Category Archives: Illness

And the Rockets’ Red Glare…

July 4, 2009

I am not even remotely supposed to be blogging right now, but my stomach is currently on day three of mulching every.single.thing I put in it, so I’m taking a moment’s break from sitting upright at a table to lie down on my bed, and write a little. I’m supposed to be at the District Forest Office right now, picking up management plans and negotiating field support, as my fieldwork starts tomorrow, and I will get there – because where there’s a will, there’s a way. Right now, however, proximity to a bathroom is of utmost importance, so blogging is how I’ll wait out the stomach pain.

I just checked in on the Facebook crew (really, on Mike, to make sure he’s still doing okay) and was cheered and perhaps a little envious to see all the wishes of “Happy 4th of July!” and fireworks displays photographed all over our great, big country. The 4th of July is one of my favorite American holidays, and one which I have “missed” for what I count as six out of the last eight summers, a bit to my chagrin. I love the 4th because I like all the ingredients it includes: the family, the friends, the beer, the barbecue (especially when people use different spatulas for the meat and the non-meat!), the watermelon, the lazy warmth and the knee-length dresses, the ice cream, and the fireworks. I love the parades, even though I don’t go – but just knowing that they are out there, that they still exist as they did when I was a child, is reassurance enough. I picture old men veterans of my hometown stepping deliberately and thoughtfully along the parade route, high school students drumming the cadence in their uncomfortable tin-soldier-style red uniforms, Uncle Sam tripping along benevolently on stilts, little neighborhood floats like those we made when I was a kid, candy thrown from clowns, and finally a bunch of slightly overweight middle-aged Jaycees guys sweating and smiling widely as they job behind their lawnmowers (and as to that last – Hullo, Suburbia! However did that tradition start?) The 4th of July at home is where it’s at.

Even though I continuously miss the 4ths of July of home, I can easily count my years and life experiences backwards through recollecting where I was on the 4th of the last decade.

For example:
•    Last year, 2008, I was in Costa Rica, somewhere around Puerto Jimenez doing a backpacking trip into the Parque Nacional Corcovado, a gorgeous park and hike that involved hours of walking along the beach, a trek through the rainforest, seeing a large cat on the way out, and more monkeys, anteaters, and little rodent-like creatures than I can count. I was traveling somewhat solo so as to explore the country before meeting up with my best-friend, Greg, to help him kickstart his graduate school research, which turned out to be a blast (and the best part of the trip, to tell the truth).
•    In 2007 I was in South Africa, sent there by the National Geographic Society on what can only be described as a lucky fluke, when I was invited to accompany an older scientist to the Society for Conservation Biology’s annual meeting in Port Elizabeth, and took the opportunity to talk to people in Stellenbosch and Praetoria, as well, about our programs and funding channels. It was a short, two week trip, but it provided a strong reminder of the allure of field research, and my desire to return to it.
•    In 2006, I had one of my more traditional 4th of July, watching the “bombs burst in air” from the rooftop of an apartment in the Shaw neighborhood in Washington DC. It was my first summer in the city, and as I turned 360 degrees I could see a myriad of small fireworks displays for as long as I could turn in circles – they just didn’t end. It was magical, and perhaps the best fireworks I have ever seen, although only so because of the accompaniment of neighborhood fireworks propping up the big national ones.
•    In 2005, I was in Alaska, where it snowed on the 4th of July, and we made a small parade and dressed up in silly costumes (bugshirts and carharts, as I recall), upending garbage cans so that I could teach everyone a drum cadence, which we played while marching around the field station’s small staging area, before drinking ourselves silly under the Midnight Sun.
•    2004 found me in California, living at 7,000 ft of elevation at a Forest Service site, in a tent, although I traveled with a co-worker to see the San Francisco Bay fireworks for the 4th. The Bay fireworks ended up involving a lot of red, white, and blue cloud matter, instead of fireworks, but we befriended a group of extremely intelligent homeless men, one of whom had read every anarchist philosophical text I had, and had a robust conversation about politics and social organization over the jars of pickles and roasted red peppers they had picked up from the food donation office at their shelter. It proved to be a strange and wonderful afternoon, and permanently changed the way I see and related to the homeless, even all these years later.
•    In 2003 I had a taste of Minnesota nice (and Minnesota fun) when during my first summer as a field researcher we all accompanied a friend and Minnesotan to the little town of Eveleth, MN, where we partied (illegally – I think I was twenty at the time) at all the bars on the closed down streets, and then headed up to Alex’s family’s lodge in the North Woods, a gorgeous place where the water of the lakes ran deep and beautiful and pure. My chief memory of Eveleth (or I should say late at night on the 4th) was of worshipping the porcelain god in his bathroom, so to speak, but it was a fun night nonetheless.
•    And finally, to take it as far back as memory goes, in 2002 I returned from my first-year of college to spend it in NJ, disturbed as I had been by the World Trade Center attacks hitting so close to home in the second week of my first year of college. I just wanted to be home, that summer, and so worked as a camp counselor (the “Nature Lady”) by day and spent the 4th watching the fireworks on my Aunt Joan’s lawn, in the next town. Even this 4th had an international flavor, though, as I invited all the international students working as counselors at the camp to join my family and I at our home, and then took them to the town parade, to my home for a barbecue, and then to my aunt’s pool for swimming, after which we all splayed out on the front lawn with my family, watching the fireworks and celebrating the 4th. This was probably the last time I saw my hometown parade, a long six years of travel and life experience ago…

