Sunday, November 20, 2005
Attack of the Amoebas
I always associated amoebae with high school biology textbooks—mitosis and nuclei and cell membranes and all that (or maybe I’m remembering wrong). In any case, what they don’t teach you about amoebae in biology class is that if you consume them, they consume you.
Of course the Julias who lived in Senegal know this already. I first heard of amoebae as a gastrointestinal threat from Julia Oliver, fresh from her two years on the Peace Corps and a month of traveling in India, when she visited me in Taiwan. She was highly knowledgeable about the dangers of food and not ironing your clothes in wet climates. She told me stories of little parasites that come off moist, un-ironed clothing and burrow under the skin, creating pimple-like bumps and eventually popping open to reveal a little worm. Amoebas, not quite so scary-sounding, came up in conversation because we had probably eaten something not very sanitary in Hong Kong, probably at that dirty place on Temple Street. (Sorry, Julia!) We had (excuse me for being too graphic) the runs in a very watery way. It didn’t seem too serious, until a few weeks later when I came down with hepatitis A—the punishment for thinking that a vaccination treatment that takes over a month is really not worth the trouble and for feeling invincible in the face of street cuisine.
It’s such a cliché to write about gastrointestinal problems on a blog about living in Mexico, and I apologize for making my first entry all about amoeba, but my ailment happens to coincide with the arrival of living-room furniture in my apartment in Arandas, Jalisco. Finally I have a feeling of as if I’ve settled into my life here, and I’m ready to start this blog that John Bauschatz suggested I write before I got to Mexico. Perhaps I feel like I’ve been initiated or something, now that I have eaten the food here for two months already and have finally gotten sick. So much for thinking that I have such a natural affinity with Mexico that I don’t become ill from the food. I’ve also gotten tired of writing several individual emails telling the same stories and never remembering what I told to whom. Of course I’ll still write to my friends and family individually, especially now that I have internet access in my apartment and don’t have to go to internet cafes, but I thought I’d try the blog thing to disseminate my news. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Don’t get alarmed, but I just spent a day and a half in the hospital. Wednesday night I was walking home and felt feverish. My heavy Dansko© clogs felt heavier and heavier, reminding me of fevers in Hong Kong, walking down the narrow sidewalks in a dizzy haze. As soon as I got home to my apartment, I went to sleep. It was about 8:30 or 9, very early for me. At 2:00 in the morning I awoke again, and that was when the worst started. I couldn’t sleep well because of the aching from the fever and the constant trips to the bathroom. When I did sleep, I had anxiety dreams about details with some frustrating paper work. Everyone I know here in Arandas has chastised me for not calling someone earlier about my illness, but I thought it would pass and was only able to bring myself to call my boss at about 6:30 a.m. She took me to the hospital.
I needed the bathroom again, but there wasn’t any toilet paper. Someone directed me to a bathroom in an empty hospital room. When I came out of the bathroom, my boss and I waited in the room for the doctor. I thought the doctor would examine me, give me some medicine, and I could go home to sleep it off. When I had hepatitis A in Taiwan, I just had some tests done and went home to sleep and force myself to eat despite my lack of appetite. But now a nurse came in and told me to put on one of those lovely little hospital gowns and lie down on the bed. A plasma drip came in. I realized that I would be staying in the hospital longer than I had expected.
It was not all that bad, though I say this now that the worst is over. At first I was overwhelmed by, I don’t know what, and I started crying when my boss kept reassuring me that I would be OK. Maybe I was crying because I didn’t think I would be OK. Or maybe I was crying because somebody was reassuring me. In any case, I was lying there on the hospital bed severely dehydrated and feverish, crying whenever my boss spoke to me and stopping when the nurses came in. Eventually I got some painkiller and was able to sleep. Everyone was extremely nice to me. The boss stayed with me most of the morning, until the cook from the school took over. My fever returned and I felt cold. The doctor said I had a little hypothermia, and I could only use the sheets with no blankets, in order to lower the fever. I felt extremely cold and my back and legs were killing me. When I finally go more medication for the pain and the fever, I fell back asleep.
I was touched by the care with which the cook, Doña Paty, placed wet towels on my forehead for hours standing by my bed. She would brush aside my hair carefully, so as not to wake me should I fall asleep.
