Attack of the Parasites
First of all, to anyone who is worried and found out what happened this week, I’m ok. I was in the hospital for two days for “intoxication alimentaire” (food borne parasites). Once again, I’m ok, and I’ll recount what happened.
I should probably warn you that if you don’t want to read details of bodily functions and all sorts of medical stuff, you should probably skip until the end, or not read this at all.
I think it happened when I ate a salad (Katie, I know…I know…). I was warned about eating them, and I should have not even considered the idea. The problem is, I don’t have stove currently in this apartment, the next one I’m living in has one, so I go out a lot to this one section of the medina that has a lot of restaurants. When you go out to the same four places to eat, you sort of make friends with the guys that work there. You also let your guard down a little bit, and when someone says to you that they make a very good salad, you say, sure, why not?
But as I’ve learned here, you cannot leave your guard down for even a second. Tuesday afternoon I started feeling ill over lunch, went back to the apartment and vomited twice. Having had Giardia years before when I visited South Africa, I instantly knew what the symptoms of a parasite felt like, and I knew I had to find a hospital. I managed to clean myself up, get to the taxi stand at place du Batha, and calmly told the cab driver I needed to go to a hospital. He was curious as to what was wrong with me, so I told him, and he pulled over to a pharmacy in the nouvelle ville of Fez. They gave him the address of Doctor Aloui, a specialist in digestive tract issues, and the cab driver drove me to him. I am continually amazed and dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Doctor Aloui, who is very kind, speaks very clear French, and has a picture of a stomach on his business card, asked me what was wrong, I told him. I went into another room and he used a sonogram to look at my stomach and digestive tract. After this he told me that the problem was that each time I vomited, it cleared my stomach and it was hard to tell if it was just going to pass through my system. If it happened again, I was to immediately call him to go to the hospital. Truth be told, I didn’t even make it out of building before I ran back, asked him to use the bathroom, and began to vomit again. Dr Aloui personally drove me to the Clinique Al Kawtar, where I spent the next two nights. I have been assured many times that this is the newest, best, and most expensive private hospital in all of Fes. I’ve never been hospitalized to the point where I’ve needed to spend the night, much less in a foreign country in the “trière mondiale”. However, I was in a room by myself with blue wallpaper, two couches, a TV, bathroom, and a large open window. The hospital itself looked like any modern medical facility you can imagine, but I can’t describe what the rest of it looked like. I wasn’t curious enough to go for walks with my goutte à goutte down the hallways to explore.
I can’t even begin to tell you how scared I was. I lay in bed for around a half an hour while Dr. Aloui told the staff what he thought was wrong with me. Then two infirmiers came, man and a woman, I can’t remember their names, who were very kind and took care of me that whole night. The first attempt to put the goutte à goutte (IV drip) didn’t go so well. I started vomiting uncontrollably, lightheaded, sweating profusely, and numb in the upper and lower extremities. The guy did not understand what was happening, and kept saying “J’ai fait rien!”, all the while I’m almost in tears because I’m in so much pain, hyperventilating, and panicking because I can’t remember the word for numb in French. I fumble for my English-French dictionary near my bedside, and the best word I can find for it is paralysé, which is an awful translation. So I’m explaining it as, “Où il n’y a pas de sang dans vos mains ou pieds? L’expression en anglais est que les mains ou les pieds dorment”.
“Attendez Monsieur, vous n’êtes pas français?”
“Non, Monsieur, je suis Américain, mais, excusez-moi, ce n’est pas mon problème maintenant.”
“Oh, c’est pourquoi l’accent.”
So they let me sleep for a little while, and put the IV in a little later. During the night, both of the nurses came in and chatted with me when I was up. I vomited about 7 times that night, and they were there each time holding my head up. Once or twice they would joke with me to try and perk my spirits up.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as mangé? Un Tagine? Hahaha!”
They were also curious as to what I was doing in Fez, and whether or not I could speak Arabic, which, aside from a few words in daily conversation that are mixed with the French that I speak anyway, I cannot.
