Monday, March 24, 2025

I woke up at 2:00am this morning to hear Andi on the phone with the hotel front desk. “Hello? Could you please have a doctor come to the hotel? I am not well,” he pleaded into the phone. Poor Andi was feeling so sick. He was experiencing stomach cramps and diarrhea most of yesterday, and overnight developed a fever, chills, and vomiting. I didn’t know what to do for him, other than get him a cold washcloth for his forehead. He couldn’t keep any medication in his system.

At 8:00am this morning, a food delivery driver came with bottles of Pacari Sweat (Indonesia’s version of Gatorade) and saltine crackers. Andi was so dehydrated and he couldn’t stop shaking.

An Indonesian doctor arrived around 9:00am to see if she could help. Meanwhile, I took Tory and Aden to breakfast in the resort’s main restaurant so Andi could have some space in the hotel room.

The restaurant buffet had a few new Indonesian dishes on the menu today. One was called ongol-ongol which was a sweet dessert made with tapioca flour, sugar, coconut milk, and coconut flakes. Its gel-like texture was bouncy and flaky.

At breakfast, our favorite waitress named Dwi asked where Andi was, and I told her he wasn’t feeling well this morning. She showed great concern, and insisted on bringing him a tray of homemade chicken noodle soup, white rice, white bread, and sliced watermelon to the hotel room.

As Dwi, Tory, Aden, and I arrived at the door to the room, Andi labored to get out of bed. “I need to go to the hospital,” he moaned, “this doctor is not helping.”

“I’ll have the front desk get a car for you, Andi,” Dwi said. Andi declined, but Dwi did it anyway.

“Which hospital should I go to?” Andi asked Dwi, clearly in visible discomfort. “Go to Siloam,” Dwi advised, “It is the best.”

Shortly thereafter, a car driven by the Katamaran Hotel’s private driver whisked Andi to the hospital. The hotel reception was concerned that I wasn’t going to the hospital with Andi, but he didn’t want me to. I didn’t want to leave Tory and Aden at the hotel alone, nor did I want to caravan all of us to the hospital. It would be easier for us to wait at the hotel than in the emergency room.

The hotel was concerned Andi shouldn’t go to the hospital alone, so they sent one of the young staff members to accompany him. Andi said the 30-minute drive to the hospital was one of the worst moments of his life. He felt so poorly.

Inside the ER, there were several beds with blue curtains draped around them. The hospital staff hooked Andi up to an IV for fluids and tested his vitals. The young man from the hotel, named Janu, patiently sat with Andi next to his bed the whole time to make sure Andi could navigate the ER process okay.

Back at the hotel, I was quite worried about Andi. He wasn’t answering his phone, so I had no idea of his health status. All I could do was check “Find My Friends” on my phone and see that he was at Siloam Hospital.

Tory, Aden, and I sat nervously by the pool for the afternoon. I’m sure it looked like I didn’t care, but there wasn’t anything else for me to do, but wait for word.

Mid-afternoon, it started to rain so Tory and Aden retired to their hotel room and I went back to mine alone. Finally Andi text me around 3:00pm with an update. He apologized, saying he’d fallen asleep for a few hours. The hospital took blood and stool samples, but still no word on what was wrong with him. He was still running a fever, and was hooked up to IV fluids.

Our hotel room had been thoroughly cleaned and sanitized while we were at the pool. I felt so thankful that this happened to us while we were staying at Katamaran. The staff took such good care of all of us, shuttling Andi to the hospital and waiting with him there, cleaning our room/bathroom, and changing the sheets. The housekeeping staff even left a note on our bed wishing Andi a speedy recovery.

Finally around 7:00pm, I received another message from Andi. He’d been moved from the ER to a regular hospital room. His test results came back with a result of dysentery caused by bacterial infection. The doctors insisted Andi stay the night at the hospital so they could administer an antibiotic treatment.

Fortunately for Andi, all his medical doctors at the hospital spoke English. Andi said the nurses spoke English as well, though some not as fluently. His blood and stool sample results were written in Balinese though, so he used the app, ChatGPT, to translate the test results and flag any specific questions he should ask the medical team.

By 8:00pm, Andi’s fever had finally broken, but he was still in pretty rough shape. He agreed to stay the night at the hospital. They presented him with three different room options for his stay — a shared room for $19/night; a private room for $25/night; or, a VIP hospital room for $33/night. Andi chose the VIP room and was pleased to find a clean room very similar to Western standards.

Andi settled into his room. He said he still felt so crummy, and was hungry because he hadn’t eaten anything in 24 hours (anything he had eaten had long passed through his system). The hospital staff brought him a tray for dinner with spicy beef, pineapple, bell peppers, a slice of tempeh, and soup that was as thin as water.

Just then, the Muslim call to prayer sounded from a nearby mosque so loudly that it practically shook the walls of Andi’s hospital room. The prayer, being broadcast by megaphone, was so loud that Andi said he could hear the chant of the prayer followed by responses from the parishioners.

In that minute, Andi said he was near tears. His body felt so terrible and weak. He was hungry, but the only food he had was this disgusting, spicy beef meal. His phone battery was nearly dead and there wasn’t one English-speaking channel on the television.

Just then, there was a knock on his hospital door. “Hello, Mr. Andi?” whispered a voice on the other side of the door. The hospital door slowly crept open. In walked the front-of-house manager from Katamaran Resort carrying a take-away container of still-warm homemade chicken noodle soup. The manager introduced himself as Henry. He personally drove all the way from the resort (30+ minutes on a scooter in the pouring rain!) to see how Andi was doing, and to bring him some soup with a handwritten get well soon card signed by the staff. Andi said it was one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for him.

Henry stayed to talk with Andi for over an hour. At first when Andi wasn’t eating his soup, Henry even tried to help feed it to him! Ha ha! “You need your strength,” he told Andi. The level of hospitality and genuine care the hotel staff at Katamaran Resort showed our family today in our time of need was beyond touching. Indonesia is known for its warm hospitality, but this went above and beyond any expectation.

Back at the resort, Aden, Tory, and I went to dinner at The Sail Restaurant on the hotel property. All the servers were so concerned for Andi’s well-being that they asked us repeatedly, “how is your husband doing?” Everyone in the whole hotel knew, and they all approached to ask us. “They are being so nice that it’s almost awkward,” Tory whispered.

My stomach was a ball of nerves for Andi; I almost felt sick myself. After dinner, the kids went to their hotel room and watched shows on their iPhones while I went back to my own hotel room alone. I prayed fervently for Andi’s well-being and recovery. We’ve all been so healthy during this whole trip! Why did this have to happen now? At least if something had to happen to us while traveling, we are staying in a safe place which such helpful people.

I hope that tomorrow Andi is feeling better.