Paraiso con Parasitos

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Dias 23, 24, 25, y 26
As hard as it is to believe, the halfway point has come and gone already! This week has been off to a little bit of a rough start… Monday went okay, I had Nuevos Horizontes in the morning and Stephen and I decided to split our days so we can maximize our time with the doctor. I went by myself and shadowed Dr Tere the whole time. We saw many babies nad children with ear infections, flu, and the common cold. When I first arrived, she handed me a pamphlet she for from the Health Center that has information on how to feed babies under 2 years of age. She had me look it over for a few minutes, then brought me out to the group of women who were waiting ot be seen, and had me present the information to them in Spanish. Many of the women in this area cannot read or write, so simply giving them the pamphlet wouldn’t be of any use. I tried my best to explain, but it was a bit tough because I was JUST presented with the information a few minutes before.. it went pretty well though, and Dr. Tere had me give the speech a few more times to patients that arrived late. All in all it was a good morning of shadowing, and I returned to eat lunch witht eh family. Julias son and two grandchildren are visiting from Guatemala City. They are all very nice and made me feel like a part of the family 
Class went well on Monday, Leti and I spent a good deal of time talking over my weekend so I could practice specific grammar tenses. After class I had intended to go to the gym but found myself totally exhausted so I took a nap instead. We had a movie called American Harvest at La Luna at 730, so I ate dinner during the movie there. It was 4th of July here, so I ordered a hamburger with thoughts of home  the hamburger still tasted entirely Guatemalan, but it was good nonetheless… the documentary was really interesting- it followed a harvest season in farms across America. I learned about how difficult it is to legally immigrate to the United States, how many people die waiting overnight at the embassy or spend their life savings for an appointment and then get denied for a visa. The movie basically showed how latino immigrants, legal and illegal, form the backbone of our farming industry, which would absolutely collapse without them. Traditionally our farms were worked by blacks as slaves, then by whites before WWII.. but now it seems most Americans feel above this kind of manual labor. Farmers talked about how they advertised jobs for months, ending up with work forces that were 95-99% Mexican. I thought the movie did a good job demonstrating just how dependent our system is on migrant workers, but it didn’t take it a step farther to provide possible solutions to the illegal immigration issue. It is obviously a very complex topic with no easy answer, but we’ve got to figure out something….
I fell asleep almost immediately after class and got up early Tuesday to go to shadow at Toto, a public hospital. Matt and I arrived a little late, since the main route to Toto was blocked by political demonstrations and the bus had to turn around and take an alternate route. When we arrived, I checked in at OB Gyn and there were no impending births, so we went over to try and shadow in surgery. The staff told us we needed masks but nobody seemed to know where to get those masks.. some even told us we were supposed to bring out own masks! Finally after about 30 minutes of relentless asking we got a pair of masks and hair nets and headed into catch the end of a colycystectomy. The OR rooms were wayyy more basic than I expected, and INCREDIBLY warm. It felt like a sauna in there! I already found myself feeling a little strange, and took off my undershirt. When I came back my stomach was feeling pretty weird, so I left again to get some air. When I came back Matt had scrubbed in on a surgery and the woman was already asleep. WARNING- if you don’t want to read about bowel movements or details of surgery, skip to the next paragraph!!!! They spent a few minutes getting the woman prepped and cleaned. She had a large belly so I assumed this was going to be a cessarian section ( c section) birth. The surgeon, Dr. Medina, began cutting through her abdomen. Slowly but surely something started to poke out of the whole. Suddenly, a huge mass slid out of the cut. I assumed it was a fetus, but quickly realized I was completely wrong- this surgery was for volvulus, a life threatening condition where intestines twist inside the body, cutting off the blood supply, leading to a huge, overly-inflated black, dead piece of intestine. As soon as the smell hit my nose I knew it was DEFINITELY not a baby.. and I was hit with a pang of extreme nausea that sent me running for the door. Luckily I made it to the bathroom.. but instead of throwing up, I ended up getting sick… from the other end (please don’t make me explain!!) The worst part was there was no toilet paper in the bathroom (which there NEVER IS in Guatemala!) so I had to tear pages out of my notebook to use as toilet paper! It was awful… I went back into the surgery a few minutes later, still feeling pretty awful. Back in the OR room I was still feeling nauseous, weak, and uncomfortably warm. During the next 2 hours, I had to periodically leave the OR every 20 minutes or so, either to rest or to get sick in the bathroom again.. finally around 11 AM I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, and, despite being obviously sick, I decided to brave the 1 hour chicken bus ride to get home… After a miserable ride, I stumbled in to my house feeling like I had been hit by a car. In a matter of hours, it felt as if all the energy had been stripped of my body. I suddenly felt as if I hadn’t slept in days, and my entire body ached. I crawled into bed to try to take a nap, and when my alarm went off for lunch I had absolutely no appetite and kept sleeping. I woke up about an hour later feeling absolutely awful. My entire body was aching- my back, my arms nad legs, even my SKIN was aching. I felt feverish and delirious, so I decided to call my teacher to let her know I was sick and was going to sleep instead of going to class.
I slept straight from 2 PM till about 6 PM, and woke up feeling even worse (which I didn’t even know was possible). I can’t even describe it- I was the sickest I’ve felt in a long time. Despite being wrapped up in TONS of blankets, I was shivering cold. I was too weak to get out of bed so I didn’t have a chance to ask my senora for a thermometer, but I’m sure I had a pretty high fever. After a few restless hours unable to sleep from the pain, I finally mustered up enough strength to head down stairs and eat a banana and a small piece of bread. It was hard to keep down, but I knew I needed food.. and forced myself to drink as much water as I could. I came back upstairs and tried desperately to fall asleep. I couldn’t find a single position that was comfortable, and tossed nad turned for a few hours before falling asleep..
