Sick

Part I: Fever Dreams

The first two days I sleep almost all the time. I dream a lot - deep, heavy, impersonal dreams. All of them are European in theme and all of them are vaguely unsettling in some way I can’t put my finger on.

In one it’s the late fifties/early sixties in some incredibly clean, boring Nordic city. My job is to be to the little girls voice in a series of car commercials - the fathers says something and I answer. But it’s not a little girl voice, it’s my voice and no one seems to notice. And the guy that plays the father - a jowly, heavy browed man, looks at me too seriously, like I am his daughter. The car commercials are in some language I don’t understand and I sit around a big microphone in a studio. I always feel uncomfortable, out of sorts.

In another one I am in Spain but not the pretty, picturesque parts of Spain. I am living in a crappy apartment complex in some suburb with a bunch of other traveler type people. No one has ever bothered to decorate, it has ugly carpeting. It’s time for me to leave and the bus is coming to take me to the airport but I haven’t packed. I don’t particularly like the place, don’t have any particular attachments to the people living there but the thought of packing seems overwhelming - I have a whole room full of stuff plus stuff in the bathroom. The bus pulls up out front and I am still staring at all of it. I keep staring at it as the bus honks, pulls away, leaves me there.

Every now and then I feel a small, cold hand on my ankle or forehead - one of my female roommates checking to see if my fever is going down at all or maybe I’m making some noise or something, I don’t know. My skin is so hot that I feel anything, any change of temperature on it will wake me up, stop the dreams. A breeze through my window, the kicking aside of a sheet, it all feels like ice on my skin. I press my lips together and they feel like they’re burning.

I don’t remember if I dreamt or not that first twenty four hours that I slept through, before they took me to the hospital. If I do I don’t remember them. But I was hotter still then.

Part II: How It Happened

And I’m skipping over the emotional parts of this story. It’s not the point.

I had been feeling a little warm, a little overtired for a few days. I wrote it off to not enough sleep, some emotion, a bit of a sunburn, the crazy heat that comes before the rainy season. It had rained the night before - it hasn’t since - and in the car on the ride back from Managua I fall asleep. I wake up when I get back to my house, pay the driver, go inside and lie down fully clothed on the bed and fall asleep. It is Sunday, around 11.30 in the morning.

When I wake up I am on fire, soaked with sweat, still in the same position. I look at my cell phone. It is Monday morning. Nothing seems clear, I feel like I’m drunk, in a fog but I also realize I am in trouble. I call around to try find my travelers insurance. I call my landlady to see if it ever showed up at her house. It hasn’t. I think I fall back asleep. This whole first day is a fever dream in and of itself. I’m sure I’m getting things out of order, out of sorts just in trying to retell it.

My landlady shows up with a thermometer. Apparently I look like hell. All I want is some water. She takes my temperature. It’s metric and when she translates it comes back at almost 105. Donna is coming with the truck, she tells me, we’re taking you to the hospital.

I feel terrible about this. Donna just got back into town Saturday night and I don’t want to be a hassle to anyone. You need, she tells me, to go. You’re really sick. Nothing seems very clear. I have trouble staying on my feet. Donna comes and we go to the hospital. It’s the free one. All open air except for the exam and hospital rooms. I find a bench in the shade and fall back asleep.
After a while they put me in a room, put me on fluids, take a bunch of samples. It’s a small room with three other beds, all full, bloodstains on the floor, rubber gloves in the corners. I am put in a chair with my IV. Please go, I beg Donna. I’ll call you when I know something. I watch the bag drain, try to sleep. I think the woman in the bed next to me is dying. People keep trying to talk to me in Spanish but I’m not lucid enough to understand it.

Eventually they move me to a bed. You’re almost done, they tell me. I call Donna. She comes back. While she is on the way they ask me something and don’t like the answer. They hook me up to another bag. When she gets here they tell I need the other bag, that I might not be leaving. I tell Donna I won’t stay here. There’s no fans or air conditioning, most of the beds don’t have sheets. My chills are horrible and I’m shivering. I keep asking for another sheet to use as a blanket. When they finally give me one it has dried blood on it. Whatever is in the bag is taking forever to go in and the needle hurts badly.

I know the restaurant has to open tonight and I tell Donna to leave again, I’ll call when the bag is done. She tells me she’ll send Lilly for me. I fall asleep again for a few hours and when I wake up the level in the bag hasn’t gone down at all.

