Monday August 4th – Tuesday August 5th, 2008

(This story continues on directly from the previous story. Even though I have made it home there is one more tale to tell.)

Reaching my apartment gave me a second (or perhaps third) wind. I put my suitcase down and started to unpack, to e-mail people letting them know I was back at home. After a couple of hours of this I started to get a little restless, and decided that I would go to the physics department and see how people were doing. I was tired and looking forward to bed, but I didn’t want to mess up my internal clock by starting to sleep at dawn.

I went into the physics office and related tales of Greece, of how my luggage had broken and the tale of the previous night. After the last story it dawned on the ladies in the office that perhaps I needed some sleep, and with much more sense than I had they strongly suggested I make my way home to rest. I felt absolutely full of energy and vigour, and slipped out of the office upstairs to see which of my colleagues would listen to my tales from abroad. So it was that I spent most of Monday catching up with people around the department until finally at 3 pm I had enough and was finally ready to obey the earlier recommendation for rest.

I was awoken to the musical melody of my ‘phone sitting on my desk. Or at least I was disturbed from the sleep-like trance I was in. I got up and fumbled around for my phone as its cheery tinny music kept playing.
“Hello” I answered.
The response I got back was a hello from my friend Noor. I had tried to call her earlier in the day as she is one of my closest friends, not only in Davis but anywhere and I was eager to tell her about the people that I had met and the things that I had done while away. She was telling me that she guessed that I would have no food in my apartment as I had just arrived back in the States, and that she had made me a meal for later. How many friends like that does anyone have? So we made plans to meet up in about half and hour and catch up.

The two of us met at the Newsagents in Davis. Noor almost (or did she actually?) burst out laughing when she saw me; the beard that had been a few short hairs when I left Davis had now consumed the region around my mouth making me “resemble a red-neck”. We headed back to my place to sit down and catch up on the events that had happened over the last month. While we were sitting there chatting away Noor got a telephone call inviting her to dinner at Thai Nakorn, which I was more than welcome to join in on.

Turns out that dinner was a mistake. My dinner was what I would consider to be a fairly safe meal: salad, peanuts and tofu. After dinner I felt a little bit bloated but then again I had spent the last two days in airports and bus stations, and portions in the States are larger than those found in Europe. Still, I felt mildly nauseous. It will pass, it will pass. After everyone left dinner Noor and I decided that we would stop by the cinema and see what was playing. Wall•E was still showing, and we went in.

I had to excuse myself from the theatre during the opening credits because my nausea had increased. Before the movie had even started I had lost my dinner. I was not particularly concerned as my dinner had made me feel bad, but now it was out of my system and I did not have to worry anymore. I made it about halfway into the film before I had to give up and go home; I still felt awful and my body was still rejecting food it had received earlier in the day. As I made my way back home I called Chris Varney, one of the other physics graduate students, and asked him to organise a replacement to teach my lab tomorrow. With that done, I thought that all I had to do was go home and rest until I felt better.

I could not have been more wrong. I was sick chronically. Once I was out of food and liquids, my body started throwing up a vile metallic smelling yellow substance which I assume was stomach acid. Although the yellow colour is probably due to the peanuts. Any attempt to drink water ended with me over the sink. This carried on until almost 6am Tuesday morning, when finally my body relented enough to allow me to get to sleep.

Tuesday, 11 am

Now I was up and about again, feeling slightly better but still fairly weak. I was finally able to drink water and keep that down, so I was panicking less. Noor had called a little earlier to check if I was okay and I had told her I felt a lot better today. I had tried to eat a piece of bread from a loaf Noor had left with me the previous evening, but it was a disaster. As soon as I put the slice in my mouth it was as if all the moisture in my mouth had been drained. Okay, I can only have liquids I thought to myself. The trouble was the only drink in the house was water, and I was not going to be able to get vitamins or anything I really needed from just water. So I made a plan to head out to the juice store for a “liquid meal”.

The juice store was only a 10 minute walk from where I live. Or at least, a 10 minute walk when I am healthy. I was quite worried about heading out into the blazing California heat as the effort required to simply move from my couch to my bed seemed quite substantial. Still, no one was going to come over here and help me. I made sure I had my cellphone in case of emergencies and by mid-afternoon I finally convinced myself that I would be able to make it.

Setting out was slow, and hot. Every year in California we have stories of people that drink too much pure water due to the heat and dilute their body of electrolytes, and this is why I was worried about just sitting at home drinking water. One step after another. Always just a little further. I felt mildly feverish, a symptom which I did not have while sitting back in my house. Finally I made it into the juice store and ordered a large orange juice.

I should point out that I don’t get sick very often. If I did, I probably would have known that you don’t want to drink orange juice. All the little bits that float around in it upset and irritate your stomach. The general rule is if it is clear you can drink it. After drinking about half the juice I had I felt worse than ever; not only was my stomach upset again but even the mild air conditioning in the store was making me shiver. Normally I am someone that can sit out at night in jeans and a singlet while everyone else complains how cold it is, so I knew something was wrong.

