I’m back in gho today after a few days. My stomach kept getting worse until I had what seems like an attack of giardia on Monday night. I was a set of biological bellows for about 7 hours that night, expelling my own volcanic gases.
I’m normally one to trust in my body to resolve its problems, but Marie was getting panicky that I hadn’t had a good appetite since Friday, so I conceded to visiting both the traditional and modern hospitals to get their advice.
It took about 20 minutes to get an appointment at the traditional hospital since it was my first visit in a while. Others pushed their history documents forward through the crowd at reception and waited until the receptionist allocated them a doctor. Not having the sheet, I had to wait until I physically reached the window myself. I also made the mistake of stepping back to allow others out of the crush, but others behind me filled the gap, still leaving the departing person to squeeze their way out. I soon learnt not to be polite.
The doctor asked me what my symptoms were, checked my pulse for 30 seconds and prescribed me a herbal antibiotic, all in a few minutes. It then took another half an hour in a queue for them to package up the little brown balls to take home.
The modern hospital used a token system to ensure that I got my turn with the doctor without all the fight, but they did even less testing. The doctor asked me what was wrong, looked at my and diagnosed antacids for the upset stomach, B-Complex to restore my appetite and hydration salts to restore my fluids, again in a few minutes. The biggest difference was that I shared the doctor’s room with 4 other patients, some who were having breasts checked. It was all quite public, even if the doctor had the patient face away from us.
I decided to take the traditional medicine just to shut Marie up, but everything had returned to normal before I even took the first tablet. The body is truly an amazing machine if you don’t screw it up with drugs and chemicals.