I’ve had enough. I call Donna. Lilly is on her way. When she gets here we go over exit instructions, a handful of prescriptions. Your roommates are waiting to take care of you, Lilly tells me.

When I get home I immediately go to bed. Allen goes for my prescriptions. One of female roommates, a woman I barely knew who just moved in three days ago, notices the bag is leaking. John is out of town but she met one of his friends, a nurse. She calls the nurse who calls a doctor who shows up in fifteen minutes.

I like the doctora immediately. She turns up on a motorcycle, in her late twenties with a sweet smile, wearing heels. She looks at the bag. Your blood is congealed in it. That’s why nothing is moving, that’s why it hurts.

She and another roommate go to the farmacia on her moto. She comes back with some shots, other pills, the central American version of pedialyte. She uses the IV line to inject the drugs that were mixed in with the fluids and then disconnects the whole mess. She also gives me an intramuscular shot - a horrific, burning pain. She smiles sympathetically when my eyes water, when I whimper as the needle comes out.

For the next few days she comes over to do my injections, check on me. Yesterday she tells me my face has changed. Yesterday you looked like you were dead, she tells me, today your face, you look like you’re alive. As I take my injections she pats my back. You will be okay. Your fever has broken.

Part III: Cabin Fever/The Incredible Kindness of Near Strangers.

With the fever mostly broken and my lucidity restored I am bored, restless. Everyone looks out for me. Allen makes me rice. Mae picks me up things - water, more pedialyte, whatever. Rita checks on me, chides me when I talk on the phone too much, exert myself too much. While I’ve lived with Allen for months I barely know Mae or Rita. I am humbled by their kindness, their willingness to take care of me. The sickness has made me forget my mediocre Spanish and Mae and Rita prefer Spanish. Both them and the doctora are patient with my inability to speak anything but English. And I’m humbled by Allen’s concern, his constant assertions that I try to eat something.

Even still the stronger I feel the more being housebound wears on me. I read too much, squandering my few books. I spend too much time in my head. I watch BBC. I watch CSI. I spend too much time on the internet which has just gotten connected. Not being able to do anything for myself makes me insane.

Yesterday I go to the Pulperia for the first time. Rita walks over with me. I have never been so happy to buy orange juice in my life. I haven’t been out of the house since the hospital and the streets are so quiet - almost American. There’s been a big transit strike going on and I didn’t realize how silent the roads are without the million taxis, the few lorries, the odd bus or two. There’s just the odd private car and moto. The end of the dry season heat is overbearing and people are inside. It’s weird.

I walk back to the house - all 50 yards - by myself.

Today I go out by myself for the first time. There’s about twenty cabs operating legally in the city and I take one to the Mercado, go to the farmacia for myself, run some errands, make a few calls. After an hour and a half I’m ready to be back home - it’s hot, I’m tired - but it still feels good.

Now two hours I feel restless again. I take my meds, finish this, do some cleaning, contemplate a trip to the pulperia. I am bored out of my skull. Which is probably a good sign.

I am gearing back up. Tomorrow I’ll go to the clinic for a little bit, mostly to see the dogs and have a sandwich with a friend. By mid next week I should be back up to full speed.

*** A few notes: so what did happen to me? Tropical disease? Dirty third world country? No. Kidney infection. Same kind I’ve gotten in the states before. This one just got a little more out of hand because I was an idiot and didn’t take care of myself. Nicaragua is not going to make you sick. Just don’t be an ass and take care of yourself.

And will I get hepatitis from the hospital? No. My friends were there and I was lucid enough to know they were using a fresh needle they opened in front of me, a brand new bag of fluids. Yes, they need a maid but no, where it needed to be sterile it was. And my doctora is incredibly sterile - a fresh needle for every butt-shot. The Nicaraguan predilection for prescribing everything be administered via intramuscular shot, right in the cheek is a blog entry in and of itself. They never do that in the states. Here I was getting a bunch of them a day before I graduated down to just pills. And let me tell you people, they hurt like nothing you can imagine.

Particularly when, as my friend Katherine who has just been through who has just been through her own butt-shot odyssey notes, you have no ass.

And I’m very good about mentioning my roommates and Lilly and Donna helping me but it would be a sin to not mention David, my father, Pete, Karen, Kristen and my friends in Granada who offered anything at all, worried over me, sent me everything and kept me laughing, dealt with travel insurance nightmares and let me cry it out at times, even not so lucid times. Thank you. I love you.

And on she goes. ***