World Pride - part 7 - beach and hospital in Adventures in paradise

So…

A LOT has happened since I last wrote. Crazy. I had to go back and see what I last wrote. Anyway, I’ll try and keep it short but I feel like I’ve been on a journey and a half since the last entry.

I went back to the gay beach! I have a lot more photos from this day, but I’ll have to remember to upload them here another time because something a lot more scary happened. I will say, the beach was great, and I even got naked this time. Went for a swim, twice. I even bought an icecream from the boat-guy. It was a lovely day, and I went there in the few hours I had before I could check into the hotel.

Anyway, I’ll get on with it.

I had to ring 112 from my mobile phone from my bed in the new hotel room. The emergency number in Australia is 000 but from mobiles it’s 112, and I believe it saved my life.

I don’t know what happened, but I know I deteriorated fast. I’d managed to check into the hotel, and probably got a few good hours of settling in, and next thing I knew, I felt horrid. The room would spin whenever I would try to move, even a smidge. I’d get myself in a position where I felt okay and would refuse to move, but obviously I had to eventually. I had to control my breathing to calm myself. I did manage to get to the bathroom, twice, but I felt like I must’ve put up with this for (what felt like) 8 hours or so. That’s when I decided to stop being so proud. I knew I was in trouble.
I definitely knew I was in trouble when I could barely even grab my phone to make the call. I’d move and just get hit with a white light, like I’d been knocked out cold. That was met with panic, trying to breathe, telling myself to calm myself. My water bottle was near me and trying to open the lid and sip it was met with the room spinning and missing my mouth completely and water going everywhere. I vomited a little on the carpet beside the bed, but not a lot. That movement naturally caused more nausea. I had this idea that if I could just vomit properly, I’d feel a hell of a lot better. But it didn’t happen. I was terrified. I thought I must have heatstroke from the beach. That would make sense.

Anyway, I rang and went through the prompts. I could barely speak. I managed to put the phone on speaker. I had to ‘rasp’ out my words, even the ‘hello?’. “Just stay as still as possible, Matt” I kept telling myself. The lady on the other end of the phone did an assessment and asked me a bunch of questions, eventually telling me that she has dispatched an ambulance and it’s on it’s way. I was so relieved. I understood that she needed to do an assessment first. I could hear the ambulance sirens in the distance, and a while later, a knock at my door. I knew it was locked but I’d hoped they had access, and was sooo glad when it opened, and two lady paramedics walked in.

I was so out of it that I don’t even know what they looked like. They were very professional and helped get me upright very slowly. They gave me panadol and saw my temperature was 39.8 C. I was in my Aussiebum underwear and one helped me put some pants on and then onto the chair-thingy, and I was wheeled out through the lobby, onto the street, through the crowds of people. It must have been around dinner-time, 6:30pm I think, so people were out and about. The closing party that I was meant to go to would be having the major acts on right about now. What a shame I had to completely miss out on the finale :(
I somehow managed to move from the chair into the ambulance, but God it was not easy. They told me to watch my head as the roof was low. The girls were chatting and fascinated by all the crowds out, and said I could probably hear the concert from the ambulance and they went past. One laughed that a club had changed it’s name to ‘Homo house’ over World Pride, so I knew wherabouts we were, as I’d walked past a few times over the previous few weeks. I remember one of them calling me “A unique unicorn.” Lol. I must’ve been mumbling shit or something, I was so God-damn out of it.

I was wheeled into the ER. A nurse asked if I was vaccinated, and I said that I was, plus one booster. She apologised as she swabbed my nose, and within litererally what felt like a few minutes, one of the paramedics came back to me and said, “Bad news. You’ve got Covid.”
I suddenly felt more coherant than I had in hours. I was shocked. I have Covid!?
Is this what Covid is? No wonder I couldn’t make sense of it! I had taken a RAT back at my hotel and it had come back negative. I knew I mustn’t have been taking it correctly.
So upon that news, at least I had something to go on.

