In the early hours of the other morning I found myself as a guest at the Bali International Medical Centre (BIMC) hooked up on a saline drip and feeling like absolute crap. Believe me, it was no laughing matter. It all started the evening before when I found myself victim of a bad case of diarrhoea. My first instincts were food poisoning and immediately took an Imodium and started taking antibiotics (Cephalexin) which I always carry with me in my backpack.
It wasn’t until I visited the toilet for the umpteenth time in the early hours of the morning that my worst fears were suspected. After don my business, so to speak, I stood up and immediately collapsed; not one but twice. I broke out in a cold sweat and I rationally feared a recurrence of Malaria that I had suffered two decades earlier.
Fortunately with the assistance of Candika and my brother I was literally tossed into a taxi and whisked away to BIMC. After being hooked up on a saline drip, numerous injections of God knows what and a few blood tests, it was later revealed that I had a low salt content in my body. Thus the cause of my feinting.
At one time in my life I had too much salt in my body. How I came to have a low salt content is beyond me and I can only put it down to the continuous road-tripping and showing my brother around Bali. It’s hard to fit in the whole island in just two weeks! The blood tests did reveal that I had a parasite in my digestive system and where that bugga came from I have no idea. I do eat a lot of street food; perhaps from there.
Anyway, all is well now and I am on the mend. As a constant traveller in the tropics I have always espoused the importance of hydrating. Although dehydration was not the cause of my malady, it is extremely important to keep the fluids in your body on a continuous nature. This entails drinking lots and lots of water and gastrolytes. The best drink for that being Pocari Sweat. And, the first drink they gave me in BIMC was in fact Pocari Sweat!
