On one of my first long trips to Thailand, I was in Bangkok when I suddenly fell ill with a violent onset of diarrhoea, vomitting and high fever.
A friend immediately carted me off to an expensive private hospital where the receptionist in the lavish emergency room told us to wait for the doctor. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could and waited, and waited…and waited. . .
Nurses kept coming in and out of doors at the other end of the room seemingly without heeding our presence. There was no other acitivity that we could see. I kept getting worse and finally, after about an hour, it became too much for my friend. When the next nurse appeared, he resolutely went after her dragging me with him.
"My friend is very sick he needs to see a doctor now or he will throw up on the floor", he explained, exhibiting me in my sorry state as proof.
She shook her head and rushed off through one particularly attractive door that seemed to swallow up most of the nurses as soon as any of the others would spew them forth. My friend grabbed her arm just as she disappeared.
"We want to see a doctor, where is the doctor?", he shouted.
The nurse looked annoyed and bewildered at the same time. In the room behind her we saw at least a dozen nurses sit around a table laden with coffee and cookies. A couple of them were busy making Christmas decorations (Urban Thais are quite into Christmas - at least the commercial aspects).
One of them, looked up from the paper heart she was cutting, and smiled empathically.
"Doctor no have", she explained with the sort of mild patience that comes with superior knowledge and authority. The other nurses nodded and smiled, obviously pleased that the situation had been so elegantly dealt with.
It was only sometime later I came to appreciate their sentiment: Surely even the most ignorant tourist must understand that a hospital can't be expected to function during the doctor's 2 hours lunch break.
But once the doctor arrived, I was taken as good care of as I was entitled to with my $100,000 insurance coverage. I was admitted for 3 days during which I was diagnosed with both cholera and typhus and continually kept on an IV drip.
On my last day another tourist joined me in my room. He had a very bad throat infection - apparently a case which was of some interest to the experts, for he was visited in short order by no less than 4 different doctors who gave him 3 different diagnoses. The first would come in, have a look at the test results and prescribe a specific antibiotic. A couple of hours later, the next would come, have a look at presumably the same test results, shake his head at the stupidity of his colleague and change the prescription. Another couple of hours, enter the 'virologist'. This guy openly told us that his colleagues with their bacterial infection theory just weren't up to date with the science and prescribed yet a third drug regimen.
I was surprised because I'd never before heard that one could treat a viral infection with antibiotics. But he told us that this was a new development (this was about 7 years ago), they now had several very effective antiviral drugs.
I knew nothing about the AIDS controversy back then, so I just thought to myself, "that's excellent news" . But now I can't help wondering just what kinds of drugs the rivaling doctors were swearing by.
Fortunately for the patient perhaps, I later learned that he'd lost the shopping bag full of different drugs he was sent away with and had to make do with 'normal' antibiotics from the pharmacy throughout the remainder of his treatment.
But there was more good news to come. A giggling nurse came in with my test results in her hand. "You ok now, only food poisoning", she announced and showed me the paper she was carrying. There were a number of different boxes on it. Two that both read 'negative' were ticked. She giggled again, genuinely shy this time:
"Mr., AIDS no have."
I remember feeling a bit confused at this unexpected information, but also a strange kind of relief and gratitude, almost like being born anew. "That was well worth the initial 'doctor no have' ", I thought. But today, when I think back, I suspect there were two guys that day who were luckier than they could possibly have imagined.
The similarities between this exotic adventure and the western world will be made apparent next week.
Claus Jensen is a Dane living in Thailand
where he is able to eke out a meager but sustainable
existence as a
martial arts instructor primarily because he is much
taller than the average Thai,
and can overpower
most ordinarily accomplished
Thai boxing teachers provided they are half his size and twice his age.
Thais tend to take antibiotics every time they get a cold. Many Thai prostitutes take antibiotics continuously, believing that this will protect them from "Hiv." Thais' overuse of antibiotics is said to be staggering.
Thailand's "public health" experts make sure that the anti-Hiv message saturates public media, but to my knowledge never warn anybody about the dangers of antibiotic overuse.
Posted by: Mr. Hammer | October 18, 2006 at 11:41 AM
Mr. Hammer,
You are correct about the antibiotics, though I don't know if the Thai prostitutes still think it a charm against HIV.
The main problem is that they'll start antibiotics for anything, but they'll rarely finish the course. They stop as soon as the symptoms subside.
.
Posted by: Claus | October 18, 2006 at 06:06 PM