Much of the time, there really wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up except air, so I’d be hanging over a bowl gasping for breath and retching as much as I can. I still don’t know what it was exactly that I had. If anyone in the medical profession knows what these symptom’s are consistent with, and when the vomit and diarrhea are both green, let me know. They had me on three drips of Flagil, I’ve taken it before, its an anti-parasite blaster, which seemed to knock the thing out by the next morning because I stopped vomiting.
Amel at the foundation called around 1 in the afternoon because they were wondering where I was, and I had to apologise because I had used all the money on my pre-paid cell phone to call my parents about insurance and where I was. Needless to say, I was up all night and had just woken up when she called. About 3 hours later, everybody at the office came and visited me, which was unbelievably nice of them. It was a little embarrassing for me because I looked terrible, and smelled pretty bad, but all of them were very sympathetic for what I was going through.
The rest of the time I stayed in bed and read a couple of stories by Fouard Louri, and watched Cyborg 2 on the TV. The stories were good, especially the one about the man who is paying attention to a girl at the other end of the bar instead of his friend’s political commentary. Angelina Jolie’s lines were not. I think my favorite was “Don’t get dead.” Thank you Hollywood, I needed some asinine and terribly written words of encouragement.
Thursday morning, one of the male nurses woke me up at 6:00 AM to ask if I could spare some money for cigarettes. I gave him 20 dirhams (2∍) and asked him not to bother me again.
At around 9, Doctor Aloui came by to say that I could go soon. I managed to get out around 10 or so, took a cab back to the apartment, showered thoroughly, and went to the office, where I was given an assignment. I worked until about 5:30, and had some soup for dinner. As I am currently typing this, it is Friday, and I am feeling much better.
Those of you who knew me in high school are probably saying to yourself, “There’s something about Adrian, Africa, and parasites that go together.” I’m thinking it myself. But while research and other projects have been set back a week, I’m back on my feet and taking 4 different kinds of drugs (pain relievers, antibiotics, anti-parasite medicine) and chasing them with Pepto-Bismol because the indigestion they cause is pretty bad as well. But I’m alive.
I should probably warn you that if you don’t want to read details of bodily functions and all sorts of medical stuff, you should probably skip until the end, or not read this at all.
I think it happened when I ate a salad (Katie, I know…I know…). I was warned about eating them, and I should have not even considered the idea. The problem is, I don’t have stove currently in this apartment, the next one I’m living in has one, so I go out a lot to this one section of the medina that has a lot of restaurants. When you go out to the same four places to eat, you sort of make friends with the guys that work there. You also let your guard down a little bit, and when someone says to you that they make a very good salad, you say, sure, why not?
But as I’ve learned here, you cannot leave your guard down for even a second. Tuesday afternoon I started feeling ill over lunch, went back to the apartment and vomited twice. Having had Giardia years before when I visited South Africa, I instantly knew what the symptoms of a parasite felt like, and I knew I had to find a hospital. I managed to clean myself up, get to the taxi stand at place du Batha, and calmly told the cab driver I needed to go to a hospital. He was curious as to what was wrong with me, so I told him, and he pulled over to a pharmacy in the nouvelle ville of Fez. They gave him the address of Doctor Aloui, a specialist in digestive tract issues, and the cab driver drove me to him. I am continually amazed and dependent on the kindness of strangers.
Doctor Aloui, who is very kind, speaks very clear French, and has a picture of a stomach on his business card, asked me what was wrong, I told him. I went into another room and he used a sonogram to look at my stomach and digestive tract. After this he told me that the problem was that each time I vomited, it cleared my stomach and it was hard to tell if it was just going to pass through my system. If it happened again, I was to immediately call him to go to the hospital. Truth be told, I didn’t even make it out of building before I ran back, asked him to use the bathroom, and began to vomit again. Dr Aloui personally drove me to the Clinique Al Kawtar, where I spent the next two nights. I have been assured many times that this is the newest, best, and most expensive private hospital in all of Fes. I’ve never been hospitalized to the point where I’ve needed to spend the night, much less in a foreign country in the “trière mondiale”. However, I was in a room by myself with blue wallpaper, two couches, a TV, bathroom, and a large open window. The hospital itself looked like any modern medical facility you can imagine, but I can’t describe what the rest of it looked like. I wasn’t curious enough to go for walks with my goutte à goutte down the hallways to explore.
