Getting sick abroad

rsh118

Regale us with some of your worst travel sickness stories which you look back on now with a chuckle.

Background: I'm currently sick on the road and bored off my head.

spurious

Threatened pneumonia in 1984 Poland. Flashed ten dollars US to be seen immediately by a 'Take off your clothes, what's wrong with you?' doctor who had no English but some German and was given big horse tablets with 'gift of the American Red Cross' written on them.

rsh118

spurious wrote: »

Threatened pneumonia in 1984 Poland. Flashed ten dollars US to be seen immediately by a 'Take off your clothes, what's wrong with you?' doctor who had no English but some German and was given big horse tablets with 'gift of the American Red Cross' written on them.

Now that's what I'm after! Maybe some tales of missing a B*witches concert when you were in your early teens because you couldn't get out the bathroom, never mind the house...

osarusan

Travelling back to Ireland from Japan.

The night before I ate some of the food in the fridge rather than throw it away, and it was a fairly unusual combination of food.

The next morning, between my home and the airport, I got sick at least half a dozen times. Had to switch trains to get one with a toilet. I was drinking nothing but water and it was coming back up again, a matter of minutes later. Was white as a ghost and sweating buckets.

I was with my girlfriend (now wife) and even though we didn't say it to each other, our main thought was 'is he going to even be able to/allowed to get on the plane?'

After some more vomiting in the airport, I finally got on the flight. I remember the stewardess coming round with drinks but she took one look at me and just kept going.

Eventually I slept for a couple of hours, and woke up feeling a lot better.

qo2cj1dsne8y4k

Went to California, factor 50 on my pasty white, never so much as got a lick of sun before body on me. Ended up with serious burns, and sunstroke. no more sun for young Lexie.

Speedwell

Traveled from Texas to Johannesburg for a week-long business trip where I was the only person from my team who could hold training classes. The day I arrived, two days before class, I had dinner at the hotel. I woke up the very next day feeling ill, and got worse throughout the day. That night, I was seriously ill with the local feverish gastroenteritis that was literally killing children that week. The next day, I went to class anyway, sweating and shaking and having to excuse myself every twenty minutes, and at about 10:30, vomited spectacularly almost the entire length of the conference room table. That afternoon they scraped up petty cash and took me to a local GP. On the way back, as I attempted to keep myself quiet and still in the car, the insufferable Boer engineer driving asked me, "So, you'll be all right in the morning, then?" Yeah, right. I couldn't manage a single bite of food until I was literally in the departure area of the airport going back home. But the training class went on, you bet.

SB_Part2

I had chicken pox in Cyprus. The sun dried out the spots and it was gone in 3 days.

captbarnacles

Got sunburnt on my feet badly in Europe. It was agony to walk. Finally made it to a hospital and was looked at in a cubicle. The excited doctor then rushes off and comes back with 10 more who thought my sunburnt feet were hilarious. Some of them insisted I had been bitten by insects because they had never seen the like of it.

rsh118

captbarnacles wrote: »

Got sunburnt on my feet badly in Europe. It was agony to walk. Finally made it to a hospital and was looked at in a cubicle. The excited doctor then rushes off and comes back with 10 more who thought my sunburnt feet were hilarious. Some of them insisted I had been bitten by insects because they had never seen the like of it.

Love it! Cheered me right up as I drained myself this morning. I've got a hefty dose of fever and the runs, but I'm desperate to do the death road before we move on. Missus is sick as a dog too. So we may have come to La Paz simply to lie in bed and whinge about how much our heads hurt!

MilesMorales1

I was in florida, neither me nor my mother thought to use sunscreen on me while I was walking round shirtless with a heatwave on for about 2 days, got burnt so awful I could barely move, could have peeled the whole layer of skin off. I also got the flu at the same time, so was vomitting/diarrhoea at the same time of my skin burning. Wasn't great.

FTA69

Said this on another thread a while a back. I was hiking in the border area between Bangladesh and Myanmar and in typical fashion was chronically unprepared. I'd met up with some German lad who had water, purification tablets, maps etc and all I brought along was forty fags and a bag of bananas. I ended up drinking water from a well in one of the villages I was in and thought no more of it.

That night I shot awake at 3am with the feeling someone was sitting on my chest and ran outside the dorm/shed I was staying in where I projectile gawked over the balcony. It was literally like a brown rope jumping out of my mouth. I was honestly like your one off the Exorcist. After puking my ring I collapsed in sweat and crawled on my hands and knees back to my bed. I awoke at 7am in the baking heat as wretched as before only to discover I had shat myself and was caked in a mixture of sweat and the foulest sh*t ever done in human history.

The only jacks available was a vile Bengali squat hole and the "shower" was a copper pipe dribbling cold water. I spent the next three days migrating from my bed to the squat hole every 45 minutes to either puke til I collapsed or spray some yellow watery sh*t-like substance out of myself. Sometimes I couldn't even make it back to the bed and just lay on the concrete in a delirious haze while getting feasted upon by mosquitos. Every once and a while some tribal lad working at the hotel would come in with rehydration salts and coke and a reassuring word. There was no hospital or even a bloody doctor in the whole area so I just had to ride it out.

