Bad food, no sleep and other people's relatives

Well it's been a long time between drinks, but I have an excuse and a jolly good one too - I've been in hospital with Dengue Fever.

The downside to my waxing lyrical about the beauty of the monsoon, is that of course the second the rain stops, out come those virulent little pests - the mosquitoe. And there's one particular kind of mosquitoe that spreads Dengue, but not dissimilar to the Scarlet Pimpernel, no-one knows which one he is. Surrounded by myth and intrigue he weaves a path of destruction through Colombo, particularly at this time of year. I of course am a mossie magnet, so have been (against all my normal principles) swatting everything that came near me. Everyone in the office has been looking at me strangely - I can just see them saying to themselves "Why is the Australian woman clapping again?".

But the clapping didn't work, 'cos one of them got to me. Apparently this year's been particularly bad for Dengue, with people dropping like flies, and yours truly was added to the list. So on Monday night was feeling somewhat dodgy, and managed to drag myself through half of one of Dunc's fabulous veggie stir fries before giving up. Never a good sign for me - if I can't eat, you know something's up. By 8.15 I was in bed, by 10pm Dunc attempted bed and decided to sleep in the spare room! There ensued a night of pain, hot and cold sweats, tossing and turning, vomiting, nausea and of course where would we be without D'ea to top it all off.

So got the Doc out, got the blood test people out, yup Dengue, nothing to do except, rest and drink water. Which I did for 2 days. Was by then so dehydrated that against my protestations I ended up in the local "private" hospital. Personally my view of hospitals is that they have bad food, you get no sleep, and they're full of other people's relatives, but I was by now too sick to protest.

I'll keep it quick, because actually you could write material for a tv series based on my short experience there, but suffice to say that life is full of learning. I've learnt (again) that I hate needles; I learnt new usages for the English language: "paining" is the commonly accepted term in the Indian sub-continent for anything hurting; I learnt that other people are pigs and have absolutely no concept of others; that the concept of communal can be stretched to the point whereby the patient you are sharing a room with has 25 relatives on her side of the curtain who are a) watching tv, b) chatting c) having a picnic d) answering their mobile phones e) not restraining their children f) "using" your bathroom .... the list is never-ending.

Anyway, I'm out now even if I did have to tell a few porky-pies to all and sundry to get outta there. And I've gotta rest, 'cos I felt like death yesterday, but did get my first night's sleep in a week, so things are looking up.