A Stone in the Desert
Trip Start
Oct 12, 2005
1
43
48
Trip End
Mar 31, 2006
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates
Sunday, February 26, 2006
The Stowaway
Yes, a kidney stone has been the cause of Matt's issues over the past month. The morning of our second day in Dubai, Matt woke up with a pain in his lower right side, very similar to what he had felt on previous occasions. We decided that a visit to a doctor was in order, and were told that a hospital was within walking distance. The hospital was a very clean, orderly and professional place (specializing in Maternity), and a nice Indian doctor sent Matt off to have an untrasound
01 Hospital
. After making the required joke enquiring if it was a boy or a girl, he was told that yes indeed there was a stone. To be exact, a stone called a calculus, about 6mm long and 1mm wide. The doctor made a call to a urologist and we trekked out to another hospital and had another ultrasound, an x-ray, and finally a CT scan. All the time we were thinking, "What on earth is this going to cost?!" Luckily, when the time came to pay the bill it was all less the price of a single x-ray back in the states. But even so, we're glad we had travel insurance. After looking over the results of the various tests the doctor declared the best treatment was hydrotherapy (a fancy way of saying drink lots of water, take a load of pills and wait for it to pass). That was a relief as the other option was a procedure involving several long tubes which sounded less than pleasant, to say the least.Can We Catch a Break?
We really should have known that our good travel luck was about to run out when we arrived in Dubai to discover that the hotel we had booked with Expedia five months ago and paid in advance didn't really exist!!! After three hours and visits to two different hotels we got tough and demanded that they find another hotel within ten minutes or we were checking into the Burj Al-Arab (at $2,000 a night) and billing them
02 Stone
. They quickly came up with another alternative -- a new, full-service apartment on the outskirts of Bur Dubai. Despite the fact that it had just opened, it looked very lived in. At that point, we didn't feel like arguing anymore and just wanted a place to put our packs and go to sleep.We awoke early the next morning ready for a full day of sightseeing. Kristy looked out the window and was shocked to see it was raining! Before coming to the UAE we had read that it NEVER rains in Dubai. It turns out that's not true. The hotel front desk claimed it was the first time it rained in a year. Luckily it wasn't much rain but the city has no drainage at all so it still flooded. The best part was that it rained again two days later. The front desk told us again that it was the first time it rained in a year. Right!!!
On a positive note, our apartment had a washing machine. With a newfound love of doing laundry, Kristy began to wash her clothes one at a time to ensure that they were getting really clean. To save time, Matt decided to wash all his clothes at once. Bad choice as his new red shirt from India turned all of his clothes (and Kristy's favorite white socks) pepto bismal pink. On top of the kidney stone, it's just insulting to face a drying rack of pink clothes. Now, Matt needs some new pants and a few new shirts. Kristy is bravely continuing to wear her socks.
Thankfully, we did manage to squeeze in some touring in between washing clothes, fighting with hotels and hanging around hospitals. We took a walking tour of the area of the old creek where Dubai first grew as a trading port specializing in pearls and gold
03 Kristy in Boat
. We checked out the gold souk and bought the required mosque alarm clock. It was a nice walk but it turns out the best way to see Dubai is to get yourself some wheels. So the next day we rented a car and set off to see what we could. And the place is impressive. Everywhere you look there are towering construction cranes putting up new highrises. In some areas it looks as though entire new cities are being built from scratch. We saw the Burj-al-Arab, the hotel/icon of Dubai (from the outside only, of course) and stopped by one of the famous malls, this one equipped with an indoor ski resort. We also got lost. Repeatedly. We got lost out in the desert trying a different route back to Dubai. We got lost in the industrial areas trying to find the hospital again so we could pick up our CT scan. We got lost in the neighboring state of Sharjah trying to find our hotel. Renting a car is a real double edged sword, freedom to control your own fate but a responsibility to know where the hell you are going. It would have helped to have a good map.We're currently in Amman and happy to report that we're experiencing much better luck. Amman isn't much to look at but the people are friendly and the food is great. We'll give more details in the next entry. We're still traveling with the stowaway and a huge envelope full of x-rays, CT scan films and ultrasound pics but we see brighter days ahead. Completely unrelated to our string of bad luck in Dubai, we have set our return date to March 19. We'll be bouncing between NYC, New Haven and Maine for a few weeks before getting back to the real world. While we are definitely looking forward to coming home we are also excited to be spending our final weeks here in the Middle East.
Comments
Stones
What would a long journey be without a medical adventure? Remember Gail's swelling event in Paris? We similarly had very good luck with the local medical facilities.
Have fun in Jordan!
Larry/ Dad