And so being away for the 4th yesterday was more typical than atypical, but I missed the celebration just the same. I slept through the morning in an effort to kill my stomach bug, and then decided to accompany my friend Deepak to Lakeside for the afternoon, after he got excited about all things Americana (myself included) and suggested emphatically that we should do something appropriate to celebrate my nation’s birthday. I made myself a little blue emphasizing how fun and amazing the holiday was as I explained it to him, so decided I would treat Deepak to a series of quasi-American things (a cup of real coffee; something red, white, and blue to eat?, a picnic near the lake, I would wear red, white and blue clothing, etc).

Being the pasty-skinned, dirt worshipping American I am, however, I don’t own any red or white clothing, and so had to make do with a myriad of blues, donning my Yale Forestry hat (which looks terrible on me) mostly because it was dark blue with white letters, and made the claim to my homeland for me. On a whim Deepak took us not to Lakeside but to Begnas Tal, another, smaller lake, which was a stroke of pure brilliance on his part. The ride (on the motorcycle) was fantastic – the sky was blue and clear, the clouds a puffy white, the air warm – it felt like an American July 4th. We arrived at Begnas to the pleasing discovery that it is incredibly undeveloped, forested lakeshore intact, local people quietly fishing from boats and the shoreline, only two cafes perched high on the hillside above, at which we stopped for a few hours and drank some beer, American-style (it was Carlsberg, but hey at least it was beer!), eating snacks and enjoying the view, and the shade.

Towards the end of the afternoon Deepak was a “little” buzzed, and decided he would help me to expand my social circle by going over to the only other white people in the place, a couple, who he excitedly whispered to me “are Americans!” In fact, they turned out to be Brits, very nice Brits, but I was put in the position of having to explain to them that Deepak thought they were Americans and was excited for them to share in our national holiday with me, even though in fact the holiday I was quietly celebrating was the Declaration of Independence from their country, our colonizers. Now that was different. To my surprise the couple knew that it was the 4th of July, and as such an American holiday, and turned out to be quite nice. The man out is a Gurkha soldier stationed in Nepal for a year (he’s about halfway through) and speaks Nepali, which is a quick and easy way to earn my respect here (and that of most Nepalis, as well).

