK on a Qantas plane that seemed designed specifically to make my trip hell. By the time I cleared customs and quarantine (which is not always easy to do in Sydney), I was ready to throttle someone. And I was dressed inappropriately for the 30 degree Celsius day outside. I waited for a taxi for about 45 minutes, my blood pressure gradually climbing. By the time I went to bed that night, I was really sick and spent the next three days at work alternating between a cold sweat and hot flushes.
Motion sickness and persistent nausea
You know something’s up when you feel like you’re on a bus on a dirt track when you’re just getting ready for dinner in your hotel room. I had the worst motion sickness and nausea in Cambodia than I had had in about fifteen years. I was suspicious of my malaria tablets - I had been prescribed 200mgs of doxycline when everyone else was taking 100. When I started to run out of tablets, I realised something had gone wrong somewhere. So with only a few days before I flew home, my mother back at home called my doctor - and yep, I had been taking too much. The side effect? Severe nausea. And, oh yeah, that firey heat rash I got on my arm the day I passed out in a boat from taking Dramamine.
Malaria and dengue fever (suspected)
I got bitten a lot while I was in Cambodia. By mosquitoes, bed bugs, sand flies - you name an insect, chances are it was attracted to my blood. I spent seven hours in Bangkok airport before my flight home, and about halfway through developed a cough and a runny nose that I assumed was from the air-conditioning. When I got on the plane, I took some motion sickness tablets (see above), and passed out. I woke up when we were flying over Adelaide. By the time I went to bed that night, I had a fever and was completely delirious. I woke up at midnight convinced I had malaria and sobbed pathetically for a few hours before I finally managed to drift off to (a really crappy) sleep.
The following day the doctor rushed me in ahead of all the other patients (it was actually kind of cool). He sent me off to get some blood tests. Turns out I didn’t have malaria, and probably just had the flu. I still don’t know about dengue fever because my doctor went on holidays before the test results came back.
I wonder what I can pick up in Nepal and India? Some kind of stomach-destroying parasite, I’ve no doubt. Along with, of course, limbs covered in bug bites.
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