Digestive rumblings

Written on Monday, June 20 at 2:30pm

So it's been about 14 hours, and I think my digestive tract rebellion is slowly calming down. It's been a violent battle, keeping me up through the night and keeping me from attending classes this morning, and I think it might be over. Or not.

I should have seen it coming. I had several restaurant meals this weekend and my body was absolutley exhausted from walking all over the city in the sun. Literally, I've never felt the sensations that I did last night before I went to bed. I had an incredibly uncomfortable sensitivity to touch that I can't really explain. And then at midnight, the rumblings began.

I know I should expect to contract some form of amoeba; last year, giardia and e coli seemed to top the list for some students. But I've also been told I need to wait a whole three days to be sure it's actually something substantial before heading to the lab with a sample (as one student, Scott, a seminarian from Albany said, "you'll be squeezing your cheeks the whole way to the lab"). But three days?! Fourteen hours has been more than enough to make me feel pretty miserable about life. I know I've always been a total wimp when it comes to getting sick, but you have to admit it's pretty awful when you're restricted to staying within a 100-foot radius of a toilet, and you're not sure what end it's going to come out of when you get there.

To top it off, tomorrow is a national holiday, the Andean New Year. Tonight at 8pm, Mario, a professor from the Institute is bringing a group of students on an overnight hike into the mountains to partcipate in the indigenous tradition of sacrificing a llama and welcoming the sun with outstreched arms at sunrise. I've been looking forward to this for days. In fact, I'm the one who suggested this excursion to Hermana Cathy, who coordinated it with Mario. I think I need to suck it up and take advantage of this opportunity. I might not be able to forgive myself if I didn't go.

This is the first time I'm really missing home. Clean water, a long hot shower, friends I can call to come over to sit with me in my misery, a television, and some tomato soup from Panera...mmm! I need to stop thinking about it, because that's not my reality right now. Instead, I'm going to try to head out to the pharmacy to buy some altitude pills for this overnight hike and brace myself for this adventure.

Love, patience, and faith,
K