antibiotics are a gift from buddah…

“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

This will be my longest ever post but as I’m probably not going to do another till Xmas and I suck at editing, you might as well grab yourself a hot Milo and a raspberry bagel, lean back and lol at the joke that is my life.

Every once in awhile I am sent on a path of random events so ridiculous, I cry uncle to the gods of the sky and beg forgiveness and make solemn oaths about how I will do this or do that if only the madness stops. This week in Macau was one of those weeks.

I really did not want to go to Macau as I found myself going to Macau but with tourney entry, hotel and flights all paid, I figured I did not have much choice. This was a mistake in hindsight - I should never have gone.

I quickly busted out of tourney in unnoteworthy fashion but that was only the trigger for an awesome soul-rocking run of bad luck which culminated in my honestly thinking I was on death’s door early this morning.

But let’s go back a bit to a few weeks ago when my eyes started burning in Melbourne. Rather than get better they got steadily worse over the last month, to the point where I was getting very worried in Macau. The muscles around the eyes started spasming and twitching and I started getting shooting pains when I blinked and migranes. I tried to see a doc a few times but got frustrated with their lack of English or, more correctly, my lack of Mandarin, so I tried to hold on until I could get back to Manila to get my eyes checked out.

Meanwhile, I started getting what I thought was tonsilitis. I used to get tonsilitis (which is a bitch of a little illness) about 3-4 times a year awhile back but haven’t had it for a few years. Penicillin is a magical drug and whenever I feel tonsilitis coming on, I hit up penicillin and it just pwns tonsilitis every time. This time however, the penicillin didn’t really seem to work but I assumed this was because the penicillin was 3 yrs old and again, I thought I could hold out till Manila to deal with it.

Meanwhile, the internet was disconnecting at my hotel every half hour leading to mega tilt. I asked to change rooms, they said I was in good spot for wireless and room change would not improve so I stayed. Before long, it was no longer an issue as my laptop started wisping smoke and then would no longer switch on. I am not tech savvy but I’m guessing the prognosis is not good.

Bored out of my mind with no net and no cash games (except for a PokerPro table with 20 name waiting list at all times), I turned to house edge and proceeded to dump a fairly large amount on bacc and craps, which always tilts me as I don’t bet house edge often and I also don’t really bet big but I run amazingly bad (50k down house edge last 18 months betting only here and there and never betting big like those Melb Hog Rollers).

Tilt was gradually building the whole week not just because I was getting pretty sick but also at the almost complete lack of English in Macau. Someone pointed out why would they bother with the Western world when they have 1 billion Chinese gamblers over the border which is a fairly valid point. Nonetheless, not being able to communicate can be quite frustrating.

A few other little things happened which added to my frustration. Stuff like I offer to buy piece of Emad in 15k event but he wisely not sell - then I see he has chip lead with 6 left in 1,000,000 prizepool and I cry a little, whilst still hoping he wins ofc. As I was cheering him and Eric BLESSadourian on to glory, my eyes started going completely haywire and a migrane kicked into gear so I crumbled and raced off to the emergency room of this amazing private hospital I hadn’t tried yet. This little hospital was the most amazing medical experience I have ever had. Scared and a little panicked, fully expecting no English-speaking doctors, I stumble in with blurred vision to find a wonderful world of buddah-sent competence. The receptionist spoke English and was amazing, shipping me right in to see an English-speaking eye specialist. I started rattling off my list of symptoms but only got as far as “eyes burning, muscle twitching…” when she interrupted me and rattled off all my other symptoms which is always a great sign. Turns out I had inflammation from staring at computer monitors too much. Before I could even catch up, she’d given me 2 bottles of eyedrops and said “You’ll notice improvement within hours.” This sounded a little far-fetched to me after 3 weeks of eye pain (I’m a moron for not seeing a doctor early), but I was glad I had found someone so obviously competent. I drop-dropped away and within the hour, my entire face settled down and my eyes started healing beautifully. Amazing.

