Dr. Quien, Latin Medicine Woman

Let me preface this post by saying that I am still a little drugged up. I think I have had more injections the past 4 days than all other times in my life combined.

The short end of a long story (which we all know I am not capable of delivering, but it sounds promising) is that I had a bit of a bad go of things on Friday. I went to Tiff’s school on the mountaintop in Xela to help with her third grade class. In a haze of excited kiddos asking me what color they should paint their masks for the Brazilian Carnival party, I narrowly escaped to the bathroom in time to start hallucinating, break out in a cold sweat and more or less black out.

Tiff and her boyfriend Freddy carted me all around the city on Saturday trying to figure out what was wrong. Never is one more aware of her third world status than when she is sick. Most of the hospitals and doctor’s offices here require payment up front, so we started by trying to find an ATM with money. Little known fact: ATMs rarely have money in Guatemala. Super.

I was pretty sure it was altitude sickness. I had similar spell happen when I went up to the mountains in Colorado to try out for the tennis team in college. But after a trip to the doctor, the hospital, the pharmacy, and a visit from an internal specialist, I was diagnosed with an intoxication of my intestines. Most likely from some bad lettuce.

I finally landed at Freddy’s house where his precious Latin mother was very eager to nurse me back to health. In sickness, I think we all tend to regress (in varying degrees) to the five-year-old versions of ourselves. All I wanted at that point was the comfort of knowing I did not have to run the risk of communicating poorly in Spanish, and whispered to Tiff that I kind of just wanted to go home.

Other little known fact: you do not do that in Latin American countries. Taking care of sick extranjeros is not optional in these parts, so I had Tiff and a slew a guatemaltecos at my beckon call for the three days it took me to be coherent enough to get up and out of bed. With my in-home I.V. jimmy rigged to a microphone stand by the bed, Freddy’s dad came in every 6 hours to give me my anti-nausea shot in the bum (no room for bashful people here). Tiff and I were laughing about how it all seems so 18th century, and I was trying desperatly to sleep as stray cats were running across the fiberglass roof (which I equated to a latin version of cat on a hot tin roof...for my own sanity).

Freddy’s mom was anxious to get food in me after 2 days of me not having an appetite. So she was very excited when I started keeping things down, planning my meals and charting my progress. And she was very excited to tell anyone and everyone about it. "Laura ate a warm banana today! And - thank God! - she did not throw up! But she still has diarrhea. But - yah! - she is feeling better! Yah! Maybe tomorrow no more diarrhea..."

So today: Yah! Feeling better. Yah! Still on meds. Maybe tomorrow no more intoxication of the intestines.