When we all went down to the Lakeshore after eating to check out the fishermen, who were in the process of pulling in a massive lakefish twice the size of anything already in their nets, the other woman, who was about my age, cute, little, and blonde, with a huuuuge rock on her ring finger turned to me and said, “What’s your name, by the way? Mine is Merydeth.” I was so surprised to share our name (I’ve rarely had to introduce myself so redundantly before) that I stammered in giving my own name, which is spelled differently. We both stood there a few minutes giggling in surprise and the unlikeliness of it (Merydeth had never met another Meredith before), and then politely parted ways, as the bideshi in Nepal generally do.

So that was my July 4th, as different as all of the rest of them have been, and yet one which I will remember as well as the others, for sure. I admit that I hope next year to have a knock-down, all-out American summer (beach, beer, wine, bicycles, ice cream, hiking, swimming, forests, and fireworks on the 4th), but since life changes so much and so fast, I know I could be anywhere – including right back here in Nepal.

-M-

Also posted in Bideshi, Friendship – 0 Comments

Perspective

July 3, 2009

The title of this post was supposed to be “PUSH,” or else “The Only Way To It Is Through It,” two phrases (okay, one word and one phrase) which run through my head whenever I am frustrated that something is not turning out as I would like it to, and am reminding myself not to give up. Sometimes it takes a reminder (even if it’s from oneself) that when you push past the point of logic and through aggravation, the obstacle in your path eventually gives. I was going to tell you how frustrating my week has been, how behind I feel, and what exactly I should have been doing this week, as opposed to what I have been able to do.

And I was going to say that two days ago I was reminded to maintain my humility, compassion, and patience when a young friend here, whose best-friend won the “American citizenship” lottery and just headed off to the good ol’ US of A, bugged me all morning long by phone (seriously, five missed calls!) to come meet him in the shopping district called Mahendrapul with his friend on that person’s last day. I eventually did, mentally grumbling, face in a bit of a pout, annoyed at myself that I had committed to going there, little black cartoon cloud amassing above my head. “I should be doing work,” I kept thinking, even though that wasn’t going well at all, and I probably really needed the break.

Well, I got there and the boys – and they really are boys – both 22, very close friends, cute and sweet and full of optimism about the world and getting a leg up on the competition by going to the US to work, had two plates, one inverted on top of the other, that they wanted me to smell. Something was sealed inside, and grumpy though I was, I tried to smell but couldn’t, so didn’t wager a guess at what the mystery plates held. I should premise this by saying that I’ve been giving Bishwa’s friend (whose name right now escapes me) pretty regular advice on the US, New York City, where to fly into, who to fly with, where to go, etc, and that the night before he and Bishwa had peppered me with questions about American girls and bars, and whether I would help them get an American girlfriend. I told Bishwa’s friend that if he walked into a New York City bar and announced that he is 23 and has never kissed a girl…things would take care of themselves. Like I said. Cute. Kids.

One of the things I told the friend about was food, especially since I always miss it when I travel, and so of course if you know me at all, you know I told him about pizza. I told him where to get it, how big it is, how cheap it is (in rupees), and that it’s like, “the momo of America,” momos being a dumpling-like snack that is incredibly popular here. We had in fact already ordered momos when the mystery plate was displayed before me, the two boys grinning with pride and maybe a modicum of sheepish excitement. And so what had they ordered and were excitedly waiting on me for was, of course, a pizza.

A little, round, less-good-than-Elios-which-isn’t-actually-pizza-anyway Nepali take on the pizza pie, as a sign of thanks, perhaps, and affection for me and my crazy American talk, surely. When I realized that was the source of the excitement, and the five missed phone calls, and the great big grin on this kid’s face who is about to head off into the great and intimidating west to kiss girls and make his first million (rupees, most likely)…I was humbled. And it put a lot of things in perspective, including why the way you treat people matters, and why you should come through on what you’ve promised to do, and why you can’t afford to be the cranky bideshi just because you’re overtired, or overstressed, or both. It was a nice moment.