Some of the teachers came to visit me, some with flowers. A preschool student brought me candy (which I couldn’t eat), a little foam shark, and a tiny tiger made of pipe cleaners. Everyone joked all day about tortas de lomo, what I had had for lunch the previous day, and scolded me for eating so much on the street. Doña Paty and I talked about things I could start to cook once I got home, because I have to start cooking more and eating less outside.
My friend Rocio (stress on the “i”), the secretary from the school, took over at 7 p.m. and stayed overnight on the uncomfortable couch in my room. I was happy to have her there because we could chat and tell jokes. She and another teacher and I have been calling each other “La Loca” for days. We watched TV and talked. I was feeling much better by the evening. The fever and the aching went away, but I still had to finish the drip I was on and have two more doses of antibiotics, so I ended up staying the night. The only thing I’d had to eat all day was jell-o and hot lemon tea, the only variety being that I had had grape flavor for breakfast and lunch and now I was getting pineapple. In my desperate hunger I craved a chicken sandwich with French fries so badly—because I knew a restaurant just around the corner that had hamburguesas de pollo con queso y papas, but I would settle for digestive cookies if they were permissible. They weren’t.
I forgot my hunger once we started watching documentaries on Animal Planet and National Geographic. There was a show about camels in South America and Saudi Arabia. I told Rocio about the traumatizing documentary Sandy and I saw once, where a zoo was going to breed koalas by bringing in a male, and the female koalas were in heat and going crazy humping the eucalyptus trees. I fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m., after the antibiotics started and despite the coldness in my arm that they caused.
In the morning, I got pineapple jell-o again. Rocio and I watched music videos and part of an old Mexican film called El Silencio (not because any of them were good). We waited and waited for my drip to finish. I was finally able to leave at about 1 or 2.
Ah, my fabulous appetite! My wonderful metabolism! My strong stomach! My joys and my flaws, apparently. What I love most about traveling—about living, I guess—is eating the food and drinking the beverages.
Taiwan: fresh papaya milk, bubble tea, biandang (lunchboxes), spicy beef jerky, shaved ice desserts, the fried cod near sifu’s place, syabu-syabu (hotpot), gongwan (meatballs), dumpling soup, cold sesame noodles, steamed buns, sweet, hot soy milk for breakfast.
Hong Kong: dim sum, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, tapioca with coconut milk, coconut pudding at the race track.
Malaysia & Singapore: curry rice-noodle soup, satay.
England: scones with clotted cream, cheese and potato pasties, mince pies, fish and chips, beans and toast, Pakistani curries, mini-milk popsicles.
Ireland: Guinness, Kilkenny, stew.
France: cheese, cheese, cheese, pain au chocolat, bread, bread, bread, kebabs.
Italy: tortelloni burro e oro, grating cheese, chianti, prosciutto, latte macchiato, bombolone filled with cream or nutella, gelati.
Providence: falafel, Ratty vegan bar, mashed turnips, sweet Portuguese bread, the wonderful food that the Ratty cooks made for presidential functions, grilled cheese sandwiches, tiramisu, muffins at Ocean Café, bagel melts with tomato and muenster at the Cable Car, ting, squash soup Rue de l’espere (sp?), Big Alice’s ice cream.
Tucson: breakfast burritos, vegetarian sandwiches at the old U of A union, NY pizza, smoothies, dollar burritos downtown, cheap frozen yogurt at the hospital, sopapillas with honey, huge cups of jamaica.
Columbus: French fries, Scottish eggs at Mac’s, homemade Thanksgiving dinners, Kaori’s salmon pockets, Lea’s spinach, biscuits and gravy, dosas, that spicy fish at the Chinese restaurant whose name I can never remember, Rohit’s chana, Andy’s tunky tuna, Veronica’s balls, cucumber with lime and chili, Luis’ famous hot dogs, cheap tortas at El Mariachi, Tricia’s cooking which was improving at lightning speed when I left, that place Dr. Denton took us to before I left.
Mexico: sopes, tacos al pastor, tortas, lonches, enchiladas, horchata, jamaica, quesadillas, pozole, tamales with cream, chicken sandwiches, milaneza, corn in a cup with cream, chili, and cheese, popsicles, shrimp a la diabla, papaya with lime, lime, lime.
