Catching Dengue the day after my Birthday

By Clare McNamara, s26
Murdoch University

So most of the Australian students here, and quite a few Indonesians, came out with me to celebrate (or commiserate) turning 26. The next day I was woken up at six in the morning (after three hours sleep) by the boarding house mother to have cake to celebrate. I remember thinking it was a bit inappropriate to be eating cake at 9am when we had the last birthday, but 6am was just uncalled for! Being more than a little hungover I battled through the black forest, with a glass of coke to wash it down, without needing to run to the bathroom. I could feel all the dentists in Indonesia cringe whilst doing this.

After going back to uni to do a group assignment and leaving early because I thought my hangover was getting worse, I ended up going to the hospital that night with a temperature over 40'c. There, after 2 hours, the doctor poked me a few times and said I had a virus (some things are the same the world over) and sent me home with some unrecognisable medicine that reminded me a lot of the powders and potions I had in Japan when I got chicken pox. I spent the next 3 days drenching my sheets, clothes and towels in sweat and scaring the boarding house mother because I wasn’t eating. The crazy thing was she gave me so much food I had to hide it so she thought I was eating it. It all got a bit much when she started accosting my friends as they walked down the street to get me something I liked. After the designated 3-day waiting period for going back to the doctor, I went for a blood test (another 2 hours) and was told I had dengue.

I was admitted to the hospital and spent the rest of the week hooked up to a drip. This part wasn’t all bad. Although my blood count was down, I was actually starting to feel a bit better. The room I was booked into was bigger than my apartment in Japan and had hot water and a Western toilet. Two things I don’t have where I live. The main problem with staying at the hospital was that for some reason the nurses always came to take a blood sample at 5am. Given that I had so many visitors (which was very kind) I usually hadn't slept long, so I never really did believe them when they stated that it was a ‘good’ morning.

Visiting in hospital is quite an interesting experience in Indonesia. It is not uncommon to have a whole family sleeping in the patient’s room. You are required to have a visitor’s pass to come in, but half the time the door is unlocked and so anyone can come and go as they please. Ijo, the male Indonesian assistant, slept in the room every night because he was worried about leaving me alone. I found this a bit strange given that to book a hotel room with a member of the opposite sex you have to pretend you are married! To begin with I wasn’t sure what exactly he thought was going to happen to me given that I usually sleep alone, but then came the possession incident.

During one of the visits from a group of Indonesian girls, one of them started shaking and carrying on and all the others rushed around her splashing water and muttering prayers that I couldn’t understand. Eventually I learnt that she had been possessed by a ghost that had been hanging around outside my room and had been let in by Phil when he opened the door. Don’t worry; I thought exactly the same thing when I heard this explanation. But after learning of how easily one might be possessed I understood why Ijo wanted to stay there. Apparently females are more easily possessed than males, and in some cases whole girls’ schools have become possessed. Funnily enough this usually happens during exams. 

The next exciting installment occurred when I was called by the insurance company to inform me that I was being flown back to Australia because my blood count suggested a risk of internal bleeding, which they were not prepared to treat in Indonesia. This part I fully understood given that the nurse who took my first blood test felt the need to let me know that the needle was in fact "clean." But given that I was not aware that dengue could cause internal bleeding, I was a little unnerved whilst being annoyed I had to leave. After a lot of phone calls, stress and general buggering up of Phil’s life, I was sent business class back to Perth with my own private doctor. I was taken to the airport in an ambulance and the driver even asked me if I wanted the lights and siren on. The doctor then made me use the wheelchair at the airport, which was more a tactic to jump the queue than because I couldn’t walk. It was nice to be the one pushing in at an Indonesian airport as opposed to being the one getting pushed in front of! 

I got back to Perth only to be quarantined by customs. Once I was deemed "not contagious," I was allowed to proceed to the hospital. Here I was seen by about 3 doctors and 3 nurses all telling me different things and generally taking more blood than I felt necessary. A tip for the infirmed; never let a doctor take your blood. I don’t know whether she was on work experience or what, but she came at me with a syringe that looked like it should be used for artificially inseminating cattle and poked around until she found a vein that was still working. Then she came back and did it again because she put some of the blood in the wrong-coloured vile or something and needed more. To this day I still have a visible bruise!

On the plus side though, I got to go home and spend a week with Wally and catch up with a few friends. After a  nice week of hot showers, baths, beer that is not pilsner (only a few I might add) and toasted sandwiches I thought I had better get back to Yogya…then onto Manado and Kalimantan, where I will probably get malaria!