I was so relieved about the eye cure, I forgot to hit up a doc about my ‘tonsilitis’ whilst I was there. Nevertheless, my spirits were high as I returned to the casino only to find poor Emad had run stiff to finish 5th but Eric was tearing up the table. I watched Eric put on a little final table CLINIC for the title and then we all headed out to a club for a final night out.

I was still a little bit sick and was making noise about getting an early night. I got caught up in the festivities however, drinking heavily as Miss Australia bounced around the party.

Fun times were had by all and I collasped in hotel room at 5am totally smashed, only to awake a few hours later wondering if the curtains on my life were being rapidly lowered.

I spent a few hours in pure fright and panic, too weak to move or even phone reception as a fever gripped me and I started getting some freaky ass symptoms I had never experienced before, including crawling burning sensations in my lower throat. I was having a lot of trouble attempting to create and control logical thoughts as my mind raced while the fever seemed to just be going nuts. Things were not looking good, and perhaps it was largely fevered delusion, but a few times I wondered if housekeeping would find me later that day stone cold dead.

I drifted in and out of sleep/consciousness over the next few hours, finally waking up around 1pm feeling like total ratshit but much better than I had felt during the night. I checked out and raced down to the hospital but the taxi driver took me to the wrong one, a big public hospital. I figured one hospital was as good as another and things were taking a turn for the worse again, so I skipped into emergency room, taking my place in the queue which didn’t look all that long.

At triage, I was placed in Category 3 which is basically the “Wimp Category”. I tried to canoodle my way into Category 1 by sweet-talking the triage nurse but she was having none of that, firmly explaining to me in Mandarin English Hand Signals that Category 1 is for major trauma and instable vital signs, fully implying I was nothing but a little girl with a sniffle. Rigged. I took a seat and began to wait.

I was No. 4 in the queue and that’s where I stayed for the next 3 hours as ambulances started pouring in from everywhere, obviously taking preference over my little complaints. I assume there is a major war being fought nearby, so I check out the incoming patients being raced into emergency from the endless stream of ambo’s. They didn’t look too bad to me, most appeared to be comfortably sleeping on their stretchers. Some had even gone to the trouble of splashing red paint over various body parts or pretending to have broken bones. They may have fooled the sympathetic Hippocratic medic suckers but I was onto their scam. I quickly realised these old coots were craftily outplaying me by having the smarts to arrive in an ambulance instead of a taxi.

I was starting to hallucinate as I watched 80 year old after 80 year old cruise past me in style on their stretchers. Maybe just a little delusional, but I could have sworn one old lady opened her eyes as she passed me, whispering “pwned noobie” with a cheeky grin.

Too weak to even begin to consider transferring to the private hospital, I had begun to give up all hope of being alive for the weekend. I started to write out my last will and testament on my mobile phone as well as compose an apologetic letter to Erin McNaught for giving her a fake room number the night before. She a nice girl and deserved better than that. I should have just told her I wasn’t interested instead of sending her on a goose hunt for a room that didn’t exist. Poor thing.

I was making my peace with God and with Buddah when my name was finally called 4 hours after the rigged triage. I was pretty delusional by this stage and was having serious trouble communicating with the doc, who spoke only very broken English. With a variety of hand movements, I was able to communicate my symptoms or perhaps he just took one look at me and got to work. I heard the words “throat infection” and “pneumonia” as he wacked me on an antibiotic IV drip, telling me to wait 20 min in case of negative reaction to the antibodies.

I realised I was rapidly running out of time to catch the ferry to Hong Kong for my flight home and I forgot all about his warning. The emergency room was chaotic and he moved on to other patients so I raced off to the pharmacy to fill another script he had given me, with the plan to return to pay my bill and then race to the ferry for Hong Kong.

As it turned out, the pharmacy was about 1km away and down a long set of brick stairs outside. I raced down the stairs only thinking of my desperation to get home near English-speaking doctors when a little voice inside my head said, “better slow down”. I was too slow to react. Nausea and dizzyness overtook me and I crashed in a heap on a landing near the bottom of the staircase, emptying my stomach onto my shirt and then continuing to dry retch facing upwards, a first for me and a style of dry-retching I cannot recommend. Antibodies are bitching strong. As I lay on the brick landing, heavily brusied staring into the sun with spew all over me in a foreign country knowing I was going to miss my flight, I could only think “It just does not get better than this.”