Of course the Julias who lived in Senegal know this already. I first heard of amoebae as a gastrointestinal threat from Julia Oliver, fresh from her two years on the Peace Corps and a month of traveling in India, when she visited me in Taiwan. She was highly knowledgeable about the dangers of food and not ironing your clothes in wet climates. She told me stories of little parasites that come off moist, un-ironed clothing and burrow under the skin, creating pimple-like bumps and eventually popping open to reveal a little worm. Amoebas, not quite so scary-sounding, came up in conversation because we had probably eaten something not very sanitary in Hong Kong, probably at that dirty place on Temple Street. (Sorry, Julia!) We had (excuse me for being too graphic) the runs in a very watery way. It didn’t seem too serious, until a few weeks later when I came down with hepatitis A—the punishment for thinking that a vaccination treatment that takes over a month is really not worth the trouble and for feeling invincible in the face of street cuisine.
It’s such a cliché to write about gastrointestinal problems on a blog about living in Mexico, and I apologize for making my first entry all about amoeba, but my ailment happens to coincide with the arrival of living-room furniture in my apartment in Arandas, Jalisco. Finally I have a feeling of as if I’ve settled into my life here, and I’m ready to start this blog that John Bauschatz suggested I write before I got to Mexico. Perhaps I feel like I’ve been initiated or something, now that I have eaten the food here for two months already and have finally gotten sick. So much for thinking that I have such a natural affinity with Mexico that I don’t become ill from the food. I’ve also gotten tired of writing several individual emails telling the same stories and never remembering what I told to whom. Of course I’ll still write to my friends and family individually, especially now that I have internet access in my apartment and don’t have to go to internet cafes, but I thought I’d try the blog thing to disseminate my news. Let’s see how long it lasts.
Don’t get alarmed, but I just spent a day and a half in the hospital. Wednesday night I was walking home and felt feverish. My heavy Dansko© clogs felt heavier and heavier, reminding me of fevers in Hong Kong, walking down the narrow sidewalks in a dizzy haze. As soon as I got home to my apartment, I went to sleep. It was about 8:30 or 9, very early for me. At 2:00 in the morning I awoke again, and that was when the worst started. I couldn’t sleep well because of the aching from the fever and the constant trips to the bathroom. When I did sleep, I had anxiety dreams about details with some frustrating paper work. Everyone I know here in Arandas has chastised me for not calling someone earlier about my illness, but I thought it would pass and was only able to bring myself to call my boss at about 6:30 a.m. She took me to the hospital.
I needed the bathroom again, but there wasn’t any toilet paper. Someone directed me to a bathroom in an empty hospital room. When I came out of the bathroom, my boss and I waited in the room for the doctor. I thought the doctor would examine me, give me some medicine, and I could go home to sleep it off. When I had hepatitis A in Taiwan, I just had some tests done and went home to sleep and force myself to eat despite my lack of appetite. But now a nurse came in and told me to put on one of those lovely little hospital gowns and lie down on the bed. A plasma drip came in. I realized that I would be staying in the hospital longer than I had expected.
It was not all that bad, though I say this now that the worst is over. At first I was overwhelmed by, I don’t know what, and I started crying when my boss kept reassuring me that I would be OK. Maybe I was crying because I didn’t think I would be OK. Or maybe I was crying because somebody was reassuring me. In any case, I was lying there on the hospital bed severely dehydrated and feverish, crying whenever my boss spoke to me and stopping when the nurses came in. Eventually I got some painkiller and was able to sleep. Everyone was extremely nice to me. The boss stayed with me most of the morning, until the cook from the school took over. My fever returned and I felt cold. The doctor said I had a little hypothermia, and I could only use the sheets with no blankets, in order to lower the fever. I felt extremely cold and my back and legs were killing me. When I finally go more medication for the pain and the fever, I fell back asleep.
I was touched by the care with which the cook, Doña Paty, placed wet towels on my forehead for hours standing by my bed. She would brush aside my hair carefully, so as not to wake me should I fall asleep.
