illness has a way of searing memories into your brain, the pain and suffering of being sick making those moments unforgettable, no matter how much you might prefer otherwise.
it also has a way of being intertwined with travel, a curious and unwelcome extra piece of luggage that seems to always inevitably get tucked in at the most inconvenient of times.
like the time Katie and I landed in the darkness of night in La Paz, Bolivia, scared and nervous and thinking WHAT THE HECK have we just gotten ourselves into (or was what just me?) and we made our way to our tiny hostel room for the night and then promptly...didn't sleep a wink.
Altitude sickness struck majorly in those first hours in Bolivia. Swiftly and stealthily the country greeted me with the need to throw up, to pass out (not once, but twice) and to lay in bed really doubting our decision to embark upon that particular adventure. I distinctly remember laying in that hostel bed, nauseous and woozy, listening to Katie try to eat a granola bar and thinking, "Oh dear goodness this is not going to end well."
Or the time when, two months after that initial visit to La Paz, we took a brief trip to Copacabana and I once again was struck down by the altitude sickness gods. As we wandered the little streets of the town and my head pounded, we eventually sat down in a tiny little cafe for dinner. I was so nauseous and so convinced I was going to DIE that I couldn't even bring myself to eat more than one spoonful of the chicken soup that the restaurant owner kept swearing was the best chicken soup in town. For all I know, it probably was. But I felt so voraciously ill at that moment that there wasn't a chance in the world that any kind of soup was making it down my throat.
Perhaps even worse was our return from Bolivia, which found both Katie and I sick out of our minds. We were sick before we even got on the plane and the long flight didn't do either of us any favors. I was so desperate that by the time we got off the plane in Miami I was the girl ripping open her suitcase in the middle of baggage claim, hastily gulping down pills as I sat on the floor of the terminal. Not at all suspicious behavior, right? Sickness while traveling makes all things justifiable, people. Including the fact that about 10 hours after the pill gulping I may or may not have burst into tears while pleading my case to a ticket agent.
There has also been a incident of food poisoning in Cambodia that left me convinced that I am a pretty poor house guest when my stomach is spasming in all sorts of horribly painful ways.
Or the time when my allergies got so bad last spring that I literally couldn't see out of my eyes. I spent two days miserable in bed, convinced something was seriously wrong with my eyesight and imagining all kinds of WebMD fueled theories about impending blindness when in fact all it was a serious allergic reaction to living in the same country as the Gobi Desert (thanks dust allergies!)
And then there has been the past two days...which started with me taking a nap in the middle of the day while out in the countryside (sign #1), continued with me being unable to eat anything for dinner that night (sign #2), and ended in a night of throwing up every hour.
there's just something about sickness that makes you bemoan being able to feel.
I wish there were a way to claim that I handle being ill with grace and dignity, but let's be real. It makes all of us into five-year-olds who just want to cry and be able to eat solid food again.
and now that I'm on the mend again, it has me foolishly hoping it won't come again for a long, long time.
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