I woke up Wednesday morning feeling surprisingly better. Since my symptoms started with my urgent trip to the bathroom in Toto, I decided to do a stool sample. While I waited for the results I went to google (you’d think I would have learned my lesson from the bedbugs.. but no). I looked for what could possibly explain my strange attack of diarrhea, fever, and debilitating pain. Or more importantly, what could explain how it all disappeared in the course of one night. I found tons of websites that detailed the symptoms of malaria- a classicly cyclical disease where people undergo periods of intense fever with periods of health in between. Being the major hypochondriac that I am, I spent the next 3 hours panicking about having malaria. Thank goodness, however, Margarita returned from her work at the lab with my results, and sure enough, I had a parasite- an amoeba called Antamoeba Butschilli. While most people would probably be horrified at the idea of an organism living in their intestine, I was actually relieved by the news- at least I knew what it was, and how to treat it. Margarita told me should could even get me the correct pills for free at work. I was feeling a lot better, and decided to go back to school in the afternoon, but spent the morning resting instead of going to my volunteer site. By midday exhaustion and slight nausea had set back in, but I struggled through my class with Leti. After class we had a mandatory conference with a speaker named Eduardo. Eduardo is the wife of Cindy, one of Gladys daughters (Gladys owns the school I attend). Eduardo went to the US two times in the past 10 years to work as a farm worker to send money home to his family. Both times he did so legally with a work visa, but hearing about his experiences was eye-opening. He talked of horrendous work conditions, long days with barely minimum wage pay, and a complete lack of resources for immigrants. At the second farm he worked at, they worked a 14 hour nightshift 7 days a week! They were given only basic housing, and often weren’t even given gloves to work in the fields, which used tons of pesticides nad chemicals. He still seemed pleased with the amount of money he was able to make in these brief periods, but described the work as back-breaking. We asked him if he would ever consider moving his family to the United States- he answered that if he could live as we do, of course he would. But, he said, if he had to live as the latino immigrants do, he would rather stay in Guatemala. All in all the conference was very interesting, but unfortunately my health started failing me again and I left feeling awful. Margarita gave me my pills to start when I got home, and I fell asleep right after taking them.
Thursday morning I slept in a bit before heading out to ICA clinic. A new medical student took over since I had been there, and his name is Mariano. He was very nice and made a point to include me during the appointments, showing me what he was listening for and what everything meant. In some of the downtime we had, I decided to switch my role from volunteer to patient and got some medical advice from him. Sometime Wednesday I realized I had somehow torn off 95% of my toenail on my baby toe on my left foot. Leti lectured me about how dangerous it is to lose a toenail here (you could get fungus, tetanus, etc etc) so I was anxious to have him take a look. He said everything looked fine. Since Tuesday, in addition to all these other issues I had been having, I had noticed a little bit of blood in my urine as well… which was, to say the least, a little unsettling. I explained to him the course of my illness, gave him my stool sample results, and told him about the medication I had been taking. Well, turns out the pills Margarita gave me were the right pills, but not nearly enough. She gave me 3 pills of Metronidazole, with instructions to take 1 pill every 8 hours for 1 day. He insisted that this medication needed to be taken at LEAST one week… as much as I didn’t want to offend Margarita, I decided it was probably a good idea to make SURE I knocked out all the parasites… Mariano gave me some free medication from the clinic- 4 pills of a very strong anti-amoeba medication (forgot the name). He told me that most Guatemalans take all 4 pills at once.. but that since it is so strong, and I have the weak stomach of an “extranjera” (foreigner), it would be better to break up the 4 pills into 2 doses 12 hours apart. He also suggested I get a urine sample and culture to make sure I wasn’t working on a UTI or anything… Despite feeling pretty miserable, I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that my body seemed to be literally falling apart! First parasites, then a lost toe nail, now a possible UTI? What next??? Hahaha…
After clinic, I had a mild lunch of soup with my family and struggled through another 4 hours of Spanish classes with Leti. She is a wonderful teacher, but with my lack of energy and overall feeling sick, I wasn’t my usual focused self. After class I had a light dinner with my family and took my first round of the meds I got at the clinic. At first I felt fine, but a disturbing nausea soon began to take hold. Leti warned me that this medication was EXTREMELY strong and some people described its effects as being even worse than the parasites themselves. After class I walked with Eduardo, one of the other teachers at the school, to his brother’s shoe workshop. His brother makes custom leather shoes, and, according to Eduardo, can make me a pair of custom cowboy boots for a great price. The shoe workshop turned out to be in Eduardo’s house, and his brother, Mario, had a few samples for me to check out. They were all very nice, but I especially liked one pair that had snake-skin styling around the toes and top of the foot and embroidered suede for the part around the calve. The sample was black and white, but I wanted to see what options he had for browns. The shoe was a size 39 (the biggest he had!) and it was still too small for me… we decided to set up a follow up appointment for Friday where he would bring more samples of other brown leathers for me to choose from, and a few larger sized samples.
After eating dinner and taking my first dose of my new meds, I went to salsa class. Despite feeling pretty awful, and ended up actually having a lot of fun. We pretty much have to start from square 1 every week, but she always makes sure to teach us a few exciting new moves. I’m gonna try to bring my camera next time so I can capture some of the comic genius of my dancing on video… I didn’t kill anyone with spins today, but we tried a small lift and I got a little overzealous and jumped into it, almost knocking Mike over. It was pretty fun. By the time I got home though, I felt even worse from the meds. I knew my honeymoon period with Guatemala couldn’t last all 6 weeks… but these past couple days have been pretty rough. Hopefully tomorrow will be better! I still love you Guatemala, even if you give me parasites… paraiso con parasites! (paradise with parasites!) 

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