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On the plus side, I my visit was not due to an anaphylactic reaction, it was my finger, from the jungle trek.

Keo had originally told us that the hospital was closed, but upon arriving in Luang Nam Tha we discovered that it was open until 10pm. Turns out that there are no doctors on a Sunday night though, perhaps not at all on a Sunday from what I could gather.

When we got to Many Chans I spoke with the ex-guide (I wish that I knew his name, he is Many Chans son & appears to be managing things for her, I will call him Joe, coz its easier) & showed him my finger. It looked pretty insignificant, as it was under a band-aid, but once Joe had helped me pull it off & had a look, even he couldn’t hide his surprise & revulsion at the sight of it. I must say that it looked a little better in some ways, when I first cut it, the insides of my finger were poking out badly, but when it was taken off by Joe, there was still a bit of flesh protruding, but not so badly. It was pretty obvious that it was a serious cut, there was a pharmacy next door, which we went to briefly & then confirmed what we all pretty much knew, I would need to go to the hospital to get it checked out.

I hadn’t had a shower, as we had just arrived & checked in, so Joe suggested that I go & have a shower, get cleaned up & then he would take me to the hospital. It took ages to clean off all the dirt, grime & blood from the past 3 days & waited for Geoff to finish his shower as well, before we headed downstairs.

We had organised to catchup with Manish for drinks & dinner at 8pm, but with Joe already offering to take me to hospital we were a little stuck about what to do, that was until we realised that I was going to be going to hospital on the back of Joe’s scooter, damn wearing a skirt didn’t seem like such a good idea after all, at least the ride wasn’t too far. Geoff stayed behind to tell Manish what was happening, with the idea that he/ they would meet me there.

I wasn’t sure what to expect there, I knew that it probably wouldn’t be to western standards, but probably still not what I saw. When we pulled up, there were 5 locals sitting on seats outside the emergency entrance, not sure if they were waiting to be seen or not, but they were still there when I left.

I pretty much followed Joe & his instructions, I would have hated not to have had someone who could speak both Lao & some English, as none of the nurses spoke much English. They looked at my finger, and like everyone else were impressed by the cut, however they seemed a little concerned that by the time I had come, it was now 28hrs after the fact.

I was asked my name, which I spelt out in English E-V-A & soon realised how much I wish I knew the Lao alphabet, we got there in the end though. After filling out a form, which only had my name & age on it, Joe took it up the hall & disappeared into a couple of rooms & eventually emerged with a small package (containing some squares of gauze & betadine). It was funny waiting near the desk with the nurses, one of them had their little boy with them & he was climbing all over the place, whilst the nurses (4) sat & gossiped.

Joe brought the bag back to the nurses & I was then ushered into a room, which looked a little like some of the hospital rooms that you see in war movies. It hadn’t been cleaned for a while. There was a bed in the middle of the room, which looked rather nasty, it didn’t have sheets on it, & the brown colouring of the mattress cover wasn’t doing a good job of covering up the filth. I couldn’t think of anything else but “please not the bed, please not the bed”. Luckily I was ushered towards a chair, which looked moderately better.

The nurse went to a glass & wood cabinet which was fairly dirty & pulled out a “sterile pack”, a metal dish that contained ’sterile’ scissors & other instruments to use. She seemed to be having some issues with trying to use the tweezers to remove individual pieces of gauze from the pack that Joe had gotten & resorted to using her hands (not sure when she washed them, but it wasn’t when I was there).

A big rubbish bin was moved near me, which had a fair amount of rubbish in it already & I was told to hold my hand over it, whilst my finger was cleaned. There was a bottle of saline (in a glass bottle), with a piece of plastic hose on it, which she used to clean my finger, although she dragged the plastic hose through the wound on my finger. I wonder how many other wounds it had been dragged through before mine? It was then cleaned with some betadine & wrapped up in some of the gauze (that Joe had gotten earlier) & that was it, I was allowed to leave.

