How to Survive a Hospitalization in Egypt

So my friend's been sick lately. Like, really sick. Like, she lost 20 pounds in three weeks and can only keep down Gatorade, chronically, really sick. It makes my little run-ins with upset stomachs look like preschool. And since we're now all familiar with the potato remedy prescribed at the AUC clinic, I thought I'd briefly describe her ordeals at the "best hospital in Egypt".

It started a few weeks ago, and after about a week of throwing up everything she ate, went to the on-campus clinic. There, they did three things: immediately gave her an IV of dextrose, took her blood pressure, which was 90/70, and referred her to al-Salaam hospital.

And there she went, where she was hospitalized overnight while they ran "tests." They apparently took blood, did an ultrasound of her stomach, and gave her more glucose (but no normal saline). They prescribed her Nexium (in case it was heartburn?), VomiStop (to...stop...vomiting?) and an anti-parasitic ("just in case"). She spent the night there, and was released in the morning.

Weeks went by, and she still couldn't keep any food down. She lived on a diet of Gatorade and Rold Gold Preztels, and even those didn't stay down most of the time. She went back to the hospital somewhere in there, wash, rinse, repeat. From what I saw, she had her good days and her bad days. Sometimes she was okay and had energy, and sometimes she was slumped in a chair and didn't respond to your questions.

That's how she was last Tuesday when I found her before our colloquial class in the garden of AUC's main campus. She had just taken her second round of anti-parasitic meds (with bread to stave off the metallic taste), and had promptly thrown it all up. Her best friend here and I sat with her for awhile, and I became increasingly worried about her vacant stare and extreme lethargy. We were talking about what to do--back to al-Salaam?--when she got up and ran to the bathroom. When we were walking her back, she collapsed in the middle of the hallway and couldn't talk.

And that's when we called for a doctor.

The doctor from the clinic came, and her supervisor. They took her blood pressure and glucose level, both of which were within the normal range. They told us to go back to al-Salaam ("the best hospital in all of Cairo"), and to our extreme frustration, we did.

On the cab ride over, she was slipping in and out of consciousness. She doesn't remember most of the ride there. They made her walk all over the hospital, from room to room until finally we settled in on the third floor. After some verbal haranguing on my part, a doctor finally saw her. And then the head physician of the hospital saw her: "I don't think it's anything serious." Right. After a minimal physical exam, they told us that, because they do not keep records of charts, all her previous tests would have to be repeated.

This meant drawing more blood. After watching three nurses struggle to get a line in her hand, I was concerned. I became even more concerned while watching them take blood: instead of the standard vacuum tubes I'm used to, these were more like test tubes. The nurse pulled out the stopper, held the tube near the line they had started, and began squeezing her hand. Little spurts of blood would come out of the catheter, and she would try to catch them in the tube. Needless to say, blood was everywhere: the blankets, her hands, my friend's hands, and eventually in the tube. Of course, the nurse then wiped the excess blood on the blanket and balanced the open test tubes of blood on the bed, because she didn't have a hand free. And, of course, no gloves.

They put her on more glucose, took a chest x-ray (TB?), and did another ultrasound (I kept telling her that she's pregnant with kittens).

The plan was for her to seek medical care in London over Spring Break, which is next week, but the plan changed. Her best friend's mom, who's an RN in the states, was here visiting this week. Once she got a look at our friend, she called her mother in New York, who got on the first plane out of JFK to Cairo.

Meanwhile, the doctors came up with a diagnosis: bacteria. Not bacterial infection, not a certain type of bacteria, just... bacteria. And did they prescribe her any antibiotics? Of course not.

And she still can't keep any food down.

So how do you survive a hospitalization in Egypt? You fly back to the United States. And go straight from the airport to your appointment with the chief internist at New York Jewish hospital.

This is, of course, after your passport--which has been "missing" at AUC for the past month--is miraculously found overnight, and after the AUC administration starts in on the biggest CYA mission of the year (e.g. "she doesn't look that sick," "she doesn't need to go home," "we could have sent her to a specialist," "we're sending a car for her mother.").

And don't even ever think about having any kind of trauma here. The Emergency Room is accessible only by stairs.