Going to the Hospital

Blue Cross Nursing Home
Today I got to experience going to the hospital (general practitioners office). I have been sick for 3 days now. On Sunday I came home from work and slept from 2-8 woke up for dinner and went back to sleep around 10. Monday I woke up and felt like I had the flu went to work anyway and was feeling extremely feverish the whole walk there. I walked into the day care and lay down on the floor stayed for 10-20 minutes till I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out anymore and walked back home. Once home I slept from 11 till 6 or 7 went upstairs for dinner realized that I was really sick and took my dinner of noodle soup back to bed with me. I fell asleep around 8 was up sick most of the night and slept all day today.
This afternoon Uma decided that I needed to go to the “hospital” because she was pretty sure that I had giardia. (Which I do). The hospitals here are so different that home though. The one that I visited was similar to a large doctors office plaza. When you walk in there is a receptionist on the left and a pharmacy on the right. Upstairs was where my appointment was there are offices with doctors names on them and signs with sliders on it to say whether the doctor is in or out. Outside the office there are benches to wait on and a room next to the doctor I was seeing was a “sample collection room” that smelled terrible and the bathroom had no toilet paper like so many places here.
Inside the doctor’s office there was a desk with two chairs on the left side and on the right an examination table. We talked for a while about my symptoms and then he “took my temperature” it was like he was taking my pulse (does this really work if so let me know because I was positive that I had a fever still but he said that it was normal). Then he checked my breathing. After that he asked if I had ever had my blood pressure tested. Which I thought was strange because I have it tested every single time that I go into the doctor for anything. His blood pressure thing was in a large metal box where the lid flipped up for the dial to see where the levels are and he did it twice before deciding that it was all normal.
He then wrote out three different prescriptions for killing the giardia which is a parasite that can be contracted from the water or food. It could have been so many different things that gave it to me and I am told that it has a pretty long incubation period so it could have been in the last several weeks. It come and goes apparently so I could be sick for a couple of days and then better for a while and then sick again even a month later so it was a good thing that I went to the doctor when it all started. I took my prescriptions down to the pharmacy all the pills are in bubble pack things and they just cut out the amount prescribed and give them to you. I am on a parasite killer something else and electrolytes. For all the prescriptions for 3 days worth it cost me 54 rupees. (I get 75 rupees to the dollar). When I got back I looked through my health information that I got before I left and giardia is in there but she did not highlight it as anything that I needed to worry about but the medications that they gave me are the ones recommended by them as well so hopefully it does not come back. It was an interesting experience going to the doctor here I think that it was almost worth being so sick for. Maybe and at least I did not have a boil like Kate(one of the other volunteers here) It looks like a bullet wound now that the puss has started to leak out of it. Oh the lovely diseases of Asia. Wish me luck and health for the next 2 ½ weeks no more illnesses or boils (piloos as they call them here)