I'd been feeling a little off colour. You know, the appetite goes first, then you start getting drowsy; before you know it. You're lying in bed happily hallucinating your ass off.
Doesn't that happen to everyone?
I'd managed to get the shits again. Lucky me. If I'm not careful I'm going to get a reputation for such things. Although this time it wasnt a long drawn out bout of water loss. It was one night of pure H2O evacuation. If I was wearing rose coloured glasses I wouldn't so much say that I was losing huge amounts of water, so much that my internal water supple was being 'liberated' by the Thai sewage system. Every hour, on the hour . . . . Probably. My body clock was thrown out of alignment due to my brain making up fascinating and colourful visions for me to feast on while I lay in my own sweat desperately trying to make sense of it all.
This time the hallucination was a complicated one. My room was full of amazing contraptions connected by bridges, string and light. My room was one large Mouse Trap puzzle. One move in the wrong direction, knock one of the shaky structures, and a whole series of events would have been triggered. What the outcome of these events would be I do not know. But what I did know was that I didn't want to find out. I couldn't knock the string, don't break the light beams, don't let anything fall over . . why . . dunno . . but it'd be bad!
So I lay there trying to keep my limbs steady so as to not invite calamity upon myself. While periodically getting up to go toilet side in my moments of clarity. It was during one of these moments, sometime close to morning, that my very own ?Series of Unfortunate Events? began.
I was sat on the loo, my temperature began to rise. Now I know full well that when I get a fever, as well as going merrily delirious, I faint. I get a heads up before I faint, my temperature goes through the roof. So as I sat there on the toilet, and my temperature did start going through the roof, I knew this was a bad sign. I controlled my breathing, lowered my head, and just waited till it passed.
Did I mention how uncomfortable my bed was. I hadnt noticed it before but man, it was hard. And cold. I kept on trying to get comfortable but it just wasnt happening. I moved my legs around to feel for my sheets but couldn't find them. Begrudgingly I opened my eyes to look for them.
What the hell is that in my bed? Is my pillow stood on end? Why is my bed made out of terracotta tiles? Where is my sheet? Why on earth am I so cold?
My eyes slowly got used to the light and started to focus.
A toilet? Why is there a toilet in my bed? A toilet . . . in my bed . . . eh?
I lift my head and look around. OK then I think. I'm in the bathroom. Hmmm, strange, but I'm definitely in the bathroom. I don't know why, but I know I'm here. I turn to push myself up off the floor. Oh crap. Thats a lot of blood. My arms are covered in blood, and it has congealed on them like red treacle. I look at the toilet again, then down at my arms, and somewhere in the battleground of confusion vs reality in my brain a carrier pigeon gets through: Eureka! Oh man, I think to myself, I fell of the toilet then.
I feel my arms to see where the blood is coming from. They are both ok, nothing broken, no cuts. I get up and sit back down on the loo. I taste blood in my mouth and when I spit I almost recoil that I could produce such a grotesque concoction of bodily fluids. I sit there on the toilet while the fluff is cleaned away from my brain and normal operating procedures are put back in place. I have no idea what time it is, although it is no longer dawn, the sun is fully out now. I look around the bathroom at the mess and decide I should get a shower, and then get myself off to hospital. I turn the shower on and as I stand to look in the mirror I discover where all the blood has come from. The entire right side of my face is red and I have danging spit/blood streamers hanging off my chin before sticking to my chest. I turn the shower to warm and go about cleaning myself up.
When I arrive at hospital I am immediately set upon by a doctor who numbs my face and then starts cleaning the wound. I cant feel anything but I can hear scraping. I can hear the sound of steel scraping against bone. I can hear the sound of steel scraping against my jaw bone. This was . . unsettling.
By the time the doc is finished I have 8 stitches on my chin and one just under my eye. He wants to keep me in over night to rehydrate me. Seeing as while I was laying on the bed I managed to pass out again, I feel it's best not to question this decision and I get myself ready for a night in Thai hospital.
As I'm laying in my hospital bed, tonging my chipped tooth, a drip in my arm and a huge plaster on my face, I cant help but laugh. Sure, I may have split up with my girl, and my business ideas may not be working out, and to be honest I'm not having that great a time over here . . . . but there is something about waking up on a bathroom floor, deliriously wallowing in your own blood and shit . . . that really helps to put things in perspective.