Sick in the Philippines

Location: Baguio, The Philippines
NP: Omnium Gatherum - Who Could Say
Mood: Worried

Last night, when going to bed at Starwood Hotel in Baguio, I started feeling an increasing amount of nausea, accompanied with cold hands and feet. First I figured I'd wait until morning and then see if this needed more attention, but as the symptoms worsened and I found I could not sleep at all, I was finally convinced to take the short walk to the local hospital. When I got to the hospital, my hands were starting to tingle, and later my feet did the same. Walking to the hospital, even though it's very close, was difficult.

Last meal before nausea. Tiny "solo" pizzas at Greenwich in Baguio.

I chuckled at check-in as the computer didn't know the nationality "Finnish", so, after pausing to think, the clerk set my nationality as "French" instead.

The emergency room at the local hospital had plenty of staff and many patients. But so bountiful was the staff that they could attend to me almost instantly.

They gave me a bed and put me on extra oxygen saying I was hyperventilating, which was causing my symptoms. While I agree it could explain for my hands and feet tingling, it would not explain the nausea, as I had only started to hyperventilate while walking to the hospital. They checked my blood pressure and took some blood to test me for diabetes. Blood pressure was normal and the diabetes test came up with a value of 115, which is within normal limits (80-120 is normal, if I remember correctly). At this point I had to get up and go to the bathroom. Diarrhea was the newest symptom.

So they discharged me with a prescription for nausea medicine and a request for a stool sample in a tiny glass bottle, which I dutifully provided at 6 AM that very same night. The sample provided no new information. Instead they gave me a more powerful nausea medicine and something to make the stomach less acidic, to be taken twice a day 30 minutes before a meal.

While I had trouble accepting the diagnosis, the thing that impressed me about the public hospital in Baguio was that service was quick and everything was basically free, even for a foreigner such as myself. You only needed to replace the things that you'd used at the hospital by buying new items from the pharmacy just outside the hospital (I think the cost for me was less than 100 pesos).

But please ma'am, I am not French, merci beaucoup.