Do Not Go Gently…

I stared down at the plastic tub in my hand, still unsure what to do with it.

“Er…urine?” I delicately enquired, all too aware of my habit of saying English words I didn’t know the Arabic for with a French accent.  

She either hadn’t heard, or ignored my feeble entreaty. It was left to Karen to confirm the full horror of the situation.

I stared down at the little white box. The only thing I knew for certain, underneath the aching head, the constant shivering, the weak legs and the fevered brow, was that I would not, under any circumstances, be handing a sample of my ‘stool’ to this nice young woman in a veil.

We’d gotten back from Petra the night before feeling ‘good’ tired. We’d spent the day clambering over boulders, and admiring the genuinely breath-taking buildings carved from the sheer rock of the valley, Indiana Jones theme in mind (at 38JD (39 euro) it’s the most I’ve ever paid for the privilege of visting a single tourist attraction ever).

We’d arrived home and what had been mild aches and pains when I went to bed at 10pm, was a full blown fever by 2am. Or 3am. In fact, it could have been 10:15pm as my concept of time was by this stage little more than vague ideas of  Before Pain’ and ‘After Pain.’  My back felt like it had been filled with broken glass. My head felt as though it was in a vice, I was hot enough to boil an egg on and I had so little energy I could only just open my ’Big Book of Similies’ to the ‘Clichéd’ chapter.  A makeshift camp had been set up in the bathroom.

I felt like I’d run a marathon and then gotten paralytically drunk. And at times, began to wonder if indeed that was what had happened. By 2:30 AP, I was allocating my possessions to family and friends and wondering whether gravestones could come in neon. Alas, my inheritance calculations are lost to the world as Karen refused to transcribe any of it for me, too busy was she in getting water, tablets, insurance details and enough toilet roll to have ensured the decimation of an area of rainforest the size of Wales.

As I protested with what little breath I had that she should be taking down what could be my last words, Karen sensibly went to the reception of the hostel and called a doctor.

Which was why I found myself in the clinic, being propositioned by the nurse. 

Sanity prevailed when a bloodtest turned out to suffice and several rounds of ‘drip’ (Drips? Dri?) later all was well again. Turns out I had a bit of a stomach bug. I suppose it’s given me a new perspective on life. At the very least I have a very impressive bruise on my arm from the IV treatment to show for it.  

And ultimately I can say, “I lived…”

Sunset in Wadi Musa