I asked Joe how much I needed to pay & he told me not to worry that he had already paid. I asked how much & he told me 6,000 kip. I had brought all of our cash that we had with us in 50,000 kip notes which amounted to about $70, so when I found out that it all only cost about 80 cents (AUD) that was a bit of a shock, as I suspected that as a foreigner I would be nailed with an expensive bill, like they do in the west. I even got to keep the betadine & extra gauze.

Now I just have to make sure that I keep it clean. I was told to leave the dressing on for 3 days, but I am not so sure. It’s pretty nasty looking, not often that you get to see the insides poking out like I did, Geoff reckons it is pretty gross, worse than my 2nd degree burns where the skin melted away & parts of it rotted away as it healed. Just have to be careful not to get it infected, would hate for it to go gangrenous - wouldn’t that spoil the trip. Hoping that the nerves aren’t too badly damaged either.

The last day, was a bit like day 2, lots of rain & slippery mud to walk through. I neglected to mention that we saw a few water buffalo the day before & we saw even more on the 3rd day. We disturbed some that were in some bamboo at one stage & the noise that they made as they tried to escape & were busting up the bamboo as they went was amazing - made me fairly nervous, I thought that 1/2 the cliff was falling down. We didn’t get charged by any, which was good, those horns could make one hell of a mess.

Many of the villages within the park or close to the edge, have fences built to try to keep the Water Buffalo out of their villages and the rice paddies, after seeing the amount of destruction that they had caused to the track, which had only been made a week beforehand, I can certainly see why they would want to keep them out. Many of the buffalo that wander the park have now become wild, from time to time the locals hunt them & I can personally vouch for the fact that water buffalo tastes good. If I could have a freezer full of roo, venison & water buffalo meat, so that I had a ready supply of them I would be very happy, oh maybe some rabbit & moose too .. YUMMY!!

On the 2nd day my camera broke, some sort of lens problem (won’t focus) and on the last day Geoff had issues with his. When we were crawling under a clump of bamboo, Geoff’s camelback hose had the end ripped off & his camera ended up with about .5L or more pouring over the top of it. FUCK, that made 2 cameras busted in 2 days, on the same trip - not very happy. At least Geoff got some photo’s at the start of the 3rd day, but we lost the last part of the trip, perhaps we can get a few pictures from Manish (we did exchange e-mail address’s) :0)

The first day of the walk we spent some time in the village, whilst our guide tried to rustle up some porters to help with the food & we were mesmerized by the amount of corn that we saw hanging under huts to dry. We saw heaps more on the 3rd day, the colour of the corn was almost an unnatural orange. There was so much of it too, never seen that much corn ever before & doubt that I will any time soon, (sorry no pictures). Apparently they don’t eat it, they grow it to export to China, where it is made into corn chips etc. We did see a couple of the locals using some of the discarded corn husks as a means to smoke some weed, instead of rolling it in paper, interesting use of the corn husks & quite practical really.

We had a lot of river crossings (16+) which varied in depth, the rocks were a little slippery at times & the current quite strong in some places, but surprisingly enough, no major injuries came about, except of course if you count leech bites.

The leeches were ferocious, every few hundred meters would yield a dozen more leeches. When I injured myself the day before I managed to get them all over (on my wounded finger, armpits, chest (my crop top was soaked in blood), legs & even in areas down there that you really don’t want them to be) & probably quadrupled (+++) them in a few short hours.

Keo gave us each a small pouch of salt, which we dampened & rubbed on the leeches to remove them, which did work, but damn when you have an open wound, I have to say salt is one of the last things you want to rub in it (be it leech bite or deep cut). Both Geoff I wore our water shoes on the last day (may as well, we carried them with us) which resulted in our feet being massacred by leeches. Once they get you in one place, every other leech likes to bite that same place. Most that bit me did so between my toes, which made them quite hard to remove & for the most part I tried to ignore them as much as possible.

The focus of the day seemed to be more about getting back to Luang Nam Tha, I actually felt a little hurried at times, but it was still fun.

