Raw Food Hygiene For Falngs

[SantiSuk]

Thursday night. Have escaped hospital at last!

Have felt increasingly better over the last couple of days - a trend which I think irked the junior doctors as they are still scrabbling around in my poo and squinting at blood cultures to determine the exact original cause. Immune system 1 - 0 Medics. Still they are happy enough with their ongoing task - one of them told me it's so much more interesting when a patient presents with something that you have to really work at to identify

This morning the number 2 consultant told me that clearly I was getting better but several areas in the right side of my liver that had some derangements (which had shown up in the second of my CAT scans when dye was introduced) needed another two or three days of investigations to be precise enough about the cause to be able to give the correct killer treatment. Without treatment there is a risk the nightmare of fevers could recur. He apologised for a couple of further days of boredom ahead. Actually by now I was becoming a tad institutionalised, so I didn't feel the ennui he clearly expected of me. Goody - more days of lolling around in the warm being fed at regular intervals - thought I.

This afternoon I felt well enough to give St James and its grounds a good explore - it really is a huge hospital, probably half of which has been built in the last 25 years on money inspired by Jimmy Saville and it is fitting that the locals now call it Saint Jimmys. I felt well enough to seriously consider jumping on the bus to Leeds centre to get some more supplies of pyjamas and shirts/knickers, but thought I could leave that treat till the morning.

When I got back to the ward at 5:00pm the lovely Irish puppy dog spaniel that is my senior consultant was lolloping around outside my door and proceeded to breathlessly and excitedly tell me his latest plans. 'Steve we've got enough of your poo, blood and torso interior shots to keep us going for another few days - you might as well go home and leave us to come up with the answers'. I almost bleated - but there's carrot and corriander soup and cauliflower cheese for tea. I also had to resist the bitter response 'this doesn't have anything to do with that poorly woman sitting in the wheelchair in the corridor clearly waiting for a bed does it'? When i arrived on Monday, the Infections and Travel Medicine Ward - a suite of about 25 single bedrooms, some with nuclear no entry signs on them - was only half full, but I had detected rapidly rising occupancy rates throughout the week.

So I'm back in Pudsey, feeling perfectly ok enough to look out for myself, but now understanding why jailbirds knock coppers on the head to get back inside.

The St Jimmy's team is now pretty sure that the cause of my liver grief is a liver fluke that would have been lying in wait on some aquatic water plant having been excreted by a cow. Thais in my part of Thailand (and therefore me too) eat lots of water mimosa as cooked vegetables and sometimes as raw condiments, so that fits. I shall be much less blase about uncooked stuff in future!

Puppy dog is waiting for the uber-specialists at the London Hospital for Tropical Medecine to give their opinions on my samples in the next couple of days and I will see him next Wednesday for him to tee up the treatment - one of three specialist drugs they will have to order in from Switzerland. Sometimes it is a pain being special! He sees no reason why I cannot hi-tail it back out to Thailand in time for the birth and I had already deferred my flight from tonight to Monday week. Ann is going to be very pleased tomorrow morning.

I do hope that the attractive junior doctor gets her wish and that they can all crowd around the microscope in the next few days saying - hey come and have a look at this little bugger - it's a real beauty.

[Sheryl]

Did you eat any "som tom thai" ?

As the pala (small raw crabs) they put in it are a common source of liver fluke infestation in Thailand. Very prevalent among Thais especially in the Northeast.