3 days in a Thai Hospital

My cold turned into a sinus infection, then a gastro-intestinal bacterial infection, so by the time I staggered into the hospital with my barf-bag I was in pretty bad shape. I remember the nurses giggling and saying how awful I looked as they loaded me up in a wheelchair. They didn't do that to be mean, Thais laugh at everything as a kind of stress-reliever in situations. I must admit, though, I felt a little irritated that they were giggling at me when I felt so horrible. Then they loaded me up on a gurney, heaped a warm blanket on my shivering body and stuck an IV in my hand. I clutched my plastic bag and they rolled me into the room I would be in for the next 3 nights. Every 30-45 minutes I would unplug my IV from the electrical socket and drag myself and it into the bathroom. IVs and gastro-intestinal bacterial infections are a bad mix. I'm sure the IV saved me from severe dehydration, but it was a big bummer to drag into the bathroom every 30-45 minutes for 3 days and nights.
I'm grateful for Thai hospitals, though, and all the Thai doctors and nurses in this country, what a blessing. In neighboring Burma and Cambodia they are scarce and desperately needed. Here in Thailand they are abundant and affordable for even the poor thanks to the gold-card program the government instituted here.
We don't have a gold-card of course, so the bill kind of put me in shock. Kennedy was quick to point out that it would have been many times more in the U.S.A-so I felt better.