The situation I was facing with my research refused to resolve itself, or to let me do the resolving, however, and once again I found myself incredibly aggravated over the last three days, as I attempted to make sense of a morass of information in both Nepali and English that absolutely had to be factored into the decisions I’m making about how to do my research. And I felt like a failure, and like a procrastinator (although I actually don’t think this was a factor, this time), and like I was going to disappoint a lot of people who think I can do these crazy things I stride off to do, like sampling in Nepal’s forests. I wondered a lot this week whether I am doomed to failure at creating change in the world, or at moving ahead in my career, and worried that my failure rate had increased dramatically this year (between the whole GMAT, School of Management rejection thing, et al). Suffice to say, I was miring in it.

Things turned around a little bit today, though, and I am feeling mildly optimistic. The internet even came back, after a three day outage, and so as I sat here, procrastinating the blog post, a little fried from the heat, I signed onto le Facebook and promptly found out that my good friend Mike from Yale literally fell off of the face of a mountain in Colorado this week. At 12,500 feet, smacking a large rock outcropping on the way down…possibly in front of his brother. Nine hours later he was pulled off the mountain by a rescue crew, with “only” a shattered vertebra, broken ankle, second sprained ankle, and hypothermia.

There sort of aren’t words for when you get this kind of news. The one thing I can easily say without letting the tears fall is that this is the kind of news that is a frequent traveler’s worst nightmare – to not be there when something really, really bad happens, and not be able to help when someone you really care about might need you. Luckily, the news of his fall came from Mike himself (trusty Facebook comes through again), and he is relatively okay, according to what he has posted. He will need rehabilitation and a bunch of other care, but most importantly, he’s alive, and there was no brain trauma. You can see the YouTube recovery video yourself – I can’t get the sucker to load for the life of me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nGTTzSHMak.

I don’t really know what to say next. Mike is my closest friend at Yale, the one I spend the most time with, and the first person with whom the connection was pretty much immediate. We think the same way, we like the same kinds of things, and the same stupid shit associated with an Ivy League school pisses us off. I’m a little more optimistic and “glass half full,” he’s a little more pretty freakin’ smart, and 100% totally bad ass, while also being super-duper kind and considerate. Mike is in a different program and doing a PhD instead of a Master’s, but we met on a fluke in November and have been comparing notes on the world ever since. Even though I know he’s not in Connecticut right now and am sure he is in good hands, I have an overwhelming and embarrassingly maternalistic urge to be at least on the same continent right now, and to show up and just – I don’t know – dote. My perspective on the moment is permanently changed, and more than anything, I am just so, so, SO glad he is okay!

What I thought was the last time I would see him before Nepal we got a big, warm pizza pie to go (since I was was rice-averse, anticipating the rest of the summer and the alternative was Indian food), a bottle of wine and some beers, and two delicious little cups of gelato and sat out on his front stoop across from the big park near the Farmer’s Market at twilight, eating pizza, watching people go by, and talking about life, and how much he was looking forward to this trip that he was on when he fell. I cannot even fathom the state I would have been in right now had that really awesome farewell dinner been one of the last times I saw him. I would be in pieces.

I ended up seeing Mike two more times, though, both on the last day I was in New Haven. I saw him first when he came to get me to take me to the train station at around noon, and I was not even remotely ready to go, so we ate lunch (my leftovers) instead. I then saw him once again, when he came back from his lab once more to take my laggard ass to the train, good-naturedly putting my and Julie’s stuff and selves into his car while we ran around like a bunch of crazy ladies. On that attempt we rushed to the train station, Mike pulling all kinds of crazy moves to get through a traffic light (which I found secretly exhilarating), and then shortly thereafter offered to take even more time from his priorities to go have a beer with me somewhere nearby after we watched the train pull out of the station from the car, and realized we had another hour to wait. Julie and I decided to err on the side of caution and wait on the train platform, but that last day and week was riddled with Mike’s kindnesses, and I remember distinctly turning to Julie when we were at long last waiting on the train platform, and saying something to the effect of how blessed I feel to have such amazing people in my life, and so many good friends.

This isn’t a eulogy (and thank you god for that), but I wanted to take a moment to share how truly awesome this person is, and how lucky I am to have him in my life. I’m so, so glad that he will be okay, and that I know there will be more nights of gelato and pizza to come.

