Sick Day
Trip Start
Jun 12, 2005
1
38
40
Trip End
Ongoing
Bahía de Caráquez,
Ecuador
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Early in the morning I didn't think much of the head-ache and overwhelming chilliness that I felt as I finished my morning hand-bucket bath (where, as the name implies I pour water over my head from a little yellow Tupperware in which I put it into a larger 10 gallon bucket in which water is strenuously hauled in from the street which causes a huge flood across my living room and through my house and into this could-be-larger-and-auto-fillable-aqua-colored-just-for-ten-gallons-bucket) after this morning basketball game with a bunch of teenagers who enjoy showing me how old I am getting as they run past me, dunk over my head and hurt this quickly aging 24 year-old
2 www.projectsforpeace.org/puntagorda/
. [I love run-on sentences, just ask my college professor with whom tried to correct my fabulous run-on sentences, in many cases couldn't, and thus gave me an "A" for the course.]So on my way out of the door (remember the head-ache and chilliness part above) I decided to put on a fleece to help my body fight the cool Ecuadorian winter weather of 78 degrees. Usually, my defiant Alaskan blood maintains well-defined sweat lines around my arm-pits and down the back-side of my shirt and I was prepared to make this day no different with the all-insulating technology of North Face that I pulled out from box of stuff that I never need to wear under my bed. On my way to use email I stopped at the busy office of Doctor Pepe Intriago to say "hi" to Maria Elisa where she has a real job as a secretarinurse. She does a great job at greeting sick people as they enter the door all day, answers the phone, documents stuff in the computer, takes blood pressure and temperature, copies papers, does random errands, and recently as yesterday diagnosing a patient herself and caring for him when the doctor was gone (they have less laws here).
Immediately, as I entered the office she could tell something was wrong with my appearance. I am not sure how she could tell but like I said, she is great at what she does
basketball game in Chone
. I sit here and ponder if it was the redness in the face or the inarticulate sounds of my already bad Spanish that was coming out of my mout. Perhaps, it may have been the Japanese sick-eyes that genetics pull out when I am less alert; however, what I really think may have sent the red-flag was the never-before-seen North Face fleece that can put on an additional 30 pounds to the untrained warm-weathered eyes of a Manabian Senorita as I entered the office.Before I knew it I was lying on my back with a thermometer in my mouth and a blood pressure thingy on my arm. I enjoyed all of this attention and was prepared to relax and try to talk awaiting the arrival of the real patients until she freaked out and said that my fever was way to high (what is 39 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit). I still don't know but apparently that was all it took to be given even more attention, as only the Latinas know how. Before I knew it I was swallowing pills and drinking fizzly stuff; all of it semi-normal until the rubbing alcohol came. Yes, rubbing alcohol. I must say that by the time the rubbing alcohol came there were real patients in the office and Maria Elisa was in the front doing stuff... but oohh boy, the rubbing alcohol indeed arrived. Before I knew it was being poured on my forehead with the help of a cotton swab and was being rubbed into each of the 2,432,089 pores with efficacy
Bday Pic
. I felt each one of those pores simultaneously and I may be the first person in history to be able to say so (or it makes this horrible experience better to think I am). It not only burned but it uh, it was flaming for a few long seconds. In the states and even after my first year abroad I attribute rubbing alcohol to things such as cuts and open-stuff you should disinfect... here they attribute it to cooling off your fever. I suspiciously asked her later how the rubbing alcohol remedies the cold and she said it is supposed to "cool things off". I think she may have been talking about my bad-jokes and my salsa-dancing ego, not my cold. I will respect all of that but will respectfully request a Peace Corps helicopter for my next 39 C degree fever; that or staying home alone in my own North Face fleece.After a full lunch and a nap I felt good enough to teach my English class... so I was preparing to leave the house when the mother, Ana Julia called (future immigrants whose father works in Florida) called in a sick day and therefore went my one hour of work for the day. Buu-hummm... just another day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer.