The whole trip was quite good. We ate a lot of food that grew in the jungle, which added to the trip & learned about many plants & what they were useful for as well. The Cardamon water was really nice & so was the fresh banana flower soup, bamboo shoots & other shoots that we ate. There was a really cool jungle vine that we had as well. I think that if you only ate the food that was carted in, the trip wouldn’t have been quite the same. I wish that I knew the name of the yellow fruit that we were eating, it was really nice. I think that we all really enjoyed being able to walk along & be able to identify different plants & know what we could & couldn’t eat by the 2nd & 3rd day.

Although it rained on both the 2nd & 3rd day, it added to the trip, after all we were in the jungle. It did mean that we were pretty much soaked for the last 2 days, but that is all part of the fun.

We had been walking through the jungle for a couple of days & with all the mud & everyone (yes, mostly me) slipping about the walking was taking a little longer as we all tried to be careful not to slip off the path. The path was made more interesting to walk on by the wild water buffalo that had walked through parts of the path & hacked it up pretty bad, so not only was it muddy & slippery, but the mud was now all trampled up too.

Keo had told us a few times before to be careful of the broken bamboo as it was very sharp, which I tried to remember when looking for things to steady myself when I slipped. The bamboo walking stick helped quite a lot, but there were times when you just needed that little bit extra. I recall looking at the fated piece of bamboo & thinking careful that’s sharp, then I slipped & as a natural reaction, I reached out for the bamboo to steady myself, at the same time thinking “careful where you grab it, it’s sharp”. You can see where this is going … I missed & managed to slit open my left middle finger, just above the first join. Blood pissed out everywhere & here is where it gets a little hazy.

I saw that it was a bad cut, very deep, not a superficial one, like so many others I already had. I remember a lot of blood, but not as much as everyone else does. I thought that it was pretty deep. Keo came up & with salt all over his fingers squished my finger to stop the bleeding. The first aid kit that was supposedly supplied didn’t exist, Manish at least had some bandages that he brought (we didn’t as we like Manish had been told our guide would bring one), my finger was wrapped in a band-aid & then part of Keo’s shirt, (which Geoff cut off) to help stop the bleeding. It was at the point that Keo grabbed my finger with salt on his hands & squeezed that I went into shock.

I remember not being able to see properly & being asked questions (which I am remembering now whilst writing, but couldn’t the other day) by Geoff - Who am I? Geoff, What is your name? Eva, My brothers names - Kevin & Gordon, My frogs names - Skinny & Cellophane, Where are your frogs? Australia. I thought that it happened in a wide area of the path, but apparently it happened in a really narrow area & when they carried me to a slightly wider area Geoff was hanging off the side of the hill/ cliff.

Thinking about it now, it was probably the pressure on my wound that put me into shock. I don’t like blood, but I have never gone into shock like that before & that is the only link I can see. It took me a while to recover, but at least we had brought some powdered ice tea mixes (full of sugar) which Geoff (I am assuming) mixed. Keo practically shoved it down my throat, which was weird - I remember that as I nearly choked on it. Once I had the drink that seemed to help me a lot & I was talking.

I didn’t carry my pack after that (25L day pack), Geoff did, whilst Keo guided & helped (although it felt like he dragged me more than anything else) up the path to our 2nd camp. It took us a couple of hours to get there after my accident.

I had been told after I came out of shock that it was only a little cut, but I felt a little more justified when we unwrapped it to clean out the wound a little more & put a fresh bandage on it & discover that it was a fairly deep cut. As I suspected it was deep enough for stitches, but not a clean cut either, so not sure if stitches would be viable. I still had colour in the top of my finger, so no big blood vessels were damaged. Other than that, I am no doctor & neither is Geoff. Being in the jungle & with so much rain & moisture about my finger was pretty moist & the inner parts of my finger were protruding out, kinda gross - going to have one wicked scar.

Needless to say, yet again I didn’t eat very much, between my finger, an upset stomach & sore molars I really didn’t feel all that enthused about eating an enormous amount of food again.

My leg (which was burnt) has started getting very itchy today, which I am hoping is a good sign, it’s not the full area of my leg that was burnt that’s itchy, but quite  a lot of it.