Get well soon, Mike. My thoughts are with you.

-M-

Also posted in Friendship, Research, Self-Discovery – 0 Comments

I Am Swine Flu!

June 1, 2009

Many have probably heard it through the grapevine, by now, but I was terribly ill all day Sunday, while still in Kathmandu. I went to bed totally fine – and perhaps a little drunk – early Saturday night, but woke in the middle of evening in the most immense pain: my legs ached, my back ached, my head hurt, and I couldn’t relieve the pain all night long, no matter how I shifted or turned. I was drenched in sweat but too miserable to try to move anywhere or tell anyone, so when morning came and I wasn’t up at my usual super early 7am doing work (thank you, jet lag!), my friend Kanchan, with whom I’m staying, just thought her crazy American friend was finally chilling out and sleeping in.

I finally managed to clue her in at around noon, when we took my temperature and discovered it was at least a whopping 102 degrees. Now, a fever for me is usually around 99 (I can’t recall if I’ve ever had even a 100 degree fever – I don’t think so), so this was a pretty big deal. I was flabbergasted, but then again I was also flabbergasted that I’d easily just spent the last hour or so trying to divide 7 by 7 – I’m not kidding. As an indication of just how delirious I was, every time I tried to divide 7 by 7 the world ‘alphabet’ would pop into my head, in the same font as on the Alphabet cheerios box, and so I would get confused and try to divide the word alphabet by 7 (they’re not divisible, btw). I then tried to divide the number of letters in ‘alphabet’ by seven, and – yeah, I was riding the crazy train.

I spent a lot of the day trying to just look at and focus on the ceiling, to no avail, and couldn’t do anything to make myself feel better – I nursed a cracker for about an hour until giving up about an eighth of the way through; the only drink I finished was water; I couldn’t go to the bathroom because I got too dizzy, and showering or washing my hands were out of the question. The idea of how much effort it would take to even undress exhausted me. I knew I had a vial of Ciproflaxacin (prescribed by National Geographic in the days of yore – thanks dudes) kicking around my suitcase, but I was too dizzy and nauseous to find it, and my brain was too sluggish to remember where it was until late in the day. At one point I decided I must have Japanese encephalitis, one of the two ‘recommended’ vaccines I decided against getting, and became preoccupied that my brain was melting, and I would have permanent brain damage. I was OUT THERE.

Kanchan and her mom very kindly took on the role of nursemaid and applied cool washcloths all afternoon, which is the only thing for which I remember being glad, or from which I derived any relief. Together Kanchan and I managed to find the Ciproflaxacin, me by weakly calling confused directions across the room, she by good-naturedly searched through my baggage till she found the little vial labeled ‘for fever of unknown origin.” Well, yup, I’d say that about described it. I took one in the afternoon but my fever lingered, so late in the day Kanchan and her mom decided it was time for me to go to the clinic, and I shuffled perilously down four flights of steps to the car. The whole family jumped in (this made me grin with appreciation on the inside, although on the outside I was trying not to barf from all the potholes), and we went off to one of the local clinics.

At the clinic I was an anomaly, to be sure. Everyone stared at me but that was okay, because I was so sick I stared right back, with an “I’m looking at you but I’m not seeing anything at all” expression on my face, and wearing my brown sweatshirt with ‘YALE UNIVERSITY FORESTRY’ emblazoned across the front in the tropical heat, goosebumps periodically cruising up and down my forearms.

When the doctor eventually saw me he seemed to be taking his sweet time for someone I legitimately might puke on at any moment, but after a few minutes Kanchan shared that in Nepali he had said he was waiting for a face mask. To protect himself from me. This is about the moment where I looked at my hosts in horror and wondered if I’d just given them the cooties from hell.

The doctor and everyone else who had the information had realized, as I had, that a woman who has traveled internationally for two days, arriving within the last five days, having spent extended time in four airports and coming into casual contact with literally hundreds of people, would make a textbook case of Swine Flu, or H1N1, as they began to call it after the Egyptians began the world’s largest pig roast a few weeks ago.

