What happens when you get ill and the NHS is nowhere in sight

Part 1: Nepal

After summers of travelling and a year spent in Germany, my friends and I have given the health services in other countries a bit of a try-out. For Sam and I, our experiences in Nepal were the most exciting by far, so I thought I would start with the land of Mountains and of dahl before heading on to less turbulent territories.

Post-illness storms

The route of both our illnesses was in India. Feeling flu-ey for days, I put it down to over-exhaustion and hid away in my room in the holy city of Varanasi, sending Sam out to find Western food (he failed). In Kathmandu I felt even worse, and Sam secretly googled the symptoms of malaria, despite us regularly taking our tablets. Throughout these days, he was doing an excellent job of being my fake doctor, providing me with sick bags on a six-hour ride through the Himalayas in search of a cleaner town than Kathmandu to aid my recovery, and buying polos for the journey in which we ran over a dog in our rickety minibus. Which is why, when Sam sat up in bed, exclaiming 'I need to go to the hospital', late one night, I was rather surprised. How dare he try to reprehend me of my mantel of illness. It was mine. 

But our hotel owner duly drove us to 'the best hospital in town', where I was hurried off to buy things like needles and sheets of paper with medical terms on. The pharmacist explained, mostly with hand gestures, that, before they could begin treatment, I had to buy everything. This took place in a little counter outside of the hospital. It happened several times during the long night, where I was directed off to purchase more antibiotics or drips or pee pots. Although this was a strange system, it seemed to make sense, under the premise that you can only receive treatment if you can afford it. We were fortunate enough that we could, but it led me to think of the thousands living in Nepal who couldn't - or the millions that could only just afford treatment, if it meant their family sacrificing food and other life essentials.

The night was a long one. An elderly man was visited by his family before having an ECG scan under the bedsheets, right in front of us. He was white and frail, and looking at him made my heart hurt.

We slept in a room which might have been the reception if the hospital wasn't so full. Sam was hooked up to various drips and was decorated with cannulas, diagnosed with dysentry. I felt bad that I hadn't believed him before, as he narrowed his eyes and told me he could have been dead in a week, describing how the disease could make its merry way up to the brain. In an attempt to apologise, I accompanied him to the bathrooms and tried to be helpful by holding his drip. The bathrooms were by far the worst thing about our visit. There were drains in the floor, and there were buckets. Neither of these were especially effective for the poorly people in the hospital.

I tried further to be helpful, but on buying ice-cold water from the hospital shop, I was reprimanded by the hotel owner who had come to check on us the next morning. 'Warm water only', he scowled, before feeding Sam boiled potatoes and suggesting I return to the hotel with him on his motorbike. On moving over to be closer to the patient, I tripped over his cannula tube  - and pulled it out. He winced, the nurse came over to tell me off, I cried. It was all okay though - the nurse gave it a quick wipe and popped it back in: perfectly clean.