Back in Manila, we spent the last few days of our vacation chilling out in our apartment before we flew back to the UK on Saturday evening. It was the birthday of our nephew Marvin on Thursday May 31st, and we decided to take him and other members of the family out for a celebratory meal in BGC (Bonifacio Global City). Unfortunately, I started to feel ill again during the birthday celebrations, and couldn’t face the food. I looked pretty rough too.
The following day I took to my bed for the afternoon, hoping I would feel better and gain some strength for the flight home. I had been feeling nauseous, and ended up vomiting again.
I wasn't doing too good, and was actually looking forward to getting home to the UK again. That desire was something I had never experienced before. I NEVER wanted to come home from the Philippines, I love the place too much. It wasn’t just the family who had welcomed and adopted me into their fold, it was the Filipino people and culture that I’d grown to love dearly. One of my wife’s former colleagues in the church where she worked had mentioned to me once that he considered me an honorary Filipino. Hence, it was always a struggle to say goodbye to the place I called my second home.
We awoke on the Saturday and started to pack our things into the suitcases. I didn't feel that bad. In fact, I felt a lot better than I did on Friday. Oh-oh... that was a bad assumption. Sometimes when you feel so good (or at best ‘reasonable’ when you’re dying) it means something not good is about to happen. And it sure did. Once again I started to feel a bit tired and unwell around lunch time, and decided to have a siesta before we were collected by Connie’s brother and taken to the airport.
Events from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday morning are a bit vague. I don't remember a lot, just snatches of clarity in a 72 hour time period. Thankfully my wife has filled in some of the blanks in my memories. But the following are the things I can remember.
I remember being forcibly woken up from my siesta and getting dressed for the flight.
I can remember trying to open the combination padlock that we were supposed to put on my wife's suitcase, and getting frustrated because I couldn’t remember the combination. In the end, time dictated that we let it be and take the risk that some nefarious baggage handler wouldn’t steal anything from it.
I can remember getting in the car, then getting out of it and stepping directly into a deep puddle at my brother in law's house, the journey in between our condo and his home isn't there. I don't remember anything about what happened in his house, nor the subsequent trip to the airport.
I can remember going through security screening to get into the terminal, and trying and failing to fill in the immigration card that we had to present before we were allowed into the departure lounge. I can vaguely recall my wife telling me to sit down while she was queueing at check in, and her waving at me as she got closer to the front of the line. I didn't understand why she was waving, so I just waved back! Checking in isn't a memory, although going through immigration and getting the bags scanned again is. The departure lounge experience and getting ready to board the plane isn't there. Apparently I caused quite a stir, because I couldn’t find my boarding pass and they didn’t want to let me board until I’d found it. Even the staff at the airport recognised something was wrong, but my wife assured them that I was just tired. In the end, my wife said they produced another boarding pass and I was able to get on the plane. (We found the original later in my wallet). However, I DO recall getting to our seats and flopping down into mine. The flight is a blur, except that at one time I can remember that I was trying to vomit into a sick bag.
My wife tells me that things got a little weird on the plane. It started with me not being able to figure out how to put the seatbelt on. Apparently I was trying to insert one of the female ends of the belt into another female end! I also had them close up to my face trying to make sense of my failure to connect the two. I was constantly asking for water, and my hand was persistently rubbing the back of my neck. Thankfully, the flight crew were very understanding of the situation, and looked after us really well. My wife asked them to radio ahead to the airport in order to get some assistance to get me off the plane. Thankfully the captain obliged, and there was help awaiting us on arrival. (I can highly recommend Asiana Airlines, they did a fabulous job)
What was happening? I was suffering the serious after effects of swallowing the Immodium tablets I’d taken to stop the diarrhoea earlier that week. They were so effective at stopping me up that there wasn’t a way of naturally removing the toxins from my body. Remember, a few weeks ago I told you that the liver is the organ that processes all the toxins, and that there are various ways a healthy body would expunge them. With my liver functions being only at 17%, the only way my body could get rid of toxicity was via defecation. And I was royally stuffed up. I was now suffering the results of not being able to rid myself of toxins, and those toxins went straight to my head. They call it Hepatic Encephalopathy, and it’s nasty. Not just for the sufferer, but for everyone around. Especially loved ones. https://liverfoundation.org/for-patients/about-the-liver/diseases-of-the-liver/hepatic-encephalopathy/diagnosing-hepatic-encephalopathy/#what-is-hepatic-encephalopathy I learned to think of it like suffering from a brief period of dimentia, and now have a lot of compassion for those diagnosed with this horrendous condition.
Anyway, back to the story: I know I got off the plane and was greeted with a wheelchair ride to a hospital.. A hospital? Remember the hassle over the airline tickets and the enforced change of airline? This is the Divine providential bit…
The airport in Seoul, South Korea, just happens to have a small hospital within the main terminal. Something which the airport in Jeddah certainly has not got. I couldn't imagine what would have happened if we'd still been on the original flights with me in this state of confusion. The Lord had provided in advance for us again. Isn't He good?
I was wheeled into this hospital where my wife explained to the doctor on duty what had happened to me. And I woke up from my dream state a couple of hours later, wired up to a bag of horrible looking green liquid that was being absorbed intravenously through a cannula in my arm. Once the treatment had finished, and I was more or less back in the land of living, I was discharged.
Feeling a lot better, I was taken to the airport’s disabled lounge where I could recover completely before boarding the London bound flight. I think we were in there for about 8 hours, and during that period I was quite compos mentis too. I felt like things were looking up at last... Until we got about an hour before landing at London Heathrow. Then things got a bit vague… again.