The short version of what came next went something like this: doctor lists off my symptoms, including two I did not have, and I tell him so. He insists I have a sore throat because my voice is scratchy. Kanchan wonders to herself when he last heard my voice? No point though, because I’m being referred to the Center for Contagious Disease and Prevention, where I will be tested for H1N1. Everyone in the hallway of the clinic suddenly seems to know where I’m going and what for (remember the cootie bug? And Typhoid Mary? Well yeah, it’s me), and the girl on the phone of the hospital we’re headed towards (which is like a mini CDC, for the Americans out there) sounds excited. I may be about to become Nepal’s first confirmed case of swine flu.

I myself am not excited, although somewhere in the back of my deadened brain it occurs to me with amusement that between Swine Flu and Typhoid I’ll have pretty much the fiercest bragsheet of anyone I know, if I make it through okay. I’ll also probably win every game of two truths and a lie for the rest of history, but that’s not terribly reassuring, at the moment. It also occurs to me that I’ve read Nepal’s most up-to-date regulations regarding swine flu, thanks to an overzealous Google Alert, and I know it requires about a two week in-country quarantine period. As in, if I’m sick, I can’t just go home.

I don’t feel afraid for my own well-being, though. I do feel afraid of giving innocent Nepali folks without health insurance or access to health services the cootie bug, and possibly killing them for my negligence if I don’t get it checked out. I think a bit about how incredibly irresponsible it would be to even go back to Kanchan’s house, if I think I have Swine Flu, and how easy it would be for an American to make a lot of people sick very quickly in a less-developed country, and then survive it themselves because we have better access to healthcare. And I think a lot – a lot – about healthcare, and Obama, and how much it matters and how good of a precedent it is to set, in the world, to make healthcare universal. And so off to the CCDP we go.

When we get to the Contagious Disease hospital, called Teku, it is pretty freaking gross. I try very, very hard not to make unfair comparisons between countries with different resources, but holy god is it gross. The floors are dark and dirty pseudo-stone, the light bulbs are bare and in some places, cobwebbed, and I am led into a room (with finality – as in a, you’re-sleeping-over-because-you-have-swine-flu-whether-you-like-it-or-not type hospital room with hospital bed), and told to sit down on a bed that has obvious, obvious rat excrement encrusted on the blankets. On the blankets. On the bed. Rat excrement. Did I mention there was rat excrement? Did I mention excrement means shit in French? I proceed to become fixated on the poop, obsessed by it, concerned in the insanity of my fever that I both not touch it and also not pass out and fall into it, and in my crazy state check on it periodically to make sure it is really there, and also that it hasn’t moved. It is, and it hasn’t.

The doctor comes in and he is young, maybe even younger than me, and cute and very serious, wearing a face mask (everyone at the hospital had a face mask ready when I got there) and barking questions like he knows he might be about to be famous for “finding” the first swine flu case in Nepal and he doesn’t want to screw it up. I notoriously balk in the face of health care (why do they have to be so brusque? jerks), in part since I am inexperienced in it – I have been very lucky, and never gone to a hospital for anything other than volunteering and my siblings being born.

The doctor threatens me with quarantine as if to keep me in line, and I decide that sleeping on the rat poop would in fact be more than I could handle, at this point, and cut out the sass in my answers. I am also wearing a mask, which makes it hard to answer and is distracting – mine smelled like something unexpected and institutional – not flowers, though. Although I have committed to being serious and answering the questions to avoid a fate of old rat excrement, I still chuckle when he asks if I’m married. I think the question is bizarre (I’m so young!) and Doctor Serious thinks it is, in fact, very serious. Instead he takes my parents’ names and phone numbers, because someone must be responsible for me, right? In the middle of Dr. Serious’s monologue about how he’s going to ruin my Nepal trip his pants begin to ring, to the tune of “Jump on It.” I kid you not. Dr. Serious maintains his composure while I struggle not to laugh behind the mask, but when he turns his back I eye Kanchan and do the Cabbage Patch and then the Sprinkler to the rhythm of his cell phone tone, making his assistant’s eyebrows shoot up and into his hairline. How’s that for serious, eh?

