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Published: October 31st 2006
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The last few days have been pure hell.
Pure.
Hell.
I mentioned in the first email from darjeeling about how cold it is there. Even though technically it is not THAT cold, the fact that nowhere has any sort of heat to duck into makes it even more so. We checked out one hotel because they advertised wood burning stoves, but when we asked about them the manager shrugged and said, "we only use them when it's cold."
I mentioned also in the last email that i had a temperature and some body aches, which i kept monitered. I noticed that i kept feeling more and more fatigued, more and more achy, and climbing darjeeling's steep hills in either direction was becoming increasingly more difficult. My temperature managed to rise and drop from the low hundreds to normal, and sometimes even dip as low as 93. I figured my body was just trying to fight something off.
Max and i took it easy, enduring nights where i alternated between shivers and all out sweats. During this time i had put off "showering" because it was too cold to even consider trying to clean my body with a
bucket of water. Determined, however, to actually see something, max and i rose before sunrise one morning and took a jeep to Tiger Hill, which is a lookout point that displays a magnificent view of the Himalayan range. It was gorgeous, but freezing. It was all downhill from there.
On our way back into town, another jeep stopped our driver and engaged him in a conversation that put a worrysome look on our driver's face. Apparently, the night before someone was murdered in the streets. Neat. The driver cautiously drove us back and when he dropped us off he told us to "hurry" back to our rooms. Well, we got a little lost on the way back to our room, but eventually found it anyway. Seeing as it was only 7 by the time we got back, we decided to go back to sleep. During this 'sleep' my body aches got increasingly worse. I took my temperature and it was at 102. On top of that i noticed a red rash had taken over my entire body. I hadn't showered in 4 days so i decided it might be a good idea to do that,
but it was then
i discovered we had no running water. Turns out there was a landslide about a month ago and the town's water supply has been cut off, so all their water has to be trucked up. So without a shower, i decided it was probably time to see a doctor about this mysterious fever/rash thing. So max and i wearily lug up the hill towards the doctor's office and notice that the whole town is deserted. It seems they all decided to go on strike after the murder. When we got to the doctor's office, there was no doctor
in.
By some strange stroke of luck, another patient needed urgent attention so the doctor was being called in. After waiting some time, he finally arrived and gave me a very brisk checkup. He said we needed to rule out Typhoid and Dengue, and that i'd need to have blood drawn. I assured him it wasn't typhoid, since i've been vaccinated against that, but he kindly informed me there are over 2000 strands of typhoid. oh. So he sent me upstairs to have my blood drawn and told me to come back to him with the results. So i had my
blood drawn and the lady told us to come back at 1. So we did. When we went to hand the results back to the doctor, he had left
for the day. On top of that the whole town was shut down, so we sulked back to the room. i napped and my temperature got up to 103.5. I basically felt like shit, still do. Poor Max has spent the first week of his vacation tending to me. So this morning we head back to the doctor where it is confirmed that i have Typhoid fever. It is a food and water borne illness caused by some strand of salmonella, but luckily it's curable. He prescribed me some antibiotics and the whole ordeal only ended up costing
about 10 dollars.
So as we're walking out of the doctor's office i got a sudden attack of
explosive and had to run to the nearest bathroom. I was incredibly dizzy and naseous and wondered if i'd even be able to get my pants off. After a rather unpleasant episode i returned to find that max had been puking outside. We've started monitering his temperature, and it is on the rise.
We were going to be forced to relocate from our room because of a
previous reservation, but we decided we'd had enough of darjeeling. It is not a good place to be sick. With no running water, no heat, and too many hills to climb, we decided to peace out. I'm super bummed because i didn't get to see my grandpa's school or a lot of other things.....but health first. We decided to go back to siliguri, but this was no easy feat either.
We had to share a jeep with about 10 other people, and we were shoved in back. Nothing aids nausea like a bumpy jeep ride down switchbacks.....i bounced so high i knocked my head about 5 times. It was hell. But we are now back in siliguri, where the heat is welcomed. We splurged on a nice room and will be here indefinitely until both of us get back on our feet. If max's fever doesn't subside it's back to the doctor with him tomorrow. Otherwise, we are both on bed rest in the third world. Travelling is so great.
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