Travel days are very stressful on their own... people trying to take advantage of you are overcharge for things, wandering in the heat with a heavy backpack trying to find the place your looking for, hotel hunting... add on that one person is very sick and it becomes hellish. Because Tina was so weak, Caitrin and I shared the weight of her backpack (each carrying an arm). Picture the three of us, Tina, barely able to walk, and Caitrin and I weighed down 1 1/2 times more than usual (and the status quo is difficult enough)... all worried that something could be very wrong, and saddened to have to leave the beautiful island we were, to go to unknown and unplanned territory.
Evidently emergency trips to Mataram Public Hospital is from Gili Meno is common enough... they had a set (and very high) price for a private boat and car. No bartering here... they know that you are desperate to get off the island so will charge whatever they want. We received horrible service, no one even offered to help us with our bags onto the boat (you have to wade through the water and climb up onto the boat which is difficult to do with a heavy pack, especially an extra one... usually the men at least give you a hand up) five men just watched us struggle (until we insisted that they help with Tina's bag, as it was next to impossible to do it on our own). When we arrived in Lombok two men jumped on the boat, grabbed our bags, and put them on shore. We though this was very nice until they demanded 50.000 idr for the service (which we didn't ask for... for that price I'd rather do it myself) I refused to pay their price (it's insanely high) and we begrudgingly gave them 5.000 for each bag.
The taxi brought us on the 45 minute ride to Mataram, dropped us off (seemingly on some random street) and pointed us to the direction to the hospital. We ended up walking into a side entrance and realized very quickly that this is not the Western world. After asking a passerby where to go for a fever we were pointed in the direction of the Emergency area. We fumbled our way through the maze of hallways, doors, and (rundown) elevators until we found the right area. I sat with Tina and helped explain the symptoms, the doctor (who could speak good English thankfully) took her temperature. I could see the fear in Tina's eyes as we both took in the scenery... She was sitting on a stretcher in the hallway, there were black water stains on the sagging ceiling, cobwebs and spiders littered the walls, the privacy curtains had unidentifiable stains on them, cats were walking around inside, and people being wheeled in on stretchers that looked more like trolley's (no cushion or sidebars, just slabs with wheels)...
The doctor said that her fluctuating temperature (it had gone down again) was congruent with Typhoid fever (which peaks in the evening... which is also when Tina was the worst), but it could be any number of things (Malaria and Dengue not excluded, but perhaps just a symptom of late nights and not enough water... vacationing yourself into a fever hahaha). She prescribed some medication and told us to come back in two days for blood tests (its too early to test for any of the preceding illnesses). We paid the whopping 50.000 idr (just over $5) for the check up and medication (you get what you pay for) and got the hell out of there.
After a half hour cab ride of hotel hunting (he kept bringing us to swanky expensive hotels... but thankfully it only cost 30.000 for the ride) we found a suitable place to stay. Luckily it came with a tv that had two English movie channels so Tina wouldn't get to board while Caitrin and I went out exploring (fyi Mataram is not a tourist destination. We found a mall. We were the only Caucasian people. Being incessantly stared at by everyone you see in very unnerving).
Tina's fever peaked at 40 that night.
The next day we considered our options... there was no way we were returning to that hospital for treatment... especially to get blood taken. Getting back to Bali (where there is a great tourist clinic) would either be a 9 hour shuttle and ferry trip (on the ferry that advertises it will get there "some day") or a $50 plane ride (which gets pricy to think about all of us... we are all backpacking after all). We decided to sit tight and wait another day to see if the fever goes down.
It didn't.
The next evening we considered options again, and neither seemed like something we were ready to do... so we started searching online for a tourist clinic (or at least a clean clinic) in Lombok. We phoned one that was located in a swanky hotel to see if they did blood work, or could point us in the right direction, they gave us the name and street of a clinic and lab. It happened to be on the same street as us so I went out to ask the hotel staff where it was... they laughed at me... it was directly beside us (not a block down, not across the street... practically attached to the hotel). I went over to check it out... it was heaven.
I excitedly grabbed Tina to bring her to this pristine, air conditioned, sparkling clean, needles visibly in packages, facility. We laughed at ourselves, for two days we stressed about fining a good clinic, and there one was... RIGHT beside us the whole time. Although the clinic was good... the English was not. It was difficult to decipher what our nurse was trying to say, and even more difficult for us to get our points across. But, we got a battery of tests done with results available in (get this) two hours!!! (wtf it takes two weeks in Canada to get blood work back!).
We were all happy and relieved when in one short movie later we found that she was not plagued with Malaria, Dengue, Typhoid, or any of the things we feared. We brought the results to another clinic down the street (and sat amongst a hundred people in a sweltering waiting room hallway waiting to see a doctor... still, I'd take that over the public hospital any day) who gave her some medication for an "infection" (love how he didn't diagnose anything, or elaborate, just "infection") he also stated that Typhoid takes 5 days to show up in blood work, so if she still has a fever in two days, she needs to get more blood-work done. (uuuuuuuugh)
That night her fever went down, and she actually came out for dinner.
The next day Caitrin and I went on our way, we had taken three days to care for our new friend (I couldn't imagine just leaving her with a high fever, all alone in a foreign country, with nothing but thoughts of Malaria dancing in her head) but now that her fever was down, the threat of major illness was behind her, all she needed was a few more days a rest before she would be ready to move on in her journey.
Moral of the story: don't get sick in Indonesia.
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