There was nothing for it except to seek medical advice. I headed outside and lay down on the lawn in the shade to stop my head spinning. Now the summer heat was making me hot and uncomfortable — my body was going to be very fussy about temperature. I took out my cellphone and started going through the list of names on it, looking for people with cars that would be able to take me to the university’s health centre. Dial. No answer. Move onto the next number. No answer. The only way to get there it seemed was to either call 911 or make my way on foot. Maybe I simply have a different idea of what emergency than most, but while you still have an “or” it is a sign that it is not yet time to use 911.

I had only made it halfway down 1st street on my way to campus before I needed to be sick again. It is very easy to feel sorry for yourself when you are crouched over plants while on the hot asphalt of a bike path under the blazing sun. I pulled out my phone again in the vain hope that I would be able to reach somebody. Same result. Maybe I could just lie here until someone came to help me….? I realised there would not be much point to that, as I would not actually be getting any closer to my goal. Just keep going, and if I collapse then I could try relying on the kindness of strangers. So I walked. By the time I reached the health centre at 4 pm I was ready to collapse. I approached the counter and asked if I could see one of the advice nurses or doctors. They started taking various details from me: what was my telephone number? Was my address correct? Was I still in physics? Once they were done I was told to take a seat and the nurse would be with me shortly.

The nurse took my temperature and blood pressure, and as far as they could determine I had been food poisoned and was now suffering from dehydration from all the throwing up my body was doing. The human body is strange sometimes; its defensive mechanism to not having enough liquids was to throw up all the liquids I tried to give it. The nurse gave me a bottle of Gatorade to sip on, and explained that I should get an IV drip to make me feel better. They would do this at the health centre except that the process took a few hours and they were going to close at 5. Could I find a friend to drive me to the emergency room? If not they could call me a taxi and give me a taxi voucher for the trip. For the third time I went through my list of names of possible lifts I might be able to get, but again I could not get hold of anyone. The advice nurse wrote out a taxi voucher for Village Cabs and called them to take me over to the emergency room.

[Just a quick note on Village Cabs in Davis: I don't know if the taxi voucher is something I will pay for in my student fees, or whether this is something that is subsidised by all of the students' fees. In either case the cab company is making a lot of money by having these guaranteed clients, as the fare meter was showing $12 when the cab came to pick me up.]

In the ER people were very friendly and calming. The middle-aged nurse Gladys asked me what I had been up to, and how I had ended up here. I started by trying to keep it to only medically relevant details: I had been in Europe, I just got back and had spent the last couple of days shuffling between airport terminals, bus stations and the occasional train and that it seemed like my first meal back in the states had poisoned me. She was actually looking to calm me down, and asked all the non-medically relevant questions: why was I in Europe? How was the weather? So I got to tell a few of the stories I have written in here.
“Well, you might not want to tell people you have been galavanting around Europe for three weeks if you want any sympathy from them” she told me as she got ready to leave me with the IV drip in my arm.

They ended up putting two large bags of saline solution into me, and I did feel much better at least while still lying down on the hospital bed. The doctor explained to me that for the next 24 hours I should not eat anything, and stick to drinks that I could see through. Over the course of the next three days I could slowly make my way back onto normal solid foods. After I was discharged I called one of the physics graduate students David Stancato to see if he could give me a lift to a supermarket so I could stock up on my clear fluids, and eventually give me a lift home. This time my telephone call was successful! A few minutes later David showed up and we went to the nearest supermarket.

Now standing up is a lot different from lying down when you are ill. Wandering around the supermarket looking for liquids had the effect of making me quite queasy, and I was looking forward to being able to sit down again. It was not to be so quick or easy. We got into the checkout line behind an elderly man who was having the last of his groceries scanned. The man then started to drag out a set of coupons for various products. The coupons would not scan, and the cashier was trying to call over a supervisor. Then they needed to price check a couple of items under dispute. I started to feel quite ill and rested my head on the conveyer belt while pressing my legs against the next checkout counter over for support. The man and the cashier were still at it. He needed a rain check for some goods that were out, but the cashier needed to call someone over because he didn’t have a pencil. I suppose it would have been funny if I did not feel like I was going to collapse. The whole process was so long and drawn out that I was on the verge of offering the customer ahead of us $5 if he would just forget about the rainchecks, coupons, etc. and just let us be on our way. When we did make it to the front of the line, the cashier apologised for the delay and asked us how we were both doing. A conversation flashed through my mind from Italy: Fine thank you, and you? but I settled for “not well”. David was more talkative than I was and told the cashier we had just arrived from hospital and that I was really looking forward to getting home. It was fortunate that the delay was not much longer as I was sick once more almost as soon as we had entered the supermarket parking lot.

David had been the graduate student Chris had found to take care of my lab that morning, and he offered to take it again on Wednesday. I took him up on the offer, as tonight was going to be my first really good night’s sleep since I arrived back in the United States. It was strange: I had gone through some of the strangest parts of Athens, through the rains and the caves of Trieste, eaten in five different countries, slept at airports and bus stations and been fine. Having a meal (a salad no less!) back in my home town was what it took to send me to hospital.

Footnote:
[Saturday 9th August] At this point I am eating solid foods again and feel almost completely better. So no permanent damage done!