Chapter 13: Tuesday, February 8th, 2003: Sick
So I have been sick here four times now. Which is four more than I would care for. But the thing that cracks me up about being sick here is that no one is afraid to ask you what is wrong. And they want details. I have been at the house of a family, not feeling too well, and we are all sitting around chatting, and they ask me if I want something to eat. I say I don’t because I’m not feeling great and someone (like every time) asks “what is wrong? A cold?” And you are like “no, no.” So they continue: “Diarrhea?” And you are (shrugging your shoulders) just like “yep. Diarrhea.” Or whatever your symptom is.
Now the thing is I never really have taken much medicine before, but natural remedies I find to be acceptable. For instance I find Echinacea to be a delightful deterrent for the common cold. And it is nice because they have many natural remedies here. The problem is that people here diagnose my illnesses is such crazy ways that I can’t believe their remedies are actually going to help. For instance, I am currently sick as I write this, diagnosed with “suffering from the cold.” No, no, not “a cold,” Frio. Cold. Now, I am not a doctor, but I certainly believe my churning stomachache and inability to keep food inside me is probably the result of consuming bad food or water over the past few days, and not “because your insides are too cold” (if any nurse or doctor knows something I don’t, please let me know differently). Some of the things I have been told to do/eat include: eat toast with rice, drink some sort of thick, unexplainable liquid, wash myself with raw eggs (I am not joking) and lastly, drink this tea that will simply make me instantly vomit. Which is kind of a joke because it’s what Leti here suggests, with this excited look, for whatever you have. But at this point in time it’s not that bad of an idea.
To add to this, when Miriam (another American I met) was here in December, she was at a Bible study, put on by one of the mothers of some of the workers in the hacienda, and was complaining about her back hurting. The older woman, along with some of the younger women at the Bible study said that Miriam “had too much air in her back” and their remedy was to take a candle, set it on her back, light it, and put a cup over it. When the candle went out it created a vacuum with her skin, and they moved the cup around her back, “removing the air.” Once again, I cannot professionally vouch to whether that is an accurate prognosis nor cure, but my logic says that that something isn’t quite right.
Regardless, right now I prefer to lie in bed and wait it out. Right now, it’s like this:
I wake up sick. It feels like I have a boulder in my stomach. Like everything I ate the night before clumped together in my stomach and formed to solid rock. The pain feels like my intestines are getting squashed below the stone. I have this taste in my mouth like after you eat stale cheerios dry but before you realize they are stale. I would love to throw it all up, just to empty my stomach. Or take something to just flush it out, which seems like a good idea. But then I think that with some crazy medicine or mineral or herb, is there any chance I could actually get worse? It’s probably a bad idea to take something. Probably just going to make everything worse. I think back to what I ate. It was probably the mole (“mol-eh”), or the sheep. I mean, mutton. It’s mutton what we have, but that word does not give it justice. It’s not lamb either. I mean, mutton is an old drunk Irishman sitting over a slab of mutton in some pub with a stein of Guinness. Lamb is the guy off of the New Yorker sitting in a French restaurant staring down his nose at the lady across from him over his lamb steak. This is more like really soft, um, meat, cooked just right. “Barbacoa” – Barbecue – as if anything else would be fit to barbecue after you’ve had this. The wedding food. The celebration food. The big “15th birthday for girls” food. Sunday dinner food. But I think maybe sometimes it could use a little more barbacoaing. Cooked underground wrapped in huge leaves of the maguey. Imagine like a really soft beef cooked in a ton of oil, hot and greasy and really soft and delicious off the bone, right out of the hole in the ground.
The taste in my mouth tells me it might be the tortillas that made me sick, like people have suggested before. But I can’t figure out how corn, cooked well or poorly, could make me sick. Can vegetables make you sick? Anyway, I don’t want to throw up. I hate throwing up. I’d love to every time I’m sick so I could feel better. But once I start to vomit, I want to die.
I really should just shove my finger down my throat and get it over with. But I can’t corral enough courage. I just lay there and suffer, my lower organs getting squished and causing my intense pain.
Now the thing is I never really have taken much medicine before, but natural remedies I find to be acceptable. For instance I find Echinacea to be a delightful deterrent for the common cold. And it is nice because they have many natural remedies here. The problem is that people here diagnose my illnesses is such crazy ways that I can’t believe their remedies are actually going to help. For instance, I am currently sick as I write this, diagnosed with “suffering from the cold.” No, no, not “a cold,” Frio. Cold. Now, I am not a doctor, but I certainly believe my churning stomachache and inability to keep food inside me is probably the result of consuming bad food or water over the past few days, and not “because your insides are too cold” (if any nurse or doctor knows something I don’t, please let me know differently). Some of the things I have been told to do/eat include: eat toast with rice, drink some sort of thick, unexplainable liquid, wash myself with raw eggs (I am not joking) and lastly, drink this tea that will simply make me instantly vomit. Which is kind of a joke because it’s what Leti here suggests, with this excited look, for whatever you have. But at this point in time it’s not that bad of an idea.
To add to this, when Miriam (another American I met) was here in December, she was at a Bible study, put on by one of the mothers of some of the workers in the hacienda, and was complaining about her back hurting. The older woman, along with some of the younger women at the Bible study said that Miriam “had too much air in her back” and their remedy was to take a candle, set it on her back, light it, and put a cup over it. When the candle went out it created a vacuum with her skin, and they moved the cup around her back, “removing the air.” Once again, I cannot professionally vouch to whether that is an accurate prognosis nor cure, but my logic says that that something isn’t quite right.
Regardless, right now I prefer to lie in bed and wait it out. Right now, it’s like this:
I wake up sick. It feels like I have a boulder in my stomach. Like everything I ate the night before clumped together in my stomach and formed to solid rock. The pain feels like my intestines are getting squashed below the stone. I have this taste in my mouth like after you eat stale cheerios dry but before you realize they are stale. I would love to throw it all up, just to empty my stomach. Or take something to just flush it out, which seems like a good idea. But then I think that with some crazy medicine or mineral or herb, is there any chance I could actually get worse? It’s probably a bad idea to take something. Probably just going to make everything worse. I think back to what I ate. It was probably the mole (“mol-eh”), or the sheep. I mean, mutton. It’s mutton what we have, but that word does not give it justice. It’s not lamb either. I mean, mutton is an old drunk Irishman sitting over a slab of mutton in some pub with a stein of Guinness. Lamb is the guy off of the New Yorker sitting in a French restaurant staring down his nose at the lady across from him over his lamb steak. This is more like really soft, um, meat, cooked just right. “Barbacoa” – Barbecue – as if anything else would be fit to barbecue after you’ve had this. The wedding food. The celebration food. The big “15th birthday for girls” food. Sunday dinner food. But I think maybe sometimes it could use a little more barbacoaing. Cooked underground wrapped in huge leaves of the maguey. Imagine like a really soft beef cooked in a ton of oil, hot and greasy and really soft and delicious off the bone, right out of the hole in the ground.
The taste in my mouth tells me it might be the tortillas that made me sick, like people have suggested before. But I can’t figure out how corn, cooked well or poorly, could make me sick. Can vegetables make you sick? Anyway, I don’t want to throw up. I hate throwing up. I’d love to every time I’m sick so I could feel better. But once I start to vomit, I want to die.
I really should just shove my finger down my throat and get it over with. But I can’t corral enough courage. I just lay there and suffer, my lower organs getting squished and causing my intense pain.
posted by Patrick McEvoy at 2:26 PM
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