Some of the teachers came to visit me, some with flowers. A preschool student brought me candy (which I couldn’t eat), a little foam shark, and a tiny tiger made of pipe cleaners. Everyone joked all day about tortas de lomo, what I had had for lunch the previous day, and scolded me for eating so much on the street. Doña Paty and I talked about things I could start to cook once I got home, because I have to start cooking more and eating less outside.
My friend Rocio (stress on the “i”), the secretary from the school, took over at 7 p.m. and stayed overnight on the uncomfortable couch in my room. I was happy to have her there because we could chat and tell jokes. She and another teacher and I have been calling each other “La Loca” for days. We watched TV and talked. I was feeling much better by the evening. The fever and the aching went away, but I still had to finish the drip I was on and have two more doses of antibiotics, so I ended up staying the night. The only thing I’d had to eat all day was jell-o and hot lemon tea, the only variety being that I had had grape flavor for breakfast and lunch and now I was getting pineapple. In my desperate hunger I craved a chicken sandwich with French fries so badly—because I knew a restaurant just around the corner that had hamburguesas de pollo con queso y papas, but I would settle for digestive cookies if they were permissible. They weren’t.
I forgot my hunger once we started watching documentaries on Animal Planet and National Geographic. There was a show about camels in South America and Saudi Arabia. I told Rocio about the traumatizing documentary Sandy and I saw once, where a zoo was going to breed koalas by bringing in a male, and the female koalas were in heat and going crazy humping the eucalyptus trees. I fell asleep sometime around 1 a.m., after the antibiotics started and despite the coldness in my arm that they caused.
In the morning, I got pineapple jell-o again. Rocio and I watched music videos and part of an old Mexican film called El Silencio (not because any of them were good). We waited and waited for my drip to finish. I was finally able to leave at about 1 or 2.
Ah, my fabulous appetite! My wonderful metabolism! My strong stomach! My joys and my flaws, apparently. What I love most about traveling—about living, I guess—is eating the food and drinking the beverages.
Taiwan: fresh papaya milk, bubble tea, biandang (lunchboxes), spicy beef jerky, shaved ice desserts, the fried cod near sifu’s place, syabu-syabu (hotpot), gongwan (meatballs), dumpling soup, cold sesame noodles, steamed buns, sweet, hot soy milk for breakfast.
Hong Kong: dim sum, Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, tapioca with coconut milk, coconut pudding at the race track.
Malaysia & Singapore: curry rice-noodle soup, satay.
England: scones with clotted cream, cheese and potato pasties, mince pies, fish and chips, beans and toast, Pakistani curries, mini-milk popsicles.
Ireland: Guinness, Kilkenny, stew.
France: cheese, cheese, cheese, pain au chocolat, bread, bread, bread, kebabs.
Italy: tortelloni burro e oro, grating cheese, chianti, prosciutto, latte macchiato, bombolone filled with cream or nutella, gelati.
Providence: falafel, Ratty vegan bar, mashed turnips, sweet Portuguese bread, the wonderful food that the Ratty cooks made for presidential functions, grilled cheese sandwiches, tiramisu, muffins at Ocean Café, bagel melts with tomato and muenster at the Cable Car, ting, squash soup Rue de l’espere (sp?), Big Alice’s ice cream.
Tucson: breakfast burritos, vegetarian sandwiches at the old U of A union, NY pizza, smoothies, dollar burritos downtown, cheap frozen yogurt at the hospital, sopapillas with honey, huge cups of jamaica.
Columbus: French fries, Scottish eggs at Mac’s, homemade Thanksgiving dinners, Kaori’s salmon pockets, Lea’s spinach, biscuits and gravy, dosas, that spicy fish at the Chinese restaurant whose name I can never remember, Rohit’s chana, Andy’s tunky tuna, Veronica’s balls, cucumber with lime and chili, Luis’ famous hot dogs, cheap tortas at El Mariachi, Tricia’s cooking which was improving at lightning speed when I left, that place Dr. Denton took us to before I left.
Mexico: sopes, tacos al pastor, tortas, lonches, enchiladas, horchata, jamaica, quesadillas, pozole, tamales with cream, chicken sandwiches, milaneza, corn in a cup with cream, chili, and cheese, popsicles, shrimp a la diabla, papaya with lime, lime, lime.
