Infección de Garganta

Reading: The Moral Equivalent of War by William James

So on Sunday I managed to come down with a nasty case of something that left me with a fever and some good old body aches. Normally this would not be all that worrisome, simply remedied with some self-prescribed Tylenol, water and sleep. However, we are not in normal, this is Ecuador, which means that fever and body aches could be a whole host of things, the most problematic being malaria and dengue.

Now, I personally ruled out the two worse extremes, mainly because I’m currently taking mephaquin for the malaria and I’m told that dengue feels like death itself, which my state of being could not be exaggerated to. On Monday, since I was still freezing even though it was clearly hot out, my neighbor, Marilyn, decided that we need to confirm my claims by rubbing me down from head to toe with a raw egg. The idea is that the egg will absorb whatever ailment is possessing you, so when it is cracked open in a glass of water, one can read the position of the yoke and albumen to determine what is actually wrong with the patient. My egg voodoo confirmed that I indeed had a fever, no thermometer needed.

And so I was whisked off for a blood test by a young doctor who determined that I simply had an unnamed, nondescript infection in my tonsils (my best guess is strep). Nothing that could not be remedied by some antibiotics. He was, however, quite stumped when I informed him that I am allergic to penicillin and that amoxicillin is not a better option… In typical male fashion for this country, he did not let this moment of humiliation stop him from asking me if he could friend me on facebook and to tell me that I had beautiful blue eyes while looking down my throat at my blister covered tonsils. Romantic.

Either way, I was now legitimately resigned to reading in my hammock for the next day while my infection healed. While sitting there, I was to obviously be pondering what could have caused me such a horrible affliction (really, who reads these days?)

Fortunately, my community has left me with a wonderful list of possible sources for the infección de mi garganta, as well as an equally lengthy list of things I am now banned from doing to prevent this bacterial infection from occurring again. Let me elaborate:

Coffee

1. Before I was officially diagnosed, I was sick due to the fact that my host mom uses too much oil when she cooks. This is also the reason that I have so many more pimples then when I first got here…
2. I am still not adjusted to the hot climate.
3. I got it from the “cold weather” we’ve been having lately.
4. It’s because I work out in the fields with the men.
5. It’s because I eat too much garlic.
6. It’s because I don’t eat rice.
7. It’s because Denali sleeps with me at night.
8. It’s because of all the dust from the few trucks that pass by once or twice a day.
   But the real reason why I have the Ecuadorian version of strep is because….
9. I eat too much ahí.

Even though I’ve been eating spicy foods my entire life, most of which are much spicy then the spiciest Ecuadorian ahí, it clearly is the cause of the irritation in my throat that resulted in my bacterial infection. I am glad that we have now cleared that up and I am resigning myself to an even more bland diet until the 20th of August when I start cooking for myself.

On a completely different not, but still somewhat medically related, Denali is most definitely preggers. Which is sad reminder that even if you raise your Ecuadorian cat like an American one, she’s still going to end up six months and pregnant. Besides the worries of teenage motherhood, I’m a little concerned about the fact that I got her a birth control shot about two weeks ago without realizing that she was probably already a good three weeks pregnant… Vamos a ver…

The other health related thing that has transpired is that I now have a small group of women who want to start a fitness group. They call themselves el Club de las Gorditas and approached me last week about if they could go running with me. Prior to my ahí-induced illness, we had been working out every evening. It involved a brief jog and attempted ab-exercises but even if it is lacking in physical strenuousness it is certainly a fine way to pass an hour every evening. The best part is that they have continued to go jogging every night that I have been bed ridden. Puntos positivos.

Final note: everyone should read the House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, especially if you’re hanging out in an Andean country for the next year or so. Thank you, Heather, for sending it my way.