To bate all, I had needed a military and police permit to stay in the area (political conflict zone) and as I overstayed it I got picked up by the shades who detained me for two hours until they realised I was just some foreign fool with dysentery and they let me go. I'd say it took me a month in all to get back to normal completely.

FTA69

I can also relate to some of the sunburn stories here. A few years back I was boxing in Cuba and after training took a few days off to relax and see the sights, two buddies were also over from Ireland at the same time. We went to the local state beach to balm out and being clever I slapped on the sun cream and hired an umbrella to keep the sun off me. I then promptly fell asleep with my two pasty white feet poking underneath the parapet - obviously the only part of my body I had put no cream on.

The lads came back after a while and noticed my feet had already turned bright red in the sun. Around six hour later they were blistered up like someone had dunked them in a deep fat fryer and the next day they had begun to bleed. Eventually the skin came off them like a sock. When we were leaving Cuba I had to be helped by the lads onto the plane and I was begging a hostess for some of her moisturiser.

I'm only happy it happened in the last two days as it would have ruined my holiday, I had to take an extra three days off work when I came home as I could do f*ck all. Minus craic.

thejaguar

On honeymoon in Malaysia, we were dropped to our island paradise in a little boat. I jumped off in my bare feet and walked to reception feeling very Robinson Crusoe.
I realised very quickly that the soles of my feet were starting to burn but my shoes were still on the boat.
I ended up with blisters across the entire sole of my foot and couldn't walk or put on shoes.
When the pain became too much I burst the blisters. Oh, the relief. Then I walked to the beach and the blisters filled with sand.

Think sandpaper inside your skin.

I eventually had to get a scissors and cut off the entire blister. Fun few days.

bear1

Rarely get sick on holidays but the one time I did end up getting seriously bad was the night I was proposing.
Planned the trip to perfection and planned to be in Rome by midnight of new years eve in front of the Colosseum and pop the question.
Along the way the turbo blew on the Slovenian/Italian border and we got stranded in some **** hole of a town with all my hopes of being in Rome long gone.
I decided to try and smooth the thing over and we went for a pizza in the local hotel's restaurant.
about 30mins later we are in the room and I've popped the question, but the moment after I had done it I get a seriously strong cramp in my stomach and keel over in agony.
The room had no toilet and I had to crawl to it to vomit or number 2.
So there I was on my proposal night with my head buried deep in the toilet instead of being deep inside anything else.
Lasted two days that did.
Nothing compared to some of the stories here but it's my only one.

rsh118

bear1 wrote: »

Rarely get sick on holidays but the one time I did end up getting seriously bad was the night I was proposing.
Planned the trip to perfection and planned to be in Rome by midnight of new years eve in front of the Colosseum and pop the question.
Along the way the turbo blew on the Slovenian/Italian border and we got stranded in some **** hole of a town with all my hopes of being in Rome long gone.
I decided to try and smooth the thing over and we went for a pizza in the local hotel's restaurant.
about 30mins later we are in the room and I've popped the question, but the moment after I had done it I get a seriously strong cramp in my stomach and keel over in agony.
The room had no toilet and I had to crawl to it to vomit or number 2.
So there I was on my proposal night with my head buried deep in the toilet instead of being deep inside anything else.
Lasted two days that did.
Nothing compared to some of the stories here but it's my only one.

Well held together to get the proposing done before falling apart! Always class when there's a shared toilet and you know there's a queue forming as you eject death water from every orifice.

My name is URL

Swallowed fish bones in Cyprus. Had to have a camera put up my nose and the bones pulled out with forceps by a doctor who didn't speak any English and with no anesthetic.

The worst part though was the 2 days prior to that I spent in bed thinking I had tonsillitis.

Other than that it was an enjoyably holiday!

recylingbin

Had a wojus hangover in Leitrim once.

captbarnacles

I posted this in another thread but 3 student dentists gave me a root canal on a tooth with a live nerve with no anesthetic. Ii was like being tortured.

spurious

On a trip on the Trans-Siberian railway in the 80s, I had one spoon of a 'fish soup' (never a good idea) and decided it wasn't for me. The whole carriage came down with an unmerciful dose of the scutters from it. Since I'd only had a spoonful, mine was not so dramatic.

The woman in charge of the carriage was good old style Soviet - 've are only putting in ze new toilet paper twice a day' - no allowance for the sudden run on it. Tissues and serviettes and all papers within reach were put into service, while I went two carriages up to where the Italian group were (on another menu) and used as much jacks paper as I liked.

Ah, regulations.

Speedwell

captbarnacles wrote: »

I posted this in another thread but 3 student dentists gave me a root canal on a tooth with a live nerve with no anesthetic. Ii was like being tortured.

Yes, but what strange and exotic place where you in when this took place?

Capt'n Midnight

recylingbin wrote: »

Had a wojus hangover in Leitrim once.

I call BS.



Leitrim doesn't exist.