The Sickly One

I’ve been sick twice now since I’ve been here. Much more sick than the usual headache from dehydration, and occasional diarrhea from too much palm oil. (Things are about to get graphic, but I feel like future PCT’s should know what to expect)The first time I probably hit up the toilet 10 times in one day. And this literally came out of nowhere. One minute I was fine, and the next, the port-a-potty was my new residence. I had to give the medical doctor a MIF kit sample (poop sample). And let me tell you, nothing is worse than collecting a poop sample when you have the runs! A couple hours after all that hit me, I started getting really achy and developed a fever. The fever went from 101 to 103 in less than an hour. I was feeling really irritable and hot at that point, so things began to get a little fuzzy. Anyway, my fever broke on the way back to homestay and I was fine for a couple more hours. The next thing I knew, I was basically delirious with an even higher fever. So I fell asleep because I was too sore and weak to do anything else. The next morning I woke up feeling fine. It seemed like I dreamed the entire thing! If only!

The next time I got sick was about a week after my first illness. We had started our technical training and we were in transit to our Counterpart workshop (where we would be meeting our contact person from our site). My stomach started hurting right below the rib cage and was getting worse by the hour; it sort of felt like a pulled muscle. But I knew I hadn’t done much of anything the week before since I was studying for the language exam (which I passed!), much less physical activity! So that night I had Chau and Ryan study the “When there is No Doctor” book and perform an appendix test on me. We all came to the conclusion that my appendix was about to rupture because I was in so much pain. Chau was scared that I was going to die in my sleep and said she didn’t want to wake up with a dead body next to her. So I promised her that if I began to die I would crawl out into the woods and die by myself like an animal. We got a good laugh out of that which hurt ALOT and made me think I was on the verge of death. Anyway, long story short, I did not die. It was just ANOTHER 24 hr virus!