After a few minutes, I rose and staggered into the pharmacy to fill the script, apologising to the lady behind the counter. She did her best to remain professional but she was obviously disgusted. I have only the utmost respect for anyone who works in the medical industry, coming across sick wretches like I was today but facing them every day - they deserve more money.

I caught a taxi back to the hospital as no way was I going to make it up the 7 flights of brick stairs. The biggest mistake I made all day was not telling the taxi to wait. They cleaned me up inside the emergency room, I spent 20 min trying to pay my bill, then realising I still had a very slim chance of catching my flight if I nailed the ferry launch time, I ran to get a taxi. The line was 15 people long, and no taxi came for 10 min so I ran back down the stairs to the pharmacy and no cars passed that road for 20 min, meaning my first taxi was a total fluke. Panicking, I see a main road about 2km in the distance down the mountain and begin to run for it, obv not thinking clearly as I was never going to make my HK flight. At this stage, logic was no longer a part of my arsenal and I was moving on pure desperated adrenalin.

After 1km of running, a taxi passes me and I tell him to race for the hotel (for bags) then for the ferry, realising about halfway that even if I nail the ferry I can’t make my flight in time. I’m ready to throw in the towel at this stage as another bout of nausea overwhelms me and the taxi driver pulls over for me to do my thing. I’m very close to tears, but the fear of being stuck in Macau drives me forward. I tell the taxi driver to race to Macau airport and I run into the terminal asking for flights.

The lady says, “Sorry no flights to Manila today” and my heart sinks. I don’t think I cried but I can’t swear that I didn’t. She then says “Hold on” and grabs her book and says “Oh wait there is a flight to Clark” (airport about 2hrs north of Manila) and my hopes soar. “Oh no”, she says, “its boarding now, you’ll never make it.” I plead with her to sell me a ticket, I beg her, I pull every heart string and she says, “Ok you can buy a ticket but I don’t think you can make it”. I buy the $300 ticket and burn rubber to immigration. I run into some kind of staff dude and he slips me through the advance line. I rip my retarded broken laptop out for the security checks, race through, grab the laptop intending to slip it into my bag whilst running for the gate. At high speed, I trip over one of the step blocks they use for the manually metal detector checks and completely stack it, smashing my laptop on the ground and everyone turns and stares. I’m in sick game mode and I grab my laptop and race off at high speed for the gate, reaching it about 3 min before ETD. The gate is closed. I’m about to burst into tears. “I HAVE A TICKET” I yell at the guy. I am a blubbering mess, panting and pleading, I absolutely HAVE to get on that plane. He’s trying to calm me down but he’s not opening the gate. “I HAVE A TICKET, I HAVE A TICKET” I keep blubbering, utterly gutted. He’s using soothing language and when I eventually calm down he tells me the flight has been delayed “Didn’t you hear the annoucement they just made?”, he asks. Ding. Finally, a delayed flight works in my favour.

As the adrenalin seeps away, I collaspe into sleep and almost miss the flight. The awesome guy at the gate recognises me sleeping and wakes me up. I’m the last one to board. We land at Clark and I’m so wasted from exhaustion and nausea before I even know what I’m doing I’ve handed over 5000 pesos to a random driver for the 2hr ride to Manila (a fair price would probably be 500 pesos).

I take my bags straight to Makati Medical only to have the doc tell me the IV I got in Macau was perfect. He gave me a few more scripts for various things and told me to take it easy for a few weeks but that I’m going to not only live but should be feeling much better within a few days or a week.

I feel pretty awesome now, all things considered, not too many hours after I genuinely, legitimately thought that death was imminent. That infection came on so fast it rocked my little world.

Antibiotics pwn infection 8020.

Merry Xmas.

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