When the good doctor finally fills me in, it is apparent that I do.not.have.swine.flu. The abject absence of a runny nose or sore throat (Beware! Beware!) seems to clear me of the plague, and it’s Influenza A Meredith he is now concerned about. And a much more docile creature, she is. At this point I become a little bit of the pissy, delirious foreigner, and tell him I’ve been vaccinated for it (I later check and it turns out I absolutely have not), and also belligerent because I already had the flu this year, and how many times do I really have to do this?

My claims fall on deaf ears, however, as the snot test and two throat cultures are on tap for me. I’m not going into the snot test – let’s just say they fish out snot with a long Q-tip and leave it at that, shall we? The throat culture is funny because Kanchan and her mother were plotting mutiny in the doctor’s absence, assuring me they will smuggle me out if Doctor Serious tries to quarantine me, which concerns me because I’ve given the doc my mother and father’s names, and I’m worried in my absence he’ll send the World Health Organization to my parents’ house, because he said he was contacting them. I have no doubt that, should the doctor have tried to quarantine me, a kidnap attempt would be staged successfully. For that, I love Nepal. And Kanchan. And her mother.

But back to the story: I’m feeling a little overly confident and smug that I’ll be smuggled out, now, so when Joe Throat Culture tries to do the tongue depressor thing I tell him in strident, incomprehensible American tones (and English language) that I have “a strong gag reflex.” And hoooooo, boy does he find out how true THAT is. At least I warned him.

Tests done and temperature taken (now a remarkable 102.4), we are left alone for fifteen minutes while the flu A test is processed. If my result is negative we are told, in no uncertain terms, that I will be staying the night. Or several nights, while Doctor Serious waits for the World Health Organization to call him back and trigger the ‘Jump on it’ song all over again. I can hardly wait, and Kanchan, her mother and I spend the time in the hospital room critiquing the dirtyness (soooo dirty. Preventably dirty, even with very little resources). I am eyeing the squat hole in the bathroom, and thinking about the fact that I am 99% certain that if I have to use that hole to go to the bathroom tonight when I’m so dizzy, I will fall in it and drown in my own excrement, never mind the rat’s, when all of a sudden I feel a wash of heat come over me. My shirt begins to actually drip with sweat (gross, I know), and my eyes focus in on the toilet hole as the first thing I’ve really looked at all day. Right there in Doctor Serious’ ward of no-fun, my fever breaks.

Five minutes later, Doctor Serious returns to tell us that my test has come back negative. I fist pump in victory (because I’ve won, right?) making Doctor Actually-Kind-of-Cute Without a Face Mask smile, whip my own face mask into the trash, and give one long, last look to the rat poop before heading out with Kanchan and her mom, making us a very relieved trio.

The rest is ridiculous. I went home and showered without a problem, and my fever (with the help of two prescriptions) began dropping that night. All of my symptoms were gone the next morning (24 hours later) except for the headache and the stomachache, and lack of appetite. That took another day.

In hindsight, more than anything, I’m glad I got it checked out, and thankful it happened when it did. Were I to have been in Pokhara when it happened I would just by the nature of things have had far less support, and in the field – I don’t really want to think about it. It would have been horrendous, or what might politely be called an “incredibly unique and unusual cultural experience.” I was lucky it struck when I was staying with Kanchan and her marvelous parents, and that they were willing and able to take care of me (and also to drive me to the clinic – there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to make it walking).

And there were benefits. I spent most of Monday not on a plane to Pokhara, as planned, but continuing to take it easy at Kanchan’s, periodically bursting out into “thank god!” or “I win!” or “I feel so good it’s amazing!” Being so sick, even if for a short time, really made me appreciate being well, and I have had several incredibly productive days since, as right now I thrive in just feeling okay. And in being very happy with that.

-M-

Also posted in Adventure, Travel – 0 Comments