October 3, 2013 - A Fever, an Earthquake, and a Flat Tire

This is the third time this month I’ve taken a sick day off work. The sum total before that since I arrived was half a day, if that.

I want to blame it on my maid, who actually had me feel her arm to show me how hot it was. When I realized how feverish she was, I pointed at the door and said, “Go home and sleep!”, miming sleep. She did. Though she washed the dishes first. I rewashed them.

That was two weeks ago, Friday. Saturday I went into Delhi to have a lunch with a co-worker. Felt mostly okay, though not 100%. Sunday, I felt even worse, though still went back into Delhi to have dinner.

When I can tell I have a fever without a thermometer, I know I’m sick. Monday morning, I emailed my team, took some ibuprofen, and slept on and off most of the day. I should have taken a sick day Tuesday, too, but I hate taking days off work.

As I rode in my taxi to work on Tuesday, I noticed a guy on a motorbike trying to get my driver’s attention. As you might have guessed, it is very difficult to get the attention of another vehicle on the road in India. Because honking certainly won’t help. But I noticed him so I alerted my driver. Turned out, we had a flat tire! I can’t believe neither of us felt it, it was all the way down to the dregs. Luckily, I live within walking distance (more or less) of work so just went the rest of the way on foot.

Filler photo from market outside work. “Abhi” means “Now”

I felt mostly better on Wednesday and Thursday (and the taxi sorted out its tire issue), then felt crappy again on Friday. On Friday morning, because it is just about the end of the month and so convenient timing, I decided to let the maid go. I don’t know for sure whether she has gotten me sick the last two times, but I’m kind of tired of re-washing dishes because they don’t meet my standards. I sometimes feel like she brings in more germs than she cleans away, which I guess is kind of a mean thing to think. I told her it was because of my wacky schedule and because I am leaving India soon. I didn’t want to make the neighbor translate firing her again.

Saturday morning, I woke up covered in a rash! My arms and legs were covered in itchy pinpricks of red. (I had thought a mosquito had attacked me at first.) My hands and feet were red, swollen, and tingly all day. Mid morning, there was an earthquake. Not a very big one, but the first one my neighbor had ever felt in the building. Both my neighbors were sufficiently nervous that, together, we all (including husbands and kids) walked down 12 flights of stairs. Apparently no one else on any other floor cared as we were the only ones outside, where we hung out for a bit (neighbor informing me that the building could withstand a 7.5 so I kinda wondered what we were doing out there) before deciding to go back up. Taking the elevator. All righty, then.

I’m an idiot, so I did not cancel my plans to go to a Tai Chi class in Lodhi Garden with the Women’s Group despite the rash and swelling. I got an auto to the metro (the first auto inexplicably turned me down) then I found a seat on the metro, one bonus of getting on at the end of the line. And a minute into the Tai Chi, I was so light-headed, I couldn’t stand any longer. Great. So I just sat there on the grass for an hour. Then I took a taxi home (the first taxi inexplicably turned me down) though enjoyed a nice lime soda at the Lodhi restaurant first with the teacher from Holland who is coincidentally acquainted with the couple that organized my trip to Leh.

On Sunday, my landlord sent his uncle and some maintenance people over to finally fix the leak in the air conditioner pipe (that was caused by the bolt in the brackets piercing the pipe.) It is finally done, yay! They also fixed my geyser (hot water heater)! Yay for not-cold showers!

Since the maintenance folks borrowed a ladder from the neighbor, I took the ladder opportunity and looked in all the closets and attic space I could never reach before! Nothing interesting, but my curiosity is satisfied. Also, I finally cleaned the ceiling fans which I had been wanting to do for ages, but couldn’t reach them.

Attic Mystery Solved! It’s… well, an attic. Over my hallway. Containing dust and an empty box.

So because every single Indian person who knew I was sick has been telling me to for the last week, I finally went to the doctor on Sunday evening. I took a rickshaw to the only hospital I knew (the reputable “Fortis Hospital” chain near my work) and went to the Emergency Room, despite that it wasn’t an emergency.

I generally wasn’t impressed. First of all, I went in the main entrance, not the emergency entrance, so it took me a good 15, 20 minutes (a lot of that waiting in line at reception while other people cut in front of me) to find the emergency area. I had to walk through a door that said “Patients Only” and had to ask several people if I was in the right place.
To their credit, the doctors were able to see me immediately, which was kind of awesome. Not as awesome was that they wanted me to lay on a bed that had clearly been lain on by previous patients. I declined. The doctors were nice enough (even the one that randomly asked if I was Christian because my name is a Christian name, which it isn’t) but they did not really tell me anything I did not already know from the internet. They just checked my blood pressure and were like, “Yep, you don’t have a fever now.”

To see the doctor was astonishingly cheap. Like $6. To get a blood test was astonishingly expensive. Over $80! Now, I might be mis-remembering (or maybe I only know the insured rate) but I thought blood tests in the U.S. were closer to $60. If I had any notion it would cost that much, I never would have bothered. It did not seem to matter if I had insurance here, unless I was admitted. Though it was kind of cool that I could look up my blood test results online to see that I didn’t have dengue fever or complications from dengue. (I didn’t think I had dengue because I suspect I would have been out of work much longer than a day. But no one had any other good explanation. And dengue is going around.)

A week later, I still don’t feel great. I had a headache so bad at work, I raided the admin team’s medicine stash (kindly labeled with which to take for what since the drug names are not the same) and found 400mg of ibuprofen. Yeah, I was all over that.

Today, I discovered that, after two wonderfully gloriously hot showers, my geyser is broken again. Awesome. At least the water isn’t freezing, just kind of swimming-pool cold, and it is still fairly hot out so it is not horrible yet, just annoying.

Tomorrow, I head to Dehradun for the weekend. Hope I can manage to not feel sick. And maybe I’ll get a hot shower.