Being sick, Hospital visits and things going un-according to plan

This blog post marks the 25,000-word mark so far in my blog. Pretty unbelievable to be honest for a chick who did NOT do well in English at school at all and finds it hard to speak sometimes let alone write. However, for the past few days, I haven’t written, not even a word.

As mentioned before, we never expected traveling to be easy and we always knew there was going to be road blocks in the way, we’ve already seen this with my parents getting flown home due to my dad’s health, well this time it’s mine…don’t worry I haven’t been flown home, but I did end up in the Hospital in Galapagos. For years I have suffered from inner ear problems which allows me to shower, snorkel for a wee while and not even attempt to dive, however, from my previous posts you will see we snorkeled the shit our of Isabela!!

From there I woke up at Jimmy’s on Tuesday morning deaf. Deaf as a dodo (even though I have never understood that analogy) Immediately panicky panda set in, but I knew it was my inner ear problem flaring up and from there my balance went, I started to feel nauseous and very dizzy. We spent a coupe of days at home as it got progressively worse and then decided to make the trip to the hospital on the island and see what my options were. After my Thailand hospital visit back in January, I knew to expect mega expense and probably a diagnosis that required the main land asap. Upon arrival at the Hospital we waited at Triage for around 30 mins chatting to another couple from AU (mostly Leo as I sat and tried to lip read) who were also in a sticky situation. From there we were hustled to another desk where I had to give my passport details and was given a post it note of paper with a Doctors name on it.

There was a sign on the wall stating the level of emergencies and a waiting time next to it…. mine was a 4 hour wait but amazingly enough I was seen in 30 minutes! The Doctor was lovely but the first thing he said was ‘Please speak Spanish as my English is shit’ – excellent!! As I thought my ears were completely blocked from salt water and with my pre-existing condition he advised that I get back to the mainland and see a specialist as they couldn’t perform the procedure there.

We are not wanting to cut our trip short at all, but we did head to Avianca and have managed to change the trip by 1 day arriving 1 day earlier in Quito on the 30th May, being a Friday, the specialist will be able to see me then. Now, here’s the good part…the part that made my year, apart from the fact that any of this has actually happened as that sucks. The Hospital visit was free…including prescription AND to change our flights with Avianca cost $2USD. Yup, the whole thing cost us $2USD! I can’t believe it! I was expecting at least upwards of a few hundred to see the doctor at the hospital. So, I have to say, it was an amazing experience and hats off to the lovely Doctor!

So, this week has been a but all over the place and to top it all off we ran out of water today AGAIN and had a power cut, so it’s not been a great week of writing fantastic tales about our adventures as to be honest I’ve not been feeling like it. I’ve been sad, depressed about not being able to hear, feel like I’m ruining our trip, even though there is nothing I can do about it but HOPEFULLY, by the time this goes live when we get strong enough WIFI in a few weeks, I will be back to normal! 😊

Meanwhile, let's take a minute to enjoy these beautiful marine iguanas doing what they do best!