A Break from the Amazon, or a Break from my Health?

After two weeks in Quito, I am back in the Amazon. I have been accepted back with open arms by my family and although I am still quite homesick and sick, I have decided to make the most of it. However, the two weeks I spent in Quito were eventful to say the least.

The first week in Quito, I spent preparing my presentation and project proposal for Wednesday, and two final assignments due on Friday, which would finish off two of my classes. I also was sick with a cold that had started Saturday while I was still in my community. Altitude automatically makes sicknesses worse so the being in Quito, compiled with the cold, caused me to become quite sick. I spent most of my time either at school or in my hotel finishing off my assignments and prepping myself for my presentation. I also found out a few days before I returned to Quito that my host-mom had got a new student so I could not go back to my house in Quito. However, unlike many of the other students who had been kicked out of their homes in Quito, I was allowed to keep the suitcases I had left there, and not be stranded with a tent, textbooks, and large amounts of clothes that I had left behind.

So being kicked out of my house, working on assignments, and being sick, it was shaping up to be an excellent week... my meeting with my program coordinator on Monday and my presentation on Wednesday went well, and I received some good advice to help guide me through the next 7 weeks of my placement. This included being more active finding out some of the answers to the questions I had posed about organic coffee production and oil resistance, as well as making an effort to be less judgemental about my preliminary conclusions as some had turned out to be wrong.

On Thursday night, while working late at the university with some friends on our assignments due the following day, we ordered in pizza. This however, turned out to be a terrible idea. When I got back to my hotel I started having sharp pains in my stomach as I tried to write a few more paragraphs on my essay. Painkillers did no good and I decided to give up and go to bed, maybe it would be better tomorrow. However, it was not better tomorrow, and the pain had moved through me to the toilet bowl. Throughout the day, this became steadily worse. I managed to finish my assignments minutes before the due date (I would not expect anything less of myself...) and went off to enjoy our new freedom from school.

However, over the next few days, I got progressively worse; so much worse that I decided to go to a hospital on Sunday. I sat around for 3 hours while they ran tests, but these tests all came back negative. I went back on Monday (after I had wished my friends goodbye as they headed to their placements), still not better, for another test, and that came back negative for parasites. I became really sick that night and vomited all over my bathroom a few times, and after much persuasion on the phone, my mom forced me to go to a different hospital on Tuesday afternoon. I was extremely weak by this point and they put me on an IV right away. They then ran a bunch of tests, gave me electrolytes, and finally when I gave them a stool sample, they determined that it was a bacterial infection, and gave me a prescription for some medication. I finally went home 7 hours later at 10pm, feeling a lot better, and crawled into bed.

Over the next few days, I lay in bed and watched movies, regaining my strength which had been zapped by the bacteria. On Friday, I determined I was well enough to go back to my community, packed up my stuff and hopped on a bus back to the Amazon. I was still pretty weak, and slept lots when I got there, but I am doing a heck of a lot better now. Cipro is a miraculous drug...