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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.

I reckon that if you wanna make a bit of money that you have to get into pharmaceuticals. We only just started to get all our vaccinations, ready for our travels & in one day we spent $800 - holy crap, we had both planned on $400, so it was a bit of a shock, not to mention that part of the charge at the Travel Dr included an injection fee, that we each had to pay - weird.

I had my MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) injection in the morning at Tweed Hospital. It all went well, I think that I had a slight reaction, but nothing too bad & I just really wanted to get it done & over with, without any more drama than required.I was in & out in a couple of hours, which was great!

In the afternoon we saw the Travel Dr at Southport together. Wow, what an experience that was. The staff were obviously over working there & the Dr that we saw was even worse. I was so happy that I wasn’t interpreting for the appointment, it was such a shambles. He started out asking us what we were doing there, we were obviously worried about something to be there, um no, just came to see what injections are suggested for the areas we will be in and any other information he might have, (seeing as he is the expert). Shortly after that he took a phone call, got really pissed off & stormed out of the room - Geoff and I both looked at each other & laughed. When he finally came in, he continued to mutter and complain for a bit, then finally got over it, inhaled deeply & rattled off a heap of information to us, which neither of us actually absorbed at all. Every once in a while he would ask us what we had decided & neither of us even knew that he had even asked a question, because he was speaking so fast. Apparently when I go back next week I am supposed to give some answers about decisions made, but that won’t be happening.

I had Typhoid, Polio Booster (which I think I had years ago - joys of your family not talking to you, so had to have it again) & Rabies (1st of 3) + the MMR. Geoff had a Rabies Booster (already finished his course years ago), Tetanus (including Whooping Cough &  Diphtheria) + Typhoid.

Next week I have another Rabies & possibly the flu vaccine too, oh joy!

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.

Wow, Woodford & X-mas are creeping up fast, it’s next weekend - holy shit! I had at least started some of my x-mas celebrations preparation before I managed to get 2nd degree burns, but being out of action for the last couple of weeks after it happened has certainly put me behind - I wish that I had done more before it happened. We aren’t even sure if Geoff’s dad is still coming up for x-mas day or not - which to be honest is kinda stressing me out. David has a dog, Benny (fox terrier) who needs to be looked after whilst he is away & he doesn’t really want to ask his neighbours, so he might only come for a day or two. If he does come, I will only see him for a day or so, as I am headed up to the Sunshine Coast on Boxing day so that I am ready for interpreting on Monday, when it officially starts.

I have decided that I won’t be camping at Woodford this year for a couple of reasons 1/ everyone who is going and camping with the dancing hands group, will be bringing hay bales (which I am allergic to) 2/ my burns need to be kept clean & I don’t think that camping there is going to be all that good for me in that respect. So instead I will be staying with Heather & Maree on their farm/ property (although with them now having goats it probably is becoming a bit more of a farm). Maree said that it will probably be good for me too, as I can have some time to myself to really relax, which is a fair point, so I can be either working or not, not in the middle most of the time like I was last year. Plus I can probably eat a little better as well. I think that I will miss being fully immersed in Deaf culture for the week, but my burns are really important to get them healed. I need to stop injuring myself!!

In other news, we setup our  x-mas tree - FINALLY tonight - holy crap, I thought that it would never happen - it was pretty quick to setup - it kinds felt like the express x-mas tree setup, taking us about 10 min to do everything but, at least it’s setup. Hard to believe that there’s only 10 days left til x-mas.

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