Welcome to India

...that was the title of an email my mother-in-law sent to me after telling her about the insanity of our weekend.

We had a lot of fun setting up the apartment, seeing a bollywood movie ("Dil Bole Hadippa") about a woman who cross dresses to play cricket for the Indian national team - very worth a view, watching workmen install our washing machine (yeah!), and meeting my new "boss" (though the project itself won't get off the ground for the next 3 weeks because of paperwork complications --- ah, India)

That was the light-hearted side of our weekend ... the more challenging (to put it lightly) parts included Allen having to go to the hospital for dehydration and Nikki's ezcema exploding in a bad way...

His insides...
It happened two nights ago during our dinner with my new boss. Allen stomach was upset, but he didn't really seem sick, just as if something he had eaten had upset him and once it was out of his system it would get better ...
But even after an initial purge it wasn't getting better, it was only getting worse and worse.
He wasn't able to hold anything down, not rehydration solution, not even water.
By 11 he was in a really bad way and I was at a loss for what to do ... Allen didn't think he needed to go to the hospital until the morning, but thankfully when we called the director of his Institute ("in case of emergencies...") he offered to help coordinate a taxi to get us there (hallelujah!) ...
I wasn't comfortable making the suggestion myself because I didn't know enough of (any, really) of the language to manage to get us anywhere safely.

Language ended up being more of an issue than either of us had expected --- but amazingly, despite his delirium Allen was able to speak like a star. Seriously, he was talking with the driver and doctors (for all I could tell) very intelligibly, which I can't say I would have been able to do in a similar situation. It was so scary how little I was able to communicate, so I thank our lucky stars that Allen was cogent enough for that... though he related to me after the fact that he probably sounded like you would expect anyone sick to speak, slow and haltingly ---- but that he was able to speak in Hindi/Urdu at all was what I considered a miracle, because I don't know how we would have gotten through this ordeal his language skills. Yes, there was one doctor who spoke (impeccable) English, but he hardly spent more than 15mins tops with us during our 5 hour visit to the emergency room.

Visiting the hospital emergency room was an experience I hope to never repeat (in India) again if I/we can help it. I helped Allen walk to the the emergency room of the hospital, after we had both removed our shoes before entering. It took me a while to get anyone's attention to get him to a bed or even to attend to him ... frankly, despite how quite the whole floor was (see picture) I felt that generally the staff couldn't give two shakes about taking care of Allen. Look, I understand that he was only dehydrated and not bleeding profusely or injured with a broken body part -- but frankly, given all the screaming we could hear from other parts of the ward, I'm not disposed to think that they cared to much about anyone else there either.



Maybe he wasn't "important enough," I don't know, but between him being ignored and no one speaking to me it just felt like we were very much alone.

They had me run to the pharmacy three or four times to buy the medicine that Allen was being given ... here instead of just one bill at the end of our stay, they will charge you each time something is used and have the family member (or person responsible for you) run to the pharmacy to pay for the replacement syringe, solution, medicine, whatever ... thankfully because all Allen needed was essentially saliene solution, we were able to cover all the costs with cash in hand, but I was worried each time I went to the pharmacy because I couldn't tell by the slip of paper I was bringing to them how much any of those items cost.

We were there between midnight and 5 am, because to stay any longer would have meant being admitted ... which on the surface doesn't seem like it would have been a bad thing for him to have gotten more rehydration solution intravenously, which we obviously weren't able to do at home and seemed to be making a marked improvement in both his coloring and his consciousness ... But no one was really paying him any attention and starting at about 1:30/2am the bugs started arriving.

It started with finger-digit-sized beetles running along the wall. Not something to freak out about, but unnerving nonetheless. Slowly they started getting bigger, with index-finger sized crickets just wandering through the ward without a care in the world (remember everyone has their shoes off in this part of the building). I was noticing on each of my trips to the pharmacy that crickets en masse were coming through the main door of the building, most were being squashed right there (if someone cared to do it) but some few brave through were able to venture all the way to the emergency room ... I would have to dodge this mass cemetary of crickets every time I went to the pharmacy (I was so thankful we were smart enough to think of putting on sneakers and socks before leaving the house)

By dawn we were out of there, bill paid, and on our way back to the apartment, a little worse for wear - but under the circumstances it was MUCH better that we had gone and gotten some fluids in Allen than not. I was just inscensed at their inattentiveness to his needs and was thankful that he could finally rest (properly) at home.

Her outsides...
For those of you know know of the trials that I've gone through with my skin, it should be no real surprise that between the stress of the hospital experience, coupled with the heat, and discomfort I was feeling at not being able to sit down properly for 5 hours (I only had a stool to sit on, which I took myself because no one was offering me anything) ... that by the time we came back I had a full body episode of ezcema.

I don't know what ezcema (or whatever this is called) is like for anyone else, but for me, my whole body will break out in mini-boils that are extremely itchy and sensitive to touch. I'll spare you from the pictures I took of what they look like (documentating the disease), but it isn't pretty.

If there is one "happy" thing we can take away from this experience I think it is that we have a better understanding of what are the causes or irritants that make my skin worse.... HEAT. Plain and simple - I say that, but it has taken years to even get this deep of an understanding because (obviously) I do my best to avoid situations where my skin will freak out.

We're pretty confident now (95% certain) that the cause is a dramatic change in temperature that my body isn't initially able to adjust to. I'd ball-park it at a 20 degree difference in temperature between NYC and Lucknow, and 30+ degree difference in the sun. My body can't take it so, it freaks out --- but we've found that if I soak in cold water (in a kiddy wading pool I brought with me) that my skin's temperature drops dramatically and the redness and the swelling goes down markedly ... Just for clarification, I don't have a feever and am not, outwardly-seeming, sick ... but my skin is always hot - most likely as a consequence of the reaction my skin is going through.

The real question is - will my skin stop freaking out as the weather gets colder? will it get worse again as it heats up in the summer? or will I be aclaimating at that point so it is not that bad?

We're not gonna know the answers to any of these questions for some time --- but I gotta admit, I'm nervous about how bad it has gotten so quickly. I mean, I wasn't so naive not to expect something to happen, but ... well, I didn't expect this.

------

So, we've been better. But we're not dead, right? Just kidding. We're OK now, much much better (behot acha) ... but we're laying low for the next little while, just enjoying our washer* and eating peanut butter and banana sandwhiches.

*Note on the washer, which I thought you would all appreciate. They put it in the second bathroom - and bathrooms in India gernally (though usually not in tourist hotels) will just have a shower head and a drain in the floor -- very practical, and easy to clean.
But, for the washer, they set it up to take advantage of the floor drain and just use it for the washer as well so it looks something like this:

So much for multi-tasking; taking a shower while standing in laundry drain water doesn't really look like it is in our cards...