Hong Kong started out great! But took a most unfortunate turn.

After the first talk I went back to the hotel for an early night and slept almost immediately at 9.30. At 10.30 I woke with a severe fever and then started a very unpleasant rotation of activities that involved the sink, the toilet and lying on the floor of the bathroom.

My fever was terrible and I took paracetamol and neurofen in an attempt to bring it down, and when after 4 hours and more paracetamol my fever was no better I became more than a little distressed.

The hotel was no help at all and when I asked htem for any sort of help they replied somehting along the lines of “no” “no” “no” “sorry” “no” till eventually I begged them to call a doctor who quickly suggested that an ambulance was more appropriate. 10 mins later 4 men arrived at my door and whisked me on the wheelchair and off to the government hospital we were…

i won’t bore you with the tale as it continues in much the same vein as I waited in the triage ward for more than four hours and was eventually seen by a doctor at 6am.

In all the possible cultural experiences that I considered I might have in Hong Kong (great food, great shopping, interesting markets with live food that I wouldn’t feel comfortable eating, bamboo scaffolding) the hospital was a real eye opener.

The advent of SARS has meant many changes to the medical system, the most obvious being that all doctors and nurses wear masks and basically do what ever they can not to touch people.

One other very interesting thing to note was the difference in culture around treatment in China. Where in Australia when you feel sick they give you stemetil, when you have diarrhoea they give you imodium and for a fever paracetamol or others to bring it down. In Hong Kong they assured me that they would not have provided me with those things. Rather they give rehydration salts and antispasmodics to reduce digestive pains and then monitor your vitals. They feed you kongee when you have a fever although I have to say beef kongee is not my favourite and even the plain kongee was hard to get down!

Hopefully I will see another aspect of Hong Kong next time!

Back in Sydney now, convalescing.

Love to you all

Natasha