I have been having issues with keeping the bandage damp enough though, it’s been drying extraordinarily fast today for some reason as well.

I think that when I have scratched it (over the top of the dressing of course) it’s been making my leg weep quite a bit more, but when you have a bad itch, you have to scratch it right?

Not sure which is worse, having an itchy leg or goose bumps in the burnt area. Goose bumps are quite painful at the moment in the area & I get them about 1/2 a dozen times a day at least, but it’s fairly temporary. However, with an itch, it can last for a while longer & has  proven to be so with my leg at the moment.

What a night. I decided to cook one of our favourite meals tonight - Corned Beef with Mashed Potato and Red Cabbage & steamed beans, but unfortunately everything didn’t quite go to plan.

I started cooking the Red Cabbage earlier in the day, as it tastes best when it has had time to cook down & stew - I put it on to cook before I went to a job & it stewed for about 9hrs + in the end.

Geoff went to his game (touch football) & I had a chat to a friend on Skype & then I put the Roast Beef on, when Geoff got home from his game of touch (they won by the way - 2 weeks in a row, which was pretty cool, and very rare). I was feeling a little tired & managed to get Geoff to put the potatoes on & then fell asleep. I must admit that when I woke up I was a little grumpy (not a very happy camper when I wake up at the best of times). Everything was still on the stove - DOH! So I got up and decided to pull it off - Geoff followed & said that he could do it, but me being me, I had to do it myself.

The big pot that the corned beef was in, had one of the handles break off (Geoff reckons that the handle is around, but I am sure that it is long gone - so I picked up the pot by the one handle that was still attached & used a tea towel to hold onto the other side of the pot. I only needed to move it about 1.5m from the stove top to sink area so that the corned beef could be removed from the pot of boiling water safely (the last time I tried to cook it, I managed to get the corned beef out of the pot, then it dropped back in & splashed onto my hand, burning me, so I thought that this was the way to go). Geoff was kinda in the way, insisting on helping & me ignoring & then when I thought that I had reached the counter, I soon realised I hadn’t. Within seconds, the pot full of boiling water was all over the front of me. At first I said nothing, then I started screaming & ripping off my pants (track pants) & then I threw myself on the couch - screaming in pain. Geoff didn’t know what the hell was going on & looked at my leg & convinced me to go upstairs & into the shower.

I only lasted about 10 min under the shower, I was finding that the shower was causing a lot more pain - probably because it’s practically a waterfall when it comes out of the shower head - ok when you want a decent shower, but when the water is actually causing more of the skin to peel off - PAINFUL!!!

After only lasting 10 min under the shower, Geoff convinced me yet again to get in the bath - he ran a cold one, but I swear it wasn’t that cold, any movement of the water just caused more pain, but that was done every once in a while. I was in the bath for about 2.5 hrs. I went into shock & I do recall banging my head against the wall & my fists on the bath, trying to cause more pain in other areas to distract myself. I really didn’t want to go to hospital, but in the end we decided that it was the best thing to do. I insisted on wearing undies & fortunately I had my wrap around (100 different ways to wear) silk skirt that I used to kinda cover myself, which I wore with my Atari t-shirt and a beanie, as I my torso was extremely COLD. It was a bad look, looking back, but I didn’t really give a shit, at least I was covered.

We headed to Robina Hospital Emergency Dept & I joined the masses (there wasn’t really that may people, but there was a bit of a delay). I couldn’t sit down due to the burn & trying to maintain some level of decency, so had to tough it out, fortunately I didn’t faint, but boy did I want to.

They did hurry my through apparently, but once I was in & they got me onto a bed, they certainly weren’t making a lot of effort to get to me any time soon, someone had anaphylaxis and there was a sick baby as well as heaps of other patients. Boy was I happy that I had taken some pain killers. A nurse happened across me almost an hour after we had been there & was a little curious as to why I was there & why no-one had seen me, I think that if I hadn’t had any pain killers and was screaming my lungs out then I might have been seen earlier. The pain was still quite intense, but it was a good idea to take something after the length of time that expired. In the end they just slapped some silver cream on me & put on a rough bandage & told me to come again tomorrow. I received a medical certificate to cover me from now until Monday 7th, but I don’t really want to cancel any jobs that I have.

