Remember the Domino’s pizza we ordered for dinner yesterday? Well that ensured we had a VERY early start to the day. At 1am in the morning, one of the kids was up vomiting the pizza and then followed the dysentery attack. This wasn’t something we were prepared for, though we had taken necessary precautions – avoided eating at unknown places, drinking only bottled water etc. I was praying that the situation improves in an hour but within 30 mins it went from bad to worse as even water & emergency medication was vomited out. I instantly knew this was the end of our plans for rest of the vacation and in fact, the vacation came to a grinding halt.
At 2pm, I woke up the driver, the cottage security and the cottage owners to determine the closest hospital with emergency facility – a quick Local search showed 5 hospitals in 1km radius with Woodland Hospital being the closest at 300 meters. That was the one they also picked and we headed out. Meanwhile, the weather had turned very windy, with temperature touching 15C. We wrapped up the kid and headed straight to the Emergency.
Again, Sharlene and folks at Aerodene were caring enough to send their son & the cook right behind us, in case any emergency assistance was required. I was already sold on Aerodene but this to me was really going the extra mile.
Woodland Hospital
The Emergency was tiny but functional, staffed by 1 Nurse and 1 Doctor at that hour. A quick check-up revealed that this was probably indigestion caused by Dominos. The Doctor, not so kindly, mentioned that this wasn’t the first case of indigestion he has seen coming from Dominos Shillong!
His reasoning, which made sense, was that in a small city like Shillong fast-food joints don’t have high inventory turn-over rate, ending up with sub-standard food. He advised visiting local food joints that are crowded, serve hot food, are well rated and thus have higher inventory turn-over. Alas, it was a trifle last to change our decision. I was also ruing the fact that the rest of the group had gone out to Café Shillong for a hot meal.
One Neomit injection was promptly delivered to stop the vomiting and a course of antibiotics (Bacigyl) was prescribed to control the indigestion. The hospital also has a 24hr pharmacy where I went over to procure the medicines and just then the Doctor came over to add 1 medicine he had forgotten (Zinconia). We got that too and headed back to the cottage. Finally at 3:30am, we all got back in bed, worrying when the next attack would come. Fortunately, it didn’t come rest of the night.
BTW Woodland hospital, Shillong doesn’t seem to have a website, for me to link, but a quick Bing Search yields a bunch of results including this post on www.antya.com. Apparently, the hospital is amongst the oldest private hospitals in the city
Call it a cruel joke that Dominos is advertising on the website that has a review of Woodland Hospital
Day 5 – at Aerodene Cottage
Waking up at 7am, it was evident that we aren’t going anywhere today. The rest of the group hung around for a bit even as the kiddo continued to earn frequent visitor miles with the John. Eventually the rest of the group headed out to Lady Hydari Park, Shillong Peak and Sacred Forest as we stayed back at the cottage.
It probably was a good idea to stay back – this was the first day in the entire trip thus far that we as a family were together! Otherwise the kids would be playing out together, mothers in tow behind them and the husbands busy by themselves or clicking photographs. Today, was a complete contrast. We remained holed up in our room, seldom venturing out. I started reading a book (more about that in a separate post), caught up on blog posting since I was running behind schedule by 2 days.
Now, lunch is not part of the deal at the Cottage so we were a bit concerned how to manage through the day. Again, Sharlene stepped in and extended luncheon service for us and what a spread it was – salad, dal, chole, rice & aloo-bhindi vegetable. This was by far the best meal at the cottage this whole week. My favourite was the salad since it had garden fresh crisp lettuce served will pepper & vinaigrette sauce.
Having spent the whole day indoors, I stepped out to the Aerodene garden and observed this bunch of dried up mushrooms on the tree, what a contrast from the fresh mushrooms we saw at Mawlynnong yesterday
Dried up mushrooms on a tree in the Aerodene garden
Towards the evening, we decided to take a second opinion and went back to Woodland Hospital.
Back to Woodland Hospital
Turns out the Emergency room is in a separate building from the rest of the hospital, so we switched building and went up to the OPD Consultation rooms. There was a Paediatric doctor visiting that evening – Dr Pankaj Jain. We were already feeling relieved and signed up for appointment number 3. Turned out to be patient number 6, as 3 patients came in with reports – possibly at the Doctor’s request.
Anyway, the Doctor repeated a few assessments and confirmed that the medication was spot-on. He converted one medicine from SOS to a daily dose for next 5 days (Zinconia) and assured us that tomorrow things would be settled!
The Doctor also said that water-led stomach infections are quite common in Shillong especially for visiting tourists.
Since none of my posts are complete without pictures, here is a sightings from today:
Get Well Medicos – opens 930am, is 200m from Aerodene cottage
Dinner & close out
We had an early dinner with kiddo having a light curd-rice meal and everyone slept off by 10pm. I continued with my book and made few edits to the blog, including adding Tags to all the posts. As I start blogging more regularly, I will need to learn how to be more proficient, effective & regular in my posts. Right now, all my posts are quite long (with/without) the pictures and that’s taking a lot of writing time. Anyway, that’s a separate post in itself!
Fruitless Entrée 