Fiji Was Hard To Swallow

Pineapple, bananas, curry, dates and everything else I put in my mouth made Fiji hard to swallow. It all began the day I arrived on the red eye from Hawaii. I felt a tickle. I thought it was only a mild dry throat.

A cloud of mist covers your screen as we go back in time.

"Welcome to Fiji." These words were coming at me like gun fire on the streets of downtown Nadi. "How long have you been here?" the man behind me asked. His face grew into an enormous grin as he thrust his hand into mine in a vigorous shake. "When was the last time that hand was washed?" I wanted to say. "Only four hours," was what came out. I pulled my hand from his and held it in the air. What was I suppose to do with it now? Should I ask him if he knows where I can wash it? Perhaps not.

Handshakes here, handshakes there. Nadi is the town of handshakes. I could almost see the germs dancing from one person to the next. And it was hot. Germs breed in the heat. With this onslaught, my defenses, already weak from the red-eye from Hawaii, would easily be overwhelmed. I was doomed.

By the next morning my worst fears were realized. An ever so slight mild soreness was building in the back of my throat. I should have rested, taken vast quantities of fluids, aspirin, but instead I headed back into Nadi to shop for local handicrafts. Wood and pottery that had been touched by every hand imaginable; wood and pottery laced with more germs.

The soreness persisted throughout the day. I was sure that in this 90 degree humid weather it was just a dry throat. I drank Coke; hell, it has been known to remove rust from a nail, but it had no effect. Nor did hot Indian food. It only worsened the problem.

Another night and another morning came and went. The soreness remained. But it was back into the city for another dose of germs. We hopped on the first bus to Sigatoka. I didn't realize there was a difference between the express bus and the local bus. When the bus driver turned off on a bumpy dirt road, I knew something was amiss. Was that exchange of crumpled cash a bribe for this side trip? No, this was the real route.

I spent the next two hours breathing road dust and the bus's belching smoke. My throat didn't need this aggravation. Hadn't anyone here heard of emissions control? But I pushed on. Laden with packs, we visited the market. We picked up vegetables exchanging more germs.

Sometime during the wee hours of the night my immune system broke down. Morning brought more than just mild soreness. Morning brought pain. Should I rest? Yes. Should I take the day off? Yes. Did I? No. We loaded our fanny packs and headed into the hills to visit the pottery village. Another bus ride of dust and smoke. My immune system was failing and I was buying pottery!

The next morning I decided to tell Janet just how bad I felt. "My throat hurts." Yes, that about summed it up. "What were those antibiotics we brought? Weren't they for sore throats," Janet said. So, I began a regimen of red and yellow capsules. That would surely do the trick. So, it was off once again. This time to Suva.

We hopped on the express bus. No savings of $2 was going to sway me to the local bus again. But it was another ride from hell. The sound the bus made was deafening. My ears were ringing. And the belching smoke added insult to injury.

By the time we got to Suva I was wiped. With heavy packs we struggled in the heat to find the South Seas Hotel. Finally, sweaty and tired, we stumbled into the foyer.

"I'll take a double room," Janet told the woman at the counter. It was the best room in the house with a bed, a metal chair, two coat hangers, a small stained end table and a ceiling fan. I was being punished for all of my sins. But the furnishings hardly mattered. I was in agony. I collapsed on the bed.

Janet handed me a bottle of water. "Here, you have to drink," she said. I grimaced. Each gulp felt like sandpaper rubbed on an open wound. Even the double-mush oatmeal she prepared, which I could only eat cold, felt like I was swallowing grit.

Nurse Janet pampered me as best she could. She insisted I take aspirin. I had a temperature of 101. I have never been fond of doctor visits, but I longed for one now. But the doctor offices I had seen in Fiji didn't bring me any mental comfort. Crammed in between two stores in Sigatoka, I'd noticed a dark and dirty room with a sign saying "Medicine and Surgery" The benches in the outer office were lined with people. They looked horrible, close to death. With the way I felt, I didn't need any help toward that end.

I tried to put a doctor's visit in Fiji out of my mind. I thought about New Zealand, clean and westernized. But we were four hours to Nadi by bus and then we would still need to change our flights. I didn't have the strength.

By the fifth day, there was no putting it off. As I laid awake watching the ceiling fan stir the dust which hung from its blades, I knew that seeing a local doctor was inevitable. The antibiotics I was taking were doing nothing. I wasn't eating; I wasn't sleeping; I wasn't drinking. For that matter, I was surprised that I was even breathing. That too was painful.

I suppose compared to the open air surgery offices I'd seen in Nadi and Sigatoka, the office at the Gordon Street Medical Facility was state-of-the-art. The building at least had a door. A woman sitting at the only desk downstairs directed us upstairs. Another woman at the only desk upstairs directed us down again. Perhaps a test to see if potential patients could walk.

"You need a slip of paper to get an appointment," the one upstairs told me. "You get that downstairs."

Finally, with paper in hand, we were granted a visit with the doctor.

"How long have you felt sick?" he asked me.

"I don't really feel sick," I explained. "I just have a terrible sore throat."

"Have you eaten any pineapples?" he asked.

"Yes, one. Why?"

"Just wondering," he said. Just wondering? Hmm, was he doing a study on Fiji pineapple consumption on the side?

"Say Ahhh," he directed.

Then from across his desk he did a one second examination of my throat. "Looks like a six to me," he said. Help me out here, I thought. Technical talk like this always throws me. "It's Strep," he stated.

"Shouldn't you take a culture?" I asked.

"Takes three days to get a throat culture back from the lab," he said, "and when it comes back, it'll probably be Strep. I'll prescribe Amoxicilin. You should feel better within 48 hours." Could I argue with an MD degree? Perhaps all Fiji throat diagnoses are made from three feet away. "I've seen six other travelers in here with the same thing in the past two weeks," he continued.

"Did the other patients get better?" I asked him.

"Not that I know of," he said. "But their spouses came down with the same thing. So, I'm going to write two prescriptions. Your wife should start taking these too."

So after another upstairs, downstairs game to pay, I took my pain killer Naprosin and my Amoxicilin back to the South Seas Hotel and to bed. 48 hours later there was no improvement. I was eating less and less; Janet was worried I would wither away. It was time for more drastic measures. We hopped the 4 pm express bus back to Nadi, stayed one night in Nadi and went to the airport at 4:45 am the next morning to fly standby to New Zealand.

Just getting on that plane raised my spirits. The pro-offered mushroom omelet managed to slither down my throat. The dinner roll even managed to sand its way past my teeth. Milk felt like acid poured down my throat but I needed the nourishment. An older couple sitting across from us commented how they had enjoyed Fiji, other than the sore throats they couldn't seem to shake. They too were on antibiotics. I was not suffering alone.

In New Zealand, I checked into the nearest medical center. The doctor looked at me, said I had a severe throat infection that had worked it's way to my eardrums and prescribed a different antibiotic. I was determined to start feeling better. Within a day I was swallowing pancakes and kiwi fruit, well on the road to recovery.