India's Gift

WARNING: If you have problems with images or talk of diarrhea, this post is not for you. Also if were constantly concerned with my safety before all this occured or may date me at any time in the future, please do not continue reading.

So, I managed to get dysentery.

It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish upon anyone, except maybe the girl who teased me incessantly in 4^th grade and any boy who breaks my sister’s heart. Or maybe not even them, because it’s that awful. Although when I woke up this morning, I was thinking that it would be a fantastic way to stop rebel armies. Trust me, with dysentery they’re going nowhere fast.

The fever hit in the middle of the night of Friday. I was freezing, shivering, despite my Tibetan yak wool blanket and the 100-degree night heat. Then the diarrhea hit on Saturday afternoon. At first this comforted me, because I figured it ruled out malaria and typhoid fever and Japanese encephalitis and any of those other dangerously diseases you can contract in the developing world. It was just very severe food poisoning from that moment of insanity when I ate some Indian street food.

I ate it because my friend bought it for me. I didn’t want to be rude. Momma taught me not to be rude. But for the record, Momma didn’t mean for you to be polite if it was a choice between rudeness and admission to an Indian hospital. Choose rudeness. Because it wasn’t just food poisoning. And dysentery, hear you me, is not really not worth the pleasantries.

I spent the next day running, or rather slowly walking, to the bathroom with what little energy I had. Because dysentery is a do or die bathroom situation. (After the events of the past two and a half days, I have no shame, sorry). I will not describe it in detail (okay, maybe I have a smidgen of shame left) but imagine diarrhea that is past your wildest dreams. And that might be getting close.

It would have been manageable, but I just could not keep my fever under control. Despite handfuls of medicine and two days of sponging by my roommate, my fever was still fluctuating between 100 and 103. When it spiked at 104, I began to get significantly more worried. Sure, a fever and wrenching bathroom trips are awful anywhere. But when the power is out (which means no fan) and it’s the middle of the Indian afternoon and the fridge won’t cool the water to sponge your body, and your fever spikes dangerously high, you really do like you’ve been thrown into physical hell. It’s time to take your chances with the cleanest hospital you can find.

I now understand how millions of people die from dysentery every year. After two days of fever, eating nothing but a cup of oatmeal, and a day of loosing all the fluids within my body, I was too weak to do anything but sit. As soon as I lay down my fever spiked so I sat, utterly exhausted, my roommate sponging me, people fetching me water because I was no strength to get it myself, just white and ghost-like. After just a week someone with dysentery would simply waste away, falling into a dehydrated pile of skin and bones.

There’s nothing like dysentery to make you wish you had your mom next to you to stroke your forehead.

Again, I am incredibly thankful for my situation in life, because unlike millions of other people, I can get to a doctor. The hospital sheets aren’t clean but the needles are, and that is a trade I am happy to make. A male nurse inserts my IV with gruff ogre-like movements, as if he if trying to stick a bear’s thigh and not a human hand. The only English word he understands is “OW,” which unfortunately leads him to further wiggle my IV. I decide to keep him as far from my bed as much as possible, and grit my teeth and bear it. Then another nurse comes along and sticks a needle in my other arm for a blood test. For those of you know me well, you realize that a needle in each arm, concurrently, is Kristen hell.

I make frequent trips to the bathroom, quickly sitting up and saying “bathroom” as my roommate rushes to grab the IV and accompany me (because the IV holder does not roll). This means that the bathroom door is propped open, her hand stuck into the bathroom holding the fluid while I am sick and trying to keep my hand low enough that my blood doesn’t pour back into the IV. She can hear everything. But when you’re that sick, you don’t give a damn. My roommate knows all too well everything pouring from my dysentery-ravaged body, I’m describing my bowl movements in detail in front of four people (including my boss), and my boss keeps asking if I’ve been passing urine regularly and how many bowl movements I have had since we arrived (apparently they’re concerned about my kidneys and urinary tract). I left my dignity somewhere in the Punjabi countryside many hours ago.

After three hours and three very fast IV drips (accompanied by whatever medicine I was given), I start to feel a little more alive. The doctor returns to ask how many times I’ve been to the bathroom. When I respond, he laughs. (And let me tell you, the answer was no laughing matter). There’s a very different sense of “bedside manner” here.

I’m still sick but fluids, man, they do wonders. God bless electrolytes. I can sit up, and hold a conversation, and I finally have some hunger again. After one more IV drip I’m ready to go home. Because, while I am thankful for the life-saving drips and medication, I really do not want to spend the night alone in an Indian hospital where only two doctors speak some English.

Really, there are some experience that are just no good. Just all, all bad.

The doctor laughs again and tells me that it’s India’s gift to me.

My thought? India can take her gift back, thank you very much.