I caught some kind of stomach bug in Nepal which began to hit me as I flew from Katmandu to Delhi, India. I felt very tired on my layover in Delhi from 7 PM to 1:50 AM. Then I didn’t get much sleep on the 10 hour flight from Delki to London. Fortunately I had built in a rest day overnight in London.
I arrived at 6:30 AM and went to a nearby Heathrow hotel. That’s when I really hit me. I had the runs all day. I was worried about getting dehydrated. I even called my doctor in New York by Skype who said I should get some Imodium and electrolytes and stay hydrated. But it was too late. I took a taxi to the nearest pharmacy and got those things. I felt sicker and sicker and the Imodium didn’t work at first. I decided to drag myself to the restaurant to get some soup to get some liquid in. I could barely finish it.
I took the elevator to my room, but as I started to get out I felt faint. The next thing I knew I had faited dead away for the first time in my life. I found myself on the floor against the wall with the soup also on the floor in front of me and a porter standing over me. It took me a while to get to my feet. The porter wanted to call the hospital. I resisted at first and went to my room. He came with me. Finally I agreed to see the paramedics. The first one came in, a very friendly and competent English man. He checked my blood pressure. It was an unbelievably low 87 over 56. How could I even be conscious? He checked blood sugar-it was OK. He gave me an electrocardiogram. Finally he started a fluid IV at my suggestion—all in the hotel room. The hotel didn’t have elevators big enough for a stretcher and they were going to carry me on a special chair to the ambulence, but I said I could walk to the elevator, and I did. At the hospital they checked everything out. Blood pressure was going up. The Imodium had finally kicked in. Eventually they gave me another IV and the blood pressure came up to 113 over 67, acceptable. The guy who took out the IV and discharged me was Nepalese and very excited to hear I had just gone to Nepal. He actually comes from the area where the Ashram has much of its agricultural land, Terai. So I had to show him some of the pictures I had just taken in Nepal. I finally took a taxi back to the hotel at 4:30 AM with a note from the doctor that said I was OK to fly. And I’m writing this on the plane back to New York!
