Hey
Bad Luck
"It's bad luck to be bitten by a dog." That's what they say in Thailand. But at least once it's over, the bad luck has been cleared. Perhaps I won't have a motorbike accident or I won't lose money in a ruthless game of Connect Four. I have used all my bad luck up, having been bitten by a dog this afternoon.
It's not a terribly bad bite... what I mean to say is that flesh was not torn from my leg or anything like that -- the dog gave me a few puncture wounds and bruising, it did hurt -- enough for sympathy but not enough for flowers. Even so, I had to go to the emergency room for a rabies booster. While I was rather irked to have spent $500.00 on my rabies vaccination before I left on this trip, I forked out the dough 'just in case'. Now I'm glad I did because all that's required are 2 booster shots instead of the entire rabies series which takes more than 4 consecutive weeks. As it is, we've had to postpone our trip to Myanmar one week so I can be here for my second booster in three days. I'm just glad Benjamin wasn't the one bitten or we'd be stuck in Thailand for 1 month.
It's actually kind of funny that Benjamin wasn't bitten because we made plenty of jokes before coming on this trip -- I was to be his 'human shield' in the event of dog or monkey bites because of my vaccination. I was to throw myself in front of fangs and spittle and save him from strange and fearsome animals. But those were just jokes; not real life. Real life has me sitting behind him on the back of a motorbike and my meaty calf just happened to be more convenient. So much for my moment of valor.
We were driving through a strange neighborhood -- one that looked, in places, to be abandoned for years, with overgrown plots of land and neglected homes. The out-of-place Roman aesthetic probably added to the general feeling of age and decline. In reality, the development has only been around for a few years but according to Lucas, who runs our guesthouse, "The Thais let things fall apart and then sell them to foreigners to fix up."
The thing we found compelling was that in between the unkempt areas were huge, fine homes with Mercedes in the driveways. Obviously this was a neighborhood for rich Thais, but it was so... peculiar. We drove down one street with a few homes and having passed one with 2 dogs, we turned around at the dead end. That's where one of the dogs bit me. It came running out into the street barking and then came right up and planted its jaws on my leg. We took off... Benjamin honking the horn to scare the beasts away -- me with my leg high in the air like I was doing a newfangled style of yoga: motoryoga. I was trying to keep my leg away from the dog, which was attempting to take a second go.
We did nothing to provoke the dog... we were simply riding on a motorbike down the street and had the bad fortune of passing by its driveway. Goes to show that any thing can happen at any time -- I rather suspected that if I were bit on this trip, it would be in the wilds of some jungle or in the dark hours of pre-dawn while walking on a lonesome alley in a bad part of town.
I waffled about whether or not I should go to the ER for the rabies booster at first. The bite didn't look serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room -- that is it didn't call up memories of horror movies about dogs named Cujo. I always think of the emergency room as a place for victims of heart attack, serious car crashes, and accidents involving lawn mowers or coke bottles. It's not the case, though -- I've seen people in there with black eyes from fights or torn ear lobes from catching impractical earrings on car doors (that was me). Perhaps they should rename the ER -- give it a more catch-all name, like the ' Room for unfortunate incidents, disasters, tragedies, catastrophes, calamities, and goof-ups'.
I was worried about 'overreacting'. Do I really need to get a rabies injection or is it just more Western hype and over caution. What I mean by that is in America, and I'm sure much of the rest of the West, we have become a bit hysterical about things like germs (we have hand lotion and fragrant air sanitizers for that) and the temperature of raw eggs (you will die if they're not refrigerated at 40º F from the moment in comes out of the hen's...what does it come out of, anyway? I don't know the name and am OK with that). We've been on the road for 9 months and no-one refrigerates eggs in Asia and I haven't gotten sick once.
All things considered, though, I decided it was stupid to take a chance with my life (rabies is deadly) rather than make a trip to the hospital and delay our visit to Myanmar. As Benjamin pointed out, Myanmar will always be there. While that's true, what it really came down to is the fact that I don't want to leave this world in that manner: a rather unheroic dog bite. If I was saving someone's life and was bitten in the process, that would be different.
The emergency room took some finding and appeared more like a cafeteria in terms of interior design, if one could be so bold as to assume that someone designed it. There were people on gurneys all about and while there were curtains, none were drawn for privacy. When we entered the room, I kept telling Benjamin, "Don't look, don't look..." I didn't want to see anything yucky. I was given a gurney of my own -- a bit fussy, if you ask me. I only wanted a shot, after all. But people were friendly and competent -- I did have my doubts about their abilities at first when I noticed the doctors looking things up on a computer and in the thick texts of a medical book. I got the feeling not too many people show up for rabies injections. Perhaps that's why so many of them die -- they're not cautious enough.
After about an hour, I left the hospital with a bag of pills (antibiotics and something for pain). I'd been given my shot, a rather painless injection thanks to the careful nurse. Even though I'd gone through three rounds of vaccinations before I left on this trip and became quite familiar with the jab of many needles, I still felt anxious about the shot. Benjamin held my hand just like my mommy used to.
In all, I spent about $30.00 -- my visit to the ER amounted to a mere 75¢... the rest was for the medicine. Can you believe it? 75¢ for a visit to the ER -- that's exactly $45.25 less than what I would pay at home IF I have health insurance. Without insurance, I can only guess at the cost: a shitload. And rabies vaccinations at home cost $165.00 each -- I would have paid $330.00 instead of $29.25 (and this figure includes the antibiotics and pain killers). Unbelievable. While it might be bad luck to be bitten by a dog in Thailand, at least it's affordable.
Everything is fine and in the end, it's not really a big deal. Our plane tickets to Myanmar have been changed, I will not get rabies, and the dog that bit me will continue to live another day. Normally in Thailand, dogs that bite are killed and then tested for rabies, but there's no way we were going to hang around outside the house to notify the dog's owner. We'd have been eaten alive.
