Dead or Alive

Wonder of wonders we are miraculously still alive, though it's been a little touch and go the past few days. We had arrived in Vishakapatnam, nicknamed Vizag for short. TG had work and meetings in the area, and his colleague, Ron Jon, a German/Indian fellow partnering on many of the same developmental projects, had rented a room at a rundown sea side resort. We decided to follow suit. We rented the cheapest room; a woven hut with an attached bathroom. All seemed well and right with the world.

After a day of running errands, we decided to take a swim in the ocean. The beach was clean. The water was clear and blue. About twenty minutes in the water, I heard TG cry out. He began desperately swimming for the shore. He collapsed on the beach, twinging in pain. He had stepped on a stingray.   I ran to the reception for them to call a doctor.  Neither of us knew what to do in this instance. All we could remember were that stingrays were poisonous, and sometimes deadly.

He limped, shaking in pain to the hotel. At the hotel, no one knew what a stingray was. They watched him seizing, seeing only the small cut on his foot, and decided that he was overreacting. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room." The doctor finally arrived, and instead of helping, he stood there saying the same thing. "No poison. No big fish. Go to room. Change clothes," they pointed at me, since I was still in my bathing suit. My bare skin was more of an issue to them than TG's health. The doctor didn't even bother to check his vitals, before denying TG's condition. TG thought there was a something lodged in his foot from the sting, and wanted to go to the hospital.

An hour later, someone finally brought a car around. I was getting desperate, since TG was still in terrible pain, and no one would do anything to help. We drove into the city, but the two locals in the car didn't know where the hospital was, and kept driving around in circles asking. I jumped out of the car in evening traffic, barefoot and wet from the beach, trying to wave down an auto to take us to the hospital.  Vizag drivers watched with morbid curiosity as TG hopped in his swim trunks across the street into the auto.

The driver had a passenger who spoke enough English, that he understood that we needed a doctor. They drove us quickly through the tangle of alleys, where we finally reached some sort of empty local emergency clinic. We had made it. Soon after we arrived, TG's pain finally started to subside. The doctors at the hospital dug around in his foot, but found nothing. They shot TG in the ass with a painkiller and sent him to a government hospital.

Upon arrival, we were immediately terrified at the state of the building and interior. The hospital was filthy, and patients were strewn on ripped stained stretchers. Their loved ones stood around the beds, and in the hall. Very few were being helped, and their cries of pain echoed down the corridors. The place was more like a medic tent during the war, than a hospital. We waited for a moment, but quickly left. Treatment there seemed more terrifying than the pain.

After returning to the resort, TG doped up on pain killers and me on adrenaline, looked up stingrays on the web. Rarely fatal, the venom causes muscle contraction, severe pain, and swelling. If the barb of the stingray strikes a vital area, one can die. Steve Irwin died when a stingray struck him in the chest. Experts recommend pouring hot water on the wound to help breakdown the poison. None of the doctors we met did this, or mentioned it. None of them had even heard of a stingray.

TG is well enough now, though he has great difficulty walking. I'm wondering if it is time for me to leave this country. We just can't seem to get a break.