FEVER! In the morning, fever all through the night.

I’ve had my first run in with mysterious tropical virus. I was completely bed ridden for almost a week and am only just on the mend. It wasn’t Malaria because the slides were negative, but was perhaps Dengue. Although we will never know because the hospitals Dengue tests were all expired!

I spent a good 5 days straight in bed with a fever, sweating, and sleeping far more than I was awake.

Whatever it was, I have survived my first bout of tropical sickness and have emerged back to the world of the living with nothing but amusing tales and muscle deterioration!

Melanesian compassion and hospitality

I have been so overwhelmed by the care I have been given while I have been sick. Looking after one and other is so deeply ingrained in Melanesian culture, which was more apparent than ever when I was under the weather.

All the staff from the station were texting and calling me each day, making sure I was ok.

My lovely counterpart from work came to my house to deliver me supplies; juice and imported Aussie fruit. And AMAZINGLY Cadbury chocolate! Which you cannot buy anywhere in Alotau! Her husband had brought it back on the dinghy from his rugby trip to a different province… and she had sacrificed it for me! In my fragile, sick state I seriously almost cried.

Our haus meri (housekeeper) would come and check on me every day and was offering to bring me soup. The bar staff from the lodge across the road even came by to see how I was doing!

Diagnoses and remedies; right, left and centre

The funny thing about being sick around here is that everyone throws in their two cents. Everyone has their diagnosis for you despite having absolutely no medical expertise. I was informally diagnosed with everything under the sun. One person’s Pneumonia is another person’s Malaria, which is another person’s Flu.

Everyone also has their own remedy for the problem; from massaging your capillaries to shots of whisky.

This time at least, bed rest seemed to do the trick.

Going to the hospital

There are no GPs here so no matter what is wrong with you, you go to the hospital. And not only the hospital, but the Accident and Emergency ward at that!

Alotau has comparatively great medical facilities when compared to the rest of the country (a health system which is often considered to be in crisis, and was described by a former PNG health minister as ‘bloody useless’).

Even so, my visits to the hospital were pretty eye opening.

However, as a white person you are never privy to the full extent of the conditions. I experience ‘positive discrimination’ pretty often throughout daily life (I don’t get patted down and searched by security guards when leaving each shop for example) and the hospital was no different.

On my first visit, despite the fact that there was a full waiting room of patients, I as the only white person, was seen to first. I also knew the doctor’s brother which in PNG goes a long way!

The next few visits were not as easy.

Among the things that I encountered;

-          There was a used needle on one of the benches in the waiting room. It had the plastic covering on it, but it was still a used needle, laying around in a health facility, in a country where transmissible diseases like HIV are extremely prevalent. It was still there when I returned the next day.

-          There is sometimes a bit of a queue system operating in the waiting room and people shuffle down the benches as people are slowly seen to. There was a space on the bench near the front of the line where no one had been sitting the whole time I had been waiting. People would shuffle up the line, but always around that one spot. As I got closer, I realised why. There was blood all over the seat.

-          The place where you go and pay hospital fees, there is a list of costs for each service (consultation, blood test, etc). In amongst all of the usual hospital services, there are also the morgue fees for each day that you leave a dead body in the hospital. Death is just another everyday part of the hospital experience.

Amazingly though, getting medical attention is pretty cheap. A consultation with a doctor cost 2 Kina (approx. $1AUD). Any medication they prescribe is also 2 Kina. A small consolation for waiting hours on end to see a doctor in a waiting room with blood in it, I guess.

All in all, being sick here made me realise how lucky we are in Australia. Being here, I have the comfort of knowing that if I get sick I will be med-evacced back to Australia to get medical attention. Most people don’t have that luxury, and relying on the health system alone would be terrifying.