Trip to the clinic

I am not a stomach bug virgin. In part it is my own fault, a desire to taste every variety of street food, no matter how many flies may have sampled it beforehand. After my food adventures come stomach bugs, and as my various travel partners will acknowledge, this is generally accompanied by acute hypochondria.

Nevertheless, last weekend when I was suffering from fever, stomach cramps, breathing difficulties, dizziness and other bodily complaints that I will not go into in case the reader may be eating at the time of reading this, I decided I would ignore potential accusations of hypochondria and get to a clinic. Wanting to stay in Angola long term, and with the negative side effects of malaria medication outweighing the positives, I had not been taking any preventative medicine and so malaria was my primary concern.

I went to one of the best clinic in town. When I asked to see a doctor, they asked me which company I was with. In hindsight I should have just quoted an oil firm and barged through. My dizziness mounting and my head pounding, I was given a business card and told to ring one of the given numbers after the weekend. We joked, wondering if my leg had fallen off whether I would also be given a business card and told to phone back later. My boyfriend then slapped his hands down on the reception desk and told them to treat me now and we would pay immediately afterwards.

The reception staff then asked me what kind of doctor I wanted. I said I did not mind and explained my symptoms. The concept of a GP was not understood here, so after five laps of the clinic I was indeed grateful my leg had not fallen off and I think it was a pediatrician I finally saw. Our joke did seem in rather bad taste after all, as I noticed a man with his full leg in plaster apart from one hole to let air to what seemed to be a gun shot wound, who was also touring the clinic in an attempt to find a doctor.

The doctor we saw was very helpful, and spoke good English. Sadly the communication between reception, doctor, nurse and laboratory was not nearly as efficient. After nearly two hours waiting for blood test results, we bypassed the reception and asked at the laboratory ourselves, who, it turned out had my results and those of many other patients, but just hadn’t brought them downstairs to reception.

I know it sounds wrong, but after four hours of waiting I admit I was slightly disappointed that the results were negative. Walking towards the exit, it obviously appeared as if we were not going to pay, as the receptionist who had told us to wait ‘just a minute’ every half an hour suddenly sprang into life, bolted towards the door and snatched my credit card.

At least now I know what to do in a real emergency- say I’m from BP, head straight to the operating theatre and refuse any business cards distributed along the way.