I can’t even begin to tell you how scared I was. I lay in bed for around a half an hour while Dr. Aloui told the staff what he thought was wrong with me. Then two infirmiers came, man and a woman, I can’t remember their names, who were very kind and took care of me that whole night. The first attempt to put the goutte à goutte (IV drip) didn’t go so well. I started vomiting uncontrollably, lightheaded, sweating profusely, and numb in the upper and lower extremities. The guy did not understand what was happening, and kept saying “J’ai fait rien!”, all the while I’m almost in tears because I’m in so much pain, hyperventilating, and panicking because I can’t remember the word for numb in French. I fumble for my English-French dictionary near my bedside, and the best word I can find for it is paralysé, which is an awful translation. So I’m explaining it as, “Où il n’y a pas de sang dans vos mains ou pieds? L’expression en anglais est que les mains ou les pieds dorment”.
“Attendez Monsieur, vous n’êtes pas français?”
“Non, Monsieur, je suis Américain, mais, excusez-moi, ce n’est pas mon problème maintenant.”
“Oh, c’est pourquoi l’accent.”
So they let me sleep for a little while, and put the IV in a little later. During the night, both of the nurses came in and chatted with me when I was up. I vomited about 7 times that night, and they were there each time holding my head up. Once or twice they would joke with me to try and perk my spirits up.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as mangé? Un Tagine? Hahaha!”
They were also curious as to what I was doing in Fez, and whether or not I could speak Arabic, which, aside from a few words in daily conversation that are mixed with the French that I speak anyway, I cannot.
Much of the time, there really wasn’t anything in my stomach to throw up except air, so I’d be hanging over a bowl gasping for breath and retching as much as I can. I still don’t know what it was exactly that I had. If anyone in the medical profession knows what these symptom’s are consistent with, and when the vomit and diarrhea are both green, let me know. They had me on three drips of Flagil, I’ve taken it before, its an anti-parasite blaster, which seemed to knock the thing out by the next morning because I stopped vomiting.
Amel at the foundation called around 1 in the afternoon because they were wondering where I was, and I had to apologise because I had used all the money on my pre-paid cell phone to call my parents about insurance and where I was. Needless to say, I was up all night and had just woken up when she called. About 3 hours later, everybody at the office came and visited me, which was unbelievably nice of them. It was a little embarrassing for me because I looked terrible, and smelled pretty bad, but all of them were very sympathetic for what I was going through.
The rest of the time I stayed in bed and read a couple of stories by Fouard Louri, and watched Cyborg 2 on the TV. The stories were good, especially the one about the man who is paying attention to a girl at the other end of the bar instead of his friend’s political commentary. Angelina Jolie’s lines were not. I think my favorite was “Don’t get dead.” Thank you Hollywood, I needed some asinine and terribly written words of encouragement.
Thursday morning, one of the male nurses woke me up at 6:00 AM to ask if I could spare some money for cigarettes. I gave him 20 dirhams (2∍) and asked him not to bother me again.
At around 9, Doctor Aloui came by to say that I could go soon. I managed to get out around 10 or so, took a cab back to the apartment, showered thoroughly, and went to the office, where I was given an assignment. I worked until about 5:30, and had some soup for dinner. As I am currently typing this, it is Friday, and I am feeling much better.
Those of you who knew me in high school are probably saying to yourself, “There’s something about Adrian, Africa, and parasites that go together.” I’m thinking it myself. But while research and other projects have been set back a week, I’m back on my feet and taking 4 different kinds of drugs (pain relievers, antibiotics, anti-parasite medicine) and chasing them with Pepto-Bismol because the indigestion they cause is pretty bad as well. But I’m alive.
posted by Adrian's Fabulous Name Goes Here at 7:22 AM
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