Being sick ...

Time for another little update from hot and sweaty Jakarta! This time I'm going to share something that has caused me a lot of concern in the past weeks: my health.

It all started with the food poisoning over 5 weeks ago. Unfortunately, things didn't get much better after that. Two days after the food poisoning, the same happened again after lunch at work. Right after eating, my lower stomach and back started hurting terribly and I needed to go straight to the doctor. There is a wonderful clinic very close to work; the international SOS clinic, and there they even speak English. The doctor gave me some medicine, which however never helped. I was told to take a break from Indonesian, often spicy and greasy, food. During my following, almost 2 week holiday in Bali and Lombok the pains returned almost every time I ate something, and I discovered that the only thing I can eat without needing to suffer was yoghurt and milkshakes. That has been my menu for a long time now. Now after 5 weeks since the pains started I have visited 3 different clinics and been tested numerous times - stool and urine samples, blood test, ultra sound of the stomach - but the doctors haven't found anything. They simply cannot explain what is wrong. I've come to the conclusion that the problem is in the intestine, which could explain great pain in the back. The doctors have also said that it can't be anything that serious or it would have shown in the test results, so now I'm just being very careful with what I eat and drink and wait for it to pass. In the mornings I eat oatmeal, during the day white bread or yoghurt and in the evenings oatmeal again. Having such a poor diet for so many weeks has of course affected my mood also. I feel much more passive and weak, and miss going to the gym, but I'm not strong enough to go there yet. I would really like to explore Jakarta and go to all the cheap restaurants again, but because of being sick I've mostly just been at home. Because of the mysterious sickness I've also had to take some days off work either because the pain was too much or because some clinics are only open on work hours and I needed to visit the doctor. One of the biggest disappointments with this is that I missed a long awaited weekend trip with 10 friends to one of the coolest volcanos of Indonesia: Bromo. Fortunately it looks like it's slowly getting better already, this weekend I took my chances and had lasagne for dinner without any pain! Believe me it tasted sooo good after weeks of plain yoghurt and oatmeal! Today I had a sandwich for lunch and again, stomach is hurting but hopefully only a short time today. So my plan is to continue the oatmeal diet and slowly try to eat more normal food. From now on I'm definitely never eating anything hot and greasy again and hope that my strange pains will soon stop for good.

To make everything a little bit worse, I've had other health concerns simultaneosly. While in Bali I was bitten by a wild monkey, and because of the fear of rabies I've needed to begin a vaccination programme here in Jakarta. It includes five vaccines to be injected during a period of 28 days. After having got the first shot I developed an allergic reaction with red rash all over my belly, chest, back and legs. My hands and feet were totally red and itched terribly. The doctor was afraid of continuing the vaccination programme in case I would get more severe reactions, but on the other hand rabies is a disease which kills with 100% certainty. After consulting specialists of infectious diseases both in Jakarta and in Finland, my vaccinations were continued, but the SOS clinic wants to take all precautions in case of allergic reactions and takes me to the ER to receive my vaccinations. There, I'm first getting a shot of antihistamine, after which I'm put into monitors and get my rabies vaccination while on an intravenous drip, after which I sleep for 2 hours in the monitors while the nurses watch my heart beat and breathing. First time at the ER, nothing happened but the second time I already felt bursts of adrenaline through my sleep and when I woke up I had a little fever and the nurses said I had been breathing very fast. Well, don't know if I had been seeing a nightmare or if it was a small reaction to the vaccination, but a fact is that the likelihood for any reactions grows bigger by every shot, and I still have two of them left, so I need to visit the ER still. In the meantime I've read stacks about rabies. It's a fatal disease which can kill you in 14 days after being bit by a rabid animal, but if you start the vaccination programme before any symptoms show, you are saved with 100% certainty. Bali is a high-risk rabies area, and reports many cases of rabies all the time, and as the whole island (and normal hospitals in Jakarta) are out of the rabies vaccination, you can imagine that I spent long times thinking do I have the disease and imagining all the symtoms on myself, almost making me a nerv wrack. Now I'm on the vaccination programme, thank god, and can finally be sure that I won't have the disease. And I'm so happy to have a very good travel insurance, because all my medical expenses exceed 500 € already and is increasing with the ER treatment to come. What a mess!