Salmonella January 30, 2008

So, remember how I was feeling a little sick in December when I last wrote?  Yeah, that turned out to be salmonella.  I kept feeling worse and worse.  I couldn’t get out of bed for two days.  I couldn’t even sit up.  My roommate had to lift and tilt the glass so I could get a sip of water.

So, Wednesday (four days after the first incident) I went to the hospital.  Some good friends here who look after me well had volunteered to drive me there, so I called them up and they took me to the emergency room.  The doctor spoke English (he’s actually an Englishman, one of the reasons they brought me to that specific hospital) and was really kindly and helpful.  He saw me for ten minutes and decided I needed an IV drip because I was really dehydrated and also that I should have some tests done to check for more exotic strains of the virus.

I was so weak that I could barely keep my head up.  I definitely couldn’t keep my eyes open.  The sister (many of the nurses were nuns) brought me into the ER and laid me on a cot in an open room with a few beds in it.  There were some other people in there, but I didn’t have the energy to check out why they were there.  I had completely forgotten any Spanish I’ve ever known, including things I learned when I was a small child.  It was just completely gone.  Various nurses would wander in and out, asking me questions that I had no way of understanding let alone answering.  My friends were able to drive me to the hospital, but weren’t able to stay with me, so I was alone.  It could be possibly the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life.  There’s something about laying in a room full of sick people while other people that you can’t communicate with stick large needles in your hand.  Especially when you know that you are so weak that you are helpless and completely reliant on the goodness, sympathy, and professionalism of others.

But thankfully the rehydration IV felt like a miracle.  By the end, I could keep my eyes open and was able to stand up by myself.  I even started to remember some Spanish.  Also, most importantly, I was able to lift the glass myself when I got back home, meaning I could stay hydrated.  I was also able to walk down the stairs to the kitchen to refill my glass and get some yogurt.  This really helped.  All my tests came back as definitely salmonella but not any exotic kind.  Just the “your strawberries were covered in crap” kind.  Which was good.

I  am completely better now.  It took a couple of weeks.  But then I was just fine.

But very wary of strawberries.

Hello, again! January 30, 2008

Wow!  I’ve been really bad at writing the last month.  I’m going to do the many-short-posts-to-catch-up thing so that I’m not so overwhelmed that I never write anything.

So, here’s the first.

Here’s an article about a new system on the buses in Mexico City.  And here’s The Nation’s take on it.  I’ve been dealing a lot with the issues of sexism in Mexico, and this was really interesting to see.  It’s a bit of validation for how bad it makes me feel sometimes.

Money quote:

There’s no doubt the harassment women face in public spaces needs to be addressed – whether it is on the street, the train, or even the internet. We’ve been subjected to regular catcalls and groping for far too long. But while the idea of a safe space is compelling, this international trend – which often comes couched in paternalistic rhetoric about “protecting” women – raises questions of just how equal the sexes are if women’s safety relies on us being separated. After all, shouldn’t we be targeting the gropers and harassers? The onus should be on men to stop harassing women, not on women to escape them.