My Bathroom, My Friend

Welcome to the post you haven't been waiting for, where I talk too honestly about getting sick in India, even though you didn't want to know.

In my limited experience, when traveling to a new place for more than two weeks at a time, it is best to just assume you will get sick at some point and, having accepted this, try not to worry about it.

Of course this doesn't make puking your guts out any less unpleasant, but at least you can drink water without constant fear.

The inevitable finally caught up to me about 80 days into our trip, and three weeks into our stay in India.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly where it started. Was it when I felt carsick on our way to a new house? Or when I woke up with body aches? Was I being punished for drinking those four mojitos and then talking about Gandhi? 

The last time (and only other time, thank Gandhi) I felt like this was in 2010 in Chennai. That was the first I experienced the human body's ability to turn from a functioning creature to basically a tube of toothpaste squeezed too hard in the middle. 

It was awful, and included an unrelated emergency auto ride through the city where I knew, as sure as I knew my own name, that if I happened to throw up then I would also poop on the person next to me. Sorry guys, but it's the truth.

This time wasn't as bad as all that, but it wasn't fun either. It actually started with a fever, which was new, leading me to google search all of the terrible reasons you can have a fever in India and what to do when you inevitably start bleeding from every orifice. 

I kept track with the thermometer from my pile-of-medicine, and yes I took this picture with some idea of documenting the less graphic parts of whatever was going to happen. That went out the window pretty quickly as the temp went up and I focused my energies towards writhing around on the bed in achey sadness.

I was afraid of having Dengue fever at this point, as I am a mosquito magnet and there were a number of cases in Bangalore before the monsoon. Luckily, it turned out to just be the run of the mill get-everything-inside-outside nonsense you would expect. 

This kind of thing always goes the same way for me--feel terrible, try not to throw up, finally fall into a restless sleep thinking you are safe, wake up at 3 in the morning  to go sit on the bathroom floor and finally give in.

As I sat there on the cold blue floor tiles I took one last photo of pale misery.

It's awkward to stay with strangers when you aren't feeling well but our hosts took good care of me. The next morning when I wobbled down the stairs, doing my best to appear chipper, the hostess made me some kind of home brew electrolyte-replacing drink with warm water and different herbs.

Ever since I have just been lying around waiting for it to go away.  

I haven't taken any medications besides some ibuprofen because I figure my body has reasons for wanting to put on this going-out-of-business sale, and far be it from me to stand in its way. I imagine my stomach in one of those bad car dealer commercials, wearing a big cowboy hat shouting "Everything must go!"

The one problem with being ill is it has made me homesick in a way I haven't been yet. So far I have been happily trundling along on our journey, not thinking too closely about being so far from my parents and our cats and a bed that belongs to me. Sitting at 3 am by a toilet willing your intestines to get their shit together (hah!) has a way of bringing all of that into focus. 

I am not too worried, though! At least this is short-lived and nothing worse. One of the other names for Dengue is "bone-break-fever" because of how much it hurts, and I will take bathroom excursions over that any day. I am also lucky to sing the praises of western sitting toilets and toilet paper, and all the wonderful things they do for us on a daily basis. 

In a few minutes I am going to try leaving the house again. Losing all of the water in my body also means I can wear the sea turtle shirt I bought in Barbados that is normally too small. Ah, silver linings!

But I sure hope this doesn't happen again.