It's not a terribly bad bite... what I mean to say is that flesh was not torn from my leg or anything like that -- the dog gave me a few puncture wounds and bruising, it did hurt -- enough for sympathy but not enough for flowers. Even so, I had to go to the emergency room for a rabies booster. While I was rather irked to have spent $500.00 on my rabies vaccination before I left on this trip, I forked out the dough 'just in case'. Now I'm glad I did because all that's required are 2 booster shots instead of the entire rabies series which takes more than 4 consecutive weeks. As it is, we've had to postpone our trip to Myanmar one week so I can be here for my second booster in three days. I'm just glad Benjamin wasn't the one bitten or we'd be stuck in Thailand for 1 month.
It's actually kind of funny that Benjamin wasn't bitten because we made plenty of jokes before coming on this trip -- I was to be his 'human shield' in the event of dog or monkey bites because of my vaccination. I was to throw myself in front of fangs and spittle and save him from strange and fearsome animals. But those were just jokes; not real life. Real life has me sitting behind him on the back of a motorbike and my meaty calf just happened to be more convenient. So much for my moment of valor.
We were driving through a strange neighborhood -- one that looked, in places, to be abandoned for years, with overgrown plots of land and neglected homes. The out-of-place Roman aesthetic probably added to the general feeling of age and decline. In reality, the development has only been around for a few years but according to Lucas, who runs our guesthouse, "The Thais let things fall apart and then sell them to foreigners to fix up."
The thing we found compelling was that in between the unkempt areas were huge, fine homes with Mercedes in the driveways. Obviously this was a neighborhood for rich Thais, but it was so... peculiar. We drove down one street with a few homes and having passed one with 2 dogs, we turned around at the dead end. That's where one of the dogs bit me. It came running out into the street barking and then came right up and planted its jaws on my leg. We took off... Benjamin honking the horn to scare the beasts away -- me with my leg high in the air like I was doing a newfangled style of yoga: motoryoga. I was trying to keep my leg away from the dog, which was attempting to take a second go.
We did nothing to provoke the dog... we were simply riding on a motorbike down the street and had the bad fortune of passing by its driveway. Goes to show that any thing can happen at any time -- I rather suspected that if I were bit on this trip, it would be in the wilds of some jungle or in the dark hours of pre-dawn while walking on a lonesome alley in a bad part of town.
I waffled about whether or not I should go to the ER for the rabies booster at first. The bite didn't look serious enough to warrant a visit to the emergency room -- that is it didn't call up memories of horror movies about dogs named Cujo. I always think of the emergency room as a place for victims of heart attack, serious car crashes, and accidents involving lawn mowers or coke bottles. It's not the case, though -- I've seen people in there with black eyes from fights or torn ear lobes from catching impractical earrings on car doors (that was me). Perhaps they should rename the ER -- give it a more catch-all name, like the ' Room for unfortunate incidents, disasters, tragedies, catastrophes, calamities, and goof-ups'.
I was worried about 'overreacting'. Do I really need to get a rabies injection or is it just more Western hype and over caution. What I mean by that is in America, and I'm sure much of the rest of the West, we have become a bit hysterical about things like germs (we have hand lotion and fragrant air sanitizers for that) and the temperature of raw eggs (you will die if they're not refrigerated at 40º F from the moment in comes out of the hen's...what does it come out of, anyway? I don't know the name and am OK with that). We've been on the road for 9 months and no-one refrigerates eggs in Asia and I haven't gotten sick once.
All things considered, though, I decided it was stupid to take a chance with my life (rabies is deadly) rather than make a trip to the hospital and delay our visit to Myanmar. As Benjamin pointed out, Myanmar will always be there. While that's true, what it really came down to is the fact that I don't want to leave this world in that manner: a rather unheroic dog bite. If I was saving someone's life and was bitten in the process, that would be different.
The emergency room took some finding and appeared more like a cafeteria in terms of interior design, if one could be so bold as to assume that someone designed it. There were people on gurneys all about and while there were curtains, none were drawn for privacy. When we entered the room, I kept telling Benjamin, "Don't look, don't look..." I didn't want to see anything yucky. I was given a gurney of my own -- a bit fussy, if you ask me. I only wanted a shot, after all. But people were friendly and competent -- I did have my doubts about their abilities at first when I noticed the doctors looking things up on a computer and in the thick texts of a medical book. I got the feeling not too many people show up for rabies injections. Perhaps that's why so many of them die -- they're not cautious enough.
After about an hour, I left the hospital with a bag of pills (antibiotics and something for pain). I'd been given my shot, a rather painless injection thanks to the careful nurse. Even though I'd gone through three rounds of vaccinations before I left on this trip and became quite familiar with the jab of many needles, I still felt anxious about the shot. Benjamin held my hand just like my mommy used to.
In all, I spent about $30.00 -- my visit to the ER amounted to a mere 75¢... the rest was for the medicine. Can you believe it? 75¢ for a visit to the ER -- that's exactly $45.25 less than what I would pay at home IF I have health insurance. Without insurance, I can only guess at the cost: a shitload. And rabies vaccinations at home cost $165.00 each -- I would have paid $330.00 instead of $29.25 (and this figure includes the antibiotics and pain killers). Unbelievable. While it might be bad luck to be bitten by a dog in Thailand, at least it's affordable.
Everything is fine and in the end, it's not really a big deal. Our plane tickets to Myanmar have been changed, I will not get rabies, and the dog that bit me will continue to live another day. Normally in Thailand, dogs that bite are killed and then tested for rabies, but there's no way we were going to hang around outside the house to notify the dog's owner. We'd have been eaten alive.
posted by Cheryn at 9:21 AM
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