At 5 AM I woke up with a high fever. Or rather, I hardly slept. Just when I thought I’d finally fallen asleep I woke up sweating. All the Pocari and water by my pillow were gone, so with a temperature near 40°C I walked down to the first floor to fetch water. It was really exhausting. Even paracetamol (antipyretic/analgesic) wasn’t doing anything.
When I went to the toilet, my urine looked a little reddish. It’s usually a clear yellow. I thought this was an emergency. I hurried back to my room, put a lot of ORS powder (oral rehydration salts) into a PET bottle and drank it.
What crossed my mind was “rhabdomyolysis” — a condition where muscle cells break down from intense exercise, releasing myoglobin (a muscle protein) into the bloodstream, which can clog the kidneys and cause acute renal failure. I’d been doing four hours of strength training every day for over a week. It was entirely possible. Anyway, I had to drink a lot of fluids to flush out the myoglobin.
At 6 AM I decided to go to the hospital. I asked an acquaintance for a recommended hospital and headed to the private Chiangmai Ram Hospital by Grab. On the bike I kept thinking, what if I end up needing dialysis, can something like this really happen in life — I couldn’t believe it. I also contacted my grandmother and my mother.
Emergency department
I arrived at the hospital and went to the emergency department. I’d forgotten my passport so they registered me with a copy, and I showed a written summary of my symptoms to the nurse. They took my blood pressure, I waited for a while, then I was seen. I told the doctor everything: that my urine had been reddish, and that I’d been doing four hours of strength training every day. I asked for blood tests and an IV.
There was one small thing that put me a bit at ease. I felt the need to urinate, so they did a urine test and the color had returned properly to yellow. Maybe it was thanks to drinking a lot of ORS. The nurse even looked like, “Oh, it’s more normal than I thought.”
For the blood draw they took blood from the back of my hand rather than my arm. It reminded me of IVs from when I was a child. The way they filled multiple tubes from a single needle was really professional. They administered some medication, and then a big saline IV drip was started.
A hospital room like on Doctor X
Once the IV started, they moved me to another room. They took me to an upstairs inpatient room. It was ridiculously luxurious. Toilet, shower, toothbrush set, TV included. The view was nice. It was exactly the kind of large, clean hospital room you see on Doctor X.
After a while a new nurse came in to ask about my condition. I had already told the doctor, though. I had to explain everything from the start again. Then someone else came who spoke fluent Japanese. I was surprised that someone like that existed in Chiang Mai. And I had to explain my condition again. How many times do I have to say it? It was obvious there was no lateral coordination. And honestly, I started to wonder if they were trying to charge me for each consultation. It’s a private hospital, after all.
When the doctor came, there were five people in the room including the nurses and an interpreter. When the doctor moved to the next room, the staff followed right behind. It was exactly the world of Doctor X. Watching it from an observer’s point of view was really entertaining.
Test results — nothing serious
The blood test showed that my CPK (creatine kinase), a value that indicates muscle damage, was above the normal range. However, in rhabdomyolysis it would be over 20,000, whereas mine was 275. Not at a serious level. The kidneys were fine. There was slight occult blood in the urine, but they said that’s common at an inflammatory level.
Antibody tests for dengue and chikungunya (mosquito-borne infections) were also negative. Kidney ultrasound showed no edema or stones. They diagnosed the diarrhea as some kind of infection, and the reddish urine as caused by dehydration. I personally think it was a mild case of rhabdomyolysis, but well — it’s healed now so whatever.
Private hospital observation diary
From noon the nurses administered medications. The funny thing was the meds arrived in individually printed packages with my name on them. They could’ve just brought them all together, but they went out of their way to print and package them. I thought, that printing cost adds up. Very private-hospital-like.
Watching around the hospital you can see something like a hierarchy. The nurse who takes blood pressure and the nurse who gives injections or drugs wear different clothes. Staff are positioned around the doctor like a halo.
The IV machine alarm kept going off so I called a nurse several times. In Thailand, if you set it for 10 hours, the machine adjusts so it ends exactly at that time. The level of medical technology is really high.
In the afternoon they decided to do a detailed kidney examination. They put me in a wheelchair and took me to the exam room. I could have walked there, but I figured that’s probably part of the fee. In the exam room I was asked to undress, and they did an ultrasound to see if the bladder was adequately full and whether the kidneys had any abnormalities. Being lowered down to below my bladder was honestly embarrassing, but I thought doctors probably see it as just another human body part.
When I asked, “Do you think I can be discharged tomorrow?” they said, “We don’t know because you also have diarrhea.” My laptop and luggage are still left at the hostel. I desperately want to go home tomorrow.
Hospital food, and loneliness
Dinner was rice porridge with chicken. The taste was mediocre. Very much hospital food. But I thought, this is also a good experience.
How special and grateful it is to have nothing wrong normally, to be free of illness and to live an ordinary life. A single day spent normally is truly amazing. Every time my health falters, I think that.
At night I woke up many times drenched in sweat. I’d wipe myself with a towel and sleep, drink ORS, sweat again and wipe — it repeated. I remembered when I got sick in the past and my mother and grandmother would change the sheets and wipe my back. Now I have to do it alone. When you get sick you feel lonely. But this loneliness is something I have to overcome.
At night the nurse gave me IV antibiotics (ceftriaxone, a third-generation cephalosporin) via drip. As an oral medication I was also prescribed doxycycline (an antibiotic used to treat infections). They also changed the finished saline bag. My fever is definitely better than yesterday. Little by little, I’m heading toward recovery.
