Discover Top Posts Tagged with #rat bite

Near-Death and Other Travel Experiences Belgrade and Sofia. Autumn 2017

There are four things a traveller needs to know about the El Diablo Hostel in Belgrade, Serbia. It has a Superb 9.7 rating on the Hostel World App, The name means ‘The Devil’, if your over forty you have to pay £26 to sleep in a private room (instead of the £7 for a dormitory) and if you leave the window open rats climb in and bite your legs.

I was travelling from Diss in Norfolk to Istanbul in Turkey by train using a cheap Interrail pass. That day I had left Vienna in Austria and taken a slow train to Belgrade (the fast ones were not included in the pass). I had been forced to share a compartment with some loutish lager lads who thought they were really something special (Saga Louts Rule, as my brother used to say). It got so bad I went to the restaurant car which was more comfortable and I could drink coffee all the time and take photos out of the window and talk to the very nice man who worked there. *

I got a taxi to the hostel at 9pm. Checked in quickly and then went to a bar where I drank a stupid amount because I felt entitled after the bad day. Being in my sixties I had a private room at the hostel. It felt so humid that I pulled the window up for fresh air and then literally collapsed into bed drunk. I have found the next part very hard to explain to doctors. There is a hazy moment in the middle of the night where I felt a sharp pain in my left leg but just went to sleep again. In the morning my whole leg (the one with the bad knee) was thirty per cent bigger than usual. Mid-calf there was two little incisions no more than a quarter-inch long which I assumed was a rat bite. I was two storeys up. I cannot say I considered the risk of rats when I opened the window the night before, and it did not seem plausible the following morning but there was an undoubted bite mark. That and my confused state made me unsure about what might have happened.

I got directions to a general practice clinic (a cross between a UK GP’s surgery and an East European Poly Clinic). A young female doctor clerked me in, put me on an examination couch and decided I had suffered a Deep Vein Thrombosis. This was a true emergency she said. I sort of knew but was not certain because of the haziness, that this was wrong. She said that I would have to go into hospital as an emergency as the clot might travel around to my lungs and kill me in an instant. I lied and told her I was a surgical nurse with forty years’ experience and that what she was looking at was certainly not a DVT. It was a rat bite although I had not seen the rat bit me. We were arguing and she said that she could not let me go because I would die. I was telling her to just give me the right kind of jabs and I would be on my way. A very tall and well-built security guard appeared in the examination room. The doctor offered me a second opinion from a more senior doctor and this is what convinced me I was right. The older doctor did a very thorough examination and said I had probably had a DVT but she said it like she did not really believe it herself.

I asked for a ‘Refusing Hospital Treatment Form’ so I could sign myself out and absolve them from responsibility if I collapsed and died in the street ten minutes later. To sign the form I had to go to the front desk. As I swung off the examination couch and pulled up my trousers the roll of tissue paper covering the couch got caught up in my trousers (the doctor had been taking the pulse in my groin area which is standard when a DVT is suspected). As I stood up and walked unsteadily toward reception the two-metre length of tissue paper trailed behind me like a very long tail. I had not seen this but heard the two doctors laughing. I turned around and saw my tail and laughed as well but in a way that became uncontrollable and you cannot breathe. This made us all friends again although the security guard was still hanging around.

The two doctors gave me some very high dose Ampicillin and a massive Frusemide injection (that’s a diuretic, something that makes you pee. I didn’t). They made those two things a condition of my leaving and I accepted them on those terms. Throughout the examination, I was thinking that Serbia is not part of the European Union and it was also specifically excluded from my medical insurance. I f I went into hospital I would be personally responsible, on the spot, for all charges. Whatever was causing the increasing swelling in my leg would cost a fortune. If I could get over the border to Bulgaria my EU card would cover all medical costs. I needed to get there quickly. The leg was still getting bigger and I could not now bend it at all or in fact walk in any kind of reasonable way. I hailed a taxi and lay down in the backseat, and said take me to the bus station. I have all kinds of apps on my mobile phone and I knew a bus was about to leave for Sofia in Bulgaria. The taxi driver asked no questions and drove to the station quickly as I asked.

At the bus station, there are two queues. The first one is for the ticket and the second one is for a metal token which allows you on the bus. I was in intense pain all the time and was anxious that my bus was about to go. I got on just as the doors were closing. There was a very confused carry on as the door was narrow and I could not climb the steps with the leg that would not bend. Once on I headed for the back seat and lay down. Almost all of the journey to Sofia I saw from a horizontal position through a dirty window and ever-present pain. I only peed once despite the injection which made me feel very clever. My head was starting to feel a bit weird.*The two doctors spoke a little English but no one else did. In fact, speaking English made everyone hate you (or that is what I imagined) as we had been bombing this city a few years before. So every communication I had was through gesture and Google Translate.

Part B tomorrow. Hell in Sofia Hospital A&E and the hotel with embarrassing walls.

Photos.

The Hostel

The Bus station

The bus token

El Diablo Hostel. It was actually a fantastic hostel. It was just my stupidity leaving the window open that caused all the problems(all pics off the internet. I was not in the mood for taking pictures)

#backpacking #belgrade #rat bite #solotravel #serbia

بہار کے اسپتال میں چوہوں کے کترنے سے 8روز کا نوزائیدہ فوت

پٹنہ: بہار کے دربھنگہ میں ایک سرکاری اسپتال میں نوزائیدہ بچوں کی خصوصی نگہداشت کے یونٹ(ایس این سی یو) میں زیر علاج ایک8روز کا بچہ چوہوں کے کاٹنے سے ہلاک ہو گیا۔ لیکن اسپتال کی انتظامیہ اس کی تردید کررہی ہے۔ اس بچے کے باپ پیرن چوپال نے، جو مدھو بنی ضلع کے پنڈول گاؤں کا رہائشی ہے،کہاکہ وہ لوگ جب در...

#Bihar #Darbhanga #newborn baby #rat bite