I see a rheumatologist today, finally after over 9 months waiting to see him, apparently he is pretty good. Was a bit of a shock when I got a letter from his office stating that my appointment will be about $500 &  I will only get $200 back from medicare - hope that I get some back from my private health insurance. It’s an hours appointment & to be honest he better have something worthwhile to say other than “I don’t know” like every other doctor has, especially when he is charging so much.

BTW - it’s only 31 days til x-mas & 33 days til Woodford, wow, this year is flying past

Yesterday was a rather interesting day. It started out with a rude awakening with the roadworks happening in the streets next to & behind us. Then the discovery that a pesky little rat has been in the garage munching on some very expensive gear - little turd. So I sorted out what he had destroyed ready to go in the rubbish & then gave up after a little while after feeling a bit stuffed up.

I cooked some sweet sticky rice (to take with us on our kayaking trip) and Geoff worked on getting the sail up on the boat. He got most of it done, before the drama unfolded.

Not really sure what happened, I went outside to see Geoff & help with the boat, my eyes were incredibly irritated, I thought that I had something in my eyes, so I rubbed them a bit & after it was a little too unbearable I decided to go in & rinse them with some water, within a few minutes my eyes were red & thoroughly irritated & then my eyeballs themselves started to swell - see photo below

The top photo was taken this morning approx 18 hours after it all started, my eye still isn’t 100% but it looks a lot better than the bottom shot. The bottom photo was taken yesterday & my eye still swelled up more than that. Everything around the iris swelled - I had a bowl in my eye & my eye was yellow instead of white - almost like it was pussy - it was foul as.

I took a shower, hoping that would help, sometimes it does with my allergic reactions to cats & dogs, no surprise that it didn’t though. I had some phenerghan - 25mg (as I didn’t have any non drowsy antihistamine that I could take - ran out with the dust storm & all) & as it progressively worsened we decided to head off to Robina hospital (heck of a lot faster than going to Southport Hospital & better facilities I think). When we arrived we had a little wait, as there were people at the windows already, but when they realised that I had a history of anaphylaxis I was seen to pretty quick - boy am I glad that I had been there earlier in the year (Jan 3rd for anaphylaxis in relation to some gellati I had - they changed the recipe & it had milk in it - Bugger!) it meant that they already had most of my details in the system, so once I was all checked in, I was brought through straight away - I felt sorry for everyone who had been waiting there for a while, when we got in straight away, but such is life I guess.

I ended up in the same bed (#5) I had been in January 3rd & one of the nursing staff there remembered me from last time. He saw me & said I remember you, you have all the allergies. The other nurse, who hadn’t even taken all my details yet was really surprised & he said yeah, she’s allergic to everything, gotta watch her - was quite funny in a way - EVERYONE remembers me because of my allergies. They asked how I was feeling & were really worried about my airways. I was having a little trouble with my breathing, so they put me on oxygen - I like oxygen I must admit, very nice when you are feeling a little shitty. I was somewhere between a 3 & 2 when I first arrived, but was upgraded to a category #2 due to breathing issues - I must admit that the oxygen helped a bit. I felt like a woose having oxygen, but once I had it on & noticed that it was helping a bit, I was pretty happy being a woose. Everyone seemed pretty worried that I was going to go into full blown anaphylaxis, which was a little weird - I was really just worried that my eyeballs were going to explode or I would go blind - forget the breathing issues. Once my breathing was under control & my blood pressure was a little better 140/60 (not normal for me) when I arrived down to 118/ 56 they started to take notice of my eyes a bit more. They were a little puzzled over what to do, in the end settling for some saline as the safest option.

In the end I had:
Phenerghan (25mg),
Ventolin (12 puffs via a spacer - apparently that;s the equivalent of having ventolin via a nebuliser) ,
Prednisone (2×25mg),
Saline (Sodium Cloride) +
Oxygen

In reality I guess that most of that could be done at home, but it was probably good that I went to hospital - I was on Oxygen for at least an hour to increase my oxygen levels as it was apparently pretty low & I don’t really have any access to that at home (at least not the PURE stuff).