I was in a special room in the ICU for 18 hours. Not even joking. Quite a few results on my blood test came back low, so I had to be hooked up to quite a few different drips. I’d already been in there for around 8 hours when a night nurse told me a new bag she was hooking up with a slow-drip that would take 8-hours to complete, so I was dreading having to be there for such a long time. Especially in that tiny room. Whenever a nurse or doctor would come in, I could hear the plastic rattling from outside the room, as they changed into full PPE to be able to come near me. One of the night doctors could not get the IV to attach. He was explaining to me and apologised - something about the ‘valve’ part not latching on, despite my big veins. I felt like a pin-cushion after he was done and finally got it to attach, so I had two on my right arm, after previously having I think two more on my left. The night nurse was lovely. I could tell she had been in the job for years and she had done this hundreds of times, hooking up the drips etc. The 8-hour drip was a Sodium Phosphate but as soon as she attached it, I felt immediate burning. It was only getting worse. I pointed out to her that I could not put up with 8 hours of this! She stopped it immediately. It was initially on my left arm, and then later on she tried it again on my right arm, thinking something must have not been right, but it was the same issue. Immediate intense burning. She again stopped it. None of the other drips had been issues, like the saline. I’d been given potassium and magnesium tablets by the nurses (I think the potassium was a drink) so the nurse said she’d ask the ICU boss what to do about the Sodium Phosphate. She came back a while later, saying that I could take it orally. Two cups, down the hatch. Thank God for that!

I don’t think I slept at all. Or when I did, I recall being awoken by an Asian nurse bursting into the room to give me more tablets. My blood pressure was being taken at various times throughout the night/day and the machine beeping next to my ears certainly wasn’t allowing me to sleep, especially when I bent my arm too much and it set off the IV alarm, which was LOUD. The nurse had to chat to me through the intercom to tell me how to turn it off lol.

So yeah, I was in there for 18 fucking hours, and THEN I got moved to a ward. I was sooooo over it. I’d been told all my levels were back to normal, I felt good again, or at least human again. The room wasn’t spinning anymore. What was weir about the ICU room is that whenever I had to use the bathroom for a shit (which was quite often with all the fluids they were pumping through me), I had to buzz them, and put on my mask and facce shield and wander through the ER to the bathroom. I made sure to use paper to shield my hand from touching surfaces, but I guess that’s all they had in the small ER department.
Once on the ward, I had my own room with a bathroom. It made so much more sense. I was in there for another further almost-six hours. A doctor finally came around and asked me (again) if I wanted to go home or if I wanted to stay. Again, I said that I’d love to go. I was worried that I wouldn’t get out of there on time to check out of my hotel!
I decided to cover my bases whilst I was in the ward, and rang the hotel to ask if I could extend my stay by another day. Thankfully, my room was still available. $334 though! Fuck Sydney prices lol. But it was the peace of mind more than anything. Once that was sorted, I had to change my flight, yet again. That’s twice I’ve changed my fight back home now. That was yet another fee.
I’m also expeting a bill in the mail when I get home from NSW ambulance. My state covers ambulance trips through our electricity bills, but I’m sure every other state (besides Tasmania) doesn’t. And I believe it’s like $1000 or something. But I’m also not too worried about it because I’m pretty sure my health insurance will cover it, at least I hope so.

I eventually got discharged, and waited around AGAIN for hours before someone finally came in and removed the two IV’s that were left stuck in my arm and hand, and I was given a copy of everything they had done to me. Four pages! I was like, “Do I need to sign anything?” and the nurse was like, “No, you’re free to go, all covered by Medicare.”
Thank God for Australia’s health care system is all I can say. Yeah the food I had in there was absolutely disgusting (I’ve been joking with myself that I wish I had lost my sense of taste lol) but the care and everything else they did for me, I am so thankful for.

I walked out of the hospital into disgusting 38/39 degree heat. I’d forgotten there was a heatwave. I did find it funny that the weather temperature was the exact same my body was when I was lying motionless on my hotel bed ringing emergency.

I’m back at the hotel with no issues, now checking out tomorrow. I managed to sleep a solid 12-hours. I needed that. I’m happy to be alive.
There’s no laws around Covid anymore in Australia, and I looked up my flight’s policies. I just have to wear a mask. I have developed a slight cough, annoyingly, so I think whomever sits next to me on the plane will get pissed off. I’m wondering if I can try and stifle the cough for the 1.5 hour flight home, or if I should skip the flight altogether and hire a car to drive home. Mind you, it is a 10-hour drive from Sydney to Brisbane. But at least I could cough comfortably lol.

Given the timing, I’m thinking I must have picked up Covid from the underwear party. Either that or one of the buses or light-rail, since they were packed most of the time. All the other events have been outdoors.
And that’s my story.