Life depends on the liver etc.
The One Where abscess makes the heart grow fonder
Hello again. And many thanks for the warm reception to my return of the Vadukut blogpost. I would like to convey my deep appreciation to everyone who said nice things via Twitter, email, WhatsApp etc.
I am particularly grateful to the haters who said that I would write one post and vanish again for ten years. To my haters I have just this to say: Your hate is the Bordeaux mixture fertiliser to the mighty coconut palm that is my writing. The more you hate me, the more I will harvest my coconuts.
Ok. Now that I’ve made myself crystal clear.
So, like most of you reading this, I am also in possession of a liver.
And until the September of 2015 I had no reason whatsoever to think about my liver. My liver did whatever it does in a healthy fashion and I carried on with my life. I had minor issues with other organs:
Thyroid: Volatile activity
Knees: Popped a ligament
Forehead: Injured by toothpick (by brother)
Head: Tree fell on it
Brain: Excessive intelligence
But liver? No issues.
Until, that is, September 2015 came along.
The story actually begins in August 2015. Exactly ten years ago, when myself and a few of my gentlemen friends from business school, including Pastrami (remember Pastrami?), embarked on a road-trip. The itinerary was as follows: Estonia → Latvia → Lithuania → Poland → Czechia → Germany → Switzerland.
The idea was to drive around, see the sights, eat the food, and achieve adequate cultural immersion. Due to personal commitments, I joined the rest of the group in Vilnius, Lithuania, and then, after everyone had dispersed, I would proceed to Basel, Switzerland for a few days of Swiss watch journalism activities.
The trip was magnificent. Every single stop on our journey was a delight. I particularly enjoyed Prague and Krakow. We ate good food, drank good wine, and one evening spent listening to jazz in a basement bar in Krakow was a particular highlight.
We also stayed in some... unique Airbnb properties.
There was this one place in Warsaw, I think. A first floor apartment that went for a rustic agricultural theme in terms of interior decoration. There were bales of hay in the rooms, and one bedroom had an old bicycle hanging on the wall.
An entire life-size BSA SLR style bicycle hanging on the wall. We slept well that night because bahut chain ki neend aayi ha lol ha.
That apartment also had the most intense piped water situation I have ever seen in my life. Every single time we opened the tap the pipes would emit this ear-splitting knocking sound.
Guys. It was like a diesel generator.
Dunk dunk dunk dunk dunk. The pipes would knock, the walls would shake, and then a thin stream of water would emanate from the taps. At one point a neighbour came and screamed at us in Polish. We called the owner who then called the neighbour who then came and said sorry, you should have told me it was the pipes knocking again. "We thought you guys were having some kind of booming bass party."
More like balding uncle party.
And then, friends, there was the palatial house we stayed at in St. Blasien.
To this day I remember driving up to the house in our hired car and thinking that surely this was a GPS mistake. It was huge. Like that house in the Sound of Music.
The rooms were all so far apart that there was an intercom system inside the house. There was also a billiards room, and a huge library. Please remember this was not some kind of cottage or collective residence situation. It was one house. And in the entire house there was a silver-haired old German man and his 30-something-year old pregnant Brazilian wife.
We were staying there for a night. And as we were moving our things in we made small talk.
"So where did you guys meet?"
"Oh she has relatives in South America of German origin..."
"Ok... where do we leave our bags?"
"Oh just use all those rooms there. We live there on the extreme right..."
"Ok..."
As evening came and it was time for bed, we began to freak out a little.
Why does someone with such a huge house need the AirBnB money?
What is up with this guy?
What is up with this house?
Is this some kind of organ-harvesting thing?
We were so freaked out we all promised to sleep lightly and be ready for any hand-to-hand combat situation that might arise in the middle of the night.
Meanwhile I used my journalism talents and did some research on the guy.
I discovered that someone with that exact same name used to run a chain of old age homes in Switzerland. And this someone was fired after unspecified charges of impropriety with residents.
Gulp.
The next morning we decided to spend a few hours in the house before parting ways. (It was our last night on the road before we dispersed.)
I browsed the substantial library. And then noticed a coffee table book full of nude photos. And then another one. And another. Before realising that one section of the entire library was dedicated to expensive, wonderfully produced erotic photography. You know the type. No one is standing or sitting like you or me. Instead one gentleman is pointing to the sky, while a lady nearby is standing on her head plucking pomegranates from a plant with her legs.
It was very tasteful and artistic. But after 45 minutes I decided enough is enough. But spent another 30 minutes just to be sure that enough was, indeed, enough.
Two weeks later I was back in London and had a terrible fever. High temperatures, sweats, chills, and a persistent headache. I went to my doctor who was taken aback at the intensity of my fever. She gave me strong drugs. Two days later, thanks to the miracle of modern design, I still had all the old symptoms, but also incredible back pain.
I was admitted to the hospital. A series of blood tests followed. The doctors were puzzled. I had all the markers of an infection, including in my bloods, but no sign of where the infection actually was. The doctors were puzzled.
And then a new guy came and asked for a complete patient history again. So I told him everything including the road trip.
"So you went on a roadtrip?"
"Yes."
"With your men friends?"
"Yes"
"So did you do anything on the trip that you are not telling me about?"
"No."
"Please be open. I can ask your family to leave the room..."
"What? No! What do you mean?"
"Mr. Sunny. Did you do anything on the trip that you might not have told us about and are currently not telling us about because your family is sitting there?"
And then it slowly started making sense. He was asking me if I had an STD. (Medical complication, not ISD PCO Xerox.)
At this point my mother-in-law sitting nearby says: "Sidin beta it is ok. You can be open. We understand. These things happen to men of a certain age. Your health is more important to us."
By which she means that as soon as I admitted to this deed, and got treatment, and came back home healed, she would beat me to death on the doorstep with light furniture.
You will be happy to know that I had not contracted an STD. Two or three puzzling days later, during my 4th or 5th ultrasound scan, the scanning lady poked me under the ribs and I screamed in agony.
"Eureka!," she said.
"Yes ma'am?" said Malayali nurse Eureka Chacko from the corridor.
"No. I mean I think I know what is up with this man."
And "what was up" was a table tennis ball sized amoebic abscess in my liver. It turns out I may have got this from drinking tap water in Warsaw. (Which apparently is generally safe except when it isn't.)
Later that day I was wheeled back into a scanning machine to be drained and cleaned and tidied. A few minutes later a short, stocky man of Indian origin with curly hair exploded into the room and walked up to me.
"Hello Amoeba Man! How are you?"
"I am in pain..."
"COOL HIGH FIVE!"
I high-fived him!
"WE ARE GOING TO HAVE AN AMAZING TIME AS I DRAIN YOUR LIVER!"
"What the..."
"ANY QUESTIONS?"
Yes I have questions for breakfast did you have cocaine?
"Doctor is this dangerous?"
"NO MY FRIEND! OK MAYBE 3% CHANCE OF MORTALITY!"
"What the..."
"I AM INSERTING THE PIPE NOW!"
A few weeks later I was at the local Sainsbury supermarket. And guess who is standing in front of me?
COCAINE DOCTOR!
"Hello doctor! It is me Amoeba man! You drained my liver!"
He looked at me in total silence. And then he spoke.
"I have no idea who you are. I do not talk to my patients outside a hospital environment. Goodbye."
I was toh 100% expecting that you got STD by touching the picture book. You know because these things can happen to men of a certain age.