After I finally got out, we stopped in at Robina to pick up a few things from the shop. I was sooooo tired, the phenerghan makes you pretty drowsy & was having a little bit of trouble maintaining any sort of focus on the task at hand - it seemed to take forever to pick up a couple of grocery items (probably did, as I am pretty sure I was dragging my ass). Once we finished that we went over for some sushi at Sushi Mania, I knew there was no way that I could last if we went home & had to make something & I was starving - my stomach said I could eat more, but my body was so tired that I had to stop after 5 plates (Seaweed Ship, 2x Prawn & Avocado hand roll & 2x Salmon & Avocado rolls) - I was having a fair amount of trouble staying awake. We got home around 6.20 & I fell asleep on the couch, woke up briefly to go upstairs & fall asleep in bed & get 13 hours of sleep. If there is one thing that I can say about having an allergic reaction, it’s that it tends to exhaust my body so much, that I actually sleep really well - my best nights sleep are after a reaction, normally I am not a very good sleeper, so that is a HUGE bonus for me - gotta look on the bright side about something.

Today I am just taking it easy, not really very keen on going outside

Well, I got cleaned up by an elevator today - fucker closed on my right knee (the one I recently had operated on). Managed to do it in front of a full elevator including someone I was there in the building to work with. None too pleased to be honest, it’s been incredibly sore today. Sucks because I was supposed to return my crutches today & now it looks like I won’t be. Hope that it improves, I might actually need to take something for it, if it doesn’t.

The rain has finally cleared, although apparently it is supposed to rain on the weekend. The Gold Coast Deaf Club (DCGC) is having a BBQ on Sunday (see Events page on main website for more info) so hopefully the weather will be ok for that to still go ahead. Speaking of rain, Lismore is flooded at the moment. I know heaps of people in the Deaf community down there, so hopefully they are all ok.

Last night was Ori’s last night with us, and here in Australia (at least for this trip). Ori put some more Kinesio tape on my knee last night, which was cool. I am going to miss having my knee taped up with Kinesio tape, I do think that it actually helps to reduce the swelling. Apparently you can use Kinesio tape to improve posture too, so I am thinking of getting some for myself to try to pull my shoulders back (or try to encourage my posture to improve). A long time ago (nearly 10 years ago), when I was going to see a Chiro, it had been suggested that I try to get a tape that sounds very similar to kinesio tape to improve my posture, so maybe I will.

Ori stayed up all night, in an effort to tire himself out for his flights & we dropped him off at the airport at 4.30am, which was a bit of an early start for Geoff and I. We ended up going home straight afterwards & jumping into bed for a few more precious hours of sleep.

I had a GP appointment in the morning, to fill in my GP about my operation and to get some blood test results. I have a bit of a high ANA, which can mean SLE (Lupus) or Rheumatoid Arthritis, but I won’t be able to find out any more about until I see a Rheumatologist in November.

Paul (orthopaedic surgeon) & Peter (physiotherapist)  made the suggestion that I get a hold of an exercise bike for the next month or so, to increase the movement in my knee. So I decided to sms a couple of friends to see if they had a bike or knew of someone who had one that I could borrow & Michael came back to say that he had one that I could use -WOHOO! Thanks Michael!!

With Ori and Geoff wanting to go into KP on Thursday night for a climb (rock climb) we organised to pick up the bike from Michael’s on the way home.  (I didn’t climb, but we did bring my camp chair along, so I sat at the bottom of the cliff had some dinner and took photo’s.)

Michael has a cardio bike, it’s actually quite cool, because you can move the handles forwards and backwards & that makes the peddles move too. It works really well coz I can’t push the peddles around properly with only one good leg. It probably has encouraged me to overdo it, so I need to find a balance. At the moment I am trying several short stints on the bike, ie 1-2min max, several times a day. Then I can build up from there.