Caution: Explicit material. Maybe don't read this one if you easily get queasy or don't want to read about vomiting and other nasties.
In February, I got typhoid fever. The illness and recovery lasted three weeks, and all in all it was the worst sickness of my life (though I've had worse nights of terrible fevers, sore throats, and stomach bugs before). I'm one of about four people I've known at PSF who have gotten typhoid, and every one of us was vaccinated prior to traveling.
It started out with me just feeling generally tired, achy, and just plain sick. I randomly got stomach cramps, but I didn't think anything of it. I do live in Pisco after all, where volunteers reguarly get what we call "Pisco Belly," suffering from an upset stomach for days on end. I went camping on the beach in the Paracas National Park, as we often do, although I really didn't want to. That night, I felt terrible. My head pounded, my stomach cramped up, and my back was tense and achy from being bent over from the stomach pain. Luckily, a friend gave me a strong painkiller and I was able to eat dinner that night.
Coming home from Paracas, I cleaned up my camping gear and went to bed at about 5pm. The next day I explained my illness to a friend who suggested that it sounded like typhoid. I checked out my symptoms to what it said online and pretty much everything checked out: achy muscles, stomach cramps (that actually brought me to tears once or twice), fever, cough, frontal headache, exhaustion. I went in for testing that day. Testing meant going to the main plaza (Plaza de Armas), going up a narrow stairway off the street into a narrow hallway with a tiny waiting room and a door to a clinic the size of a bedroom. A nurse took my name, took blood from my arm for the typhoid test, and gave me a cup for a stool sample (to test for other parasites). The stool sample cup, no exaggeration, was the size of a condiment to-go cup you would get from a restaurant. Maybe an inch deep and 2 inches across. I'm not sure how I did it, but I got the sample without making a mess. The one thing they did not provide for me was a bathroom. I had to go to a nearby restaurant to get my sample. How nice.
I went back that afternoon for the results. I was negative for parasites, but positive for one of the types of typhoid. I'm still not sure what it means, but there were two types, "H" and "O" and I was positive for one of the two. They told me to take my results to a doctor. That was Valentine's Day, and not the happiest one I can remember having.
The next morning, I had a Spanish-speaking friend, Navin, take me to the clinic. For only 20 soles (about 7 dollars), I was able to speak to a doctor (at least I think she was a doctor). I told her what was wrong and showed her my results, and she put me on two weeks of antibiotics three times a day, with food. She asked me a few questions, like if I eat street food or, oddly, condiments?! I left slightly confused by that, but a bit relieved that I would be getting relief from my symptoms.
When I started the antibiotics, the side effects started immediately. I won't list them all, as some are quite personal, but at least I'll tell some of the interesting ones. For one, I was exhausted all the time. Walking up to my third-floor bedroom felt twice as hard and took twice as long as usual. I just laid in bed most of the day, relieved that I traveled with a laptop so I could have some entertainment. Another problem I was having is what they call "hairy tongue." My tongue did not look hairy or dark like the pictures I'd seen on the net, it just was constantly coated whitish, as if I'd gone to bed without brushing my teeth. And it tasted bad! I brushed my teeth at least three times a day, but the feeling came back so fast every time. It also affected my sense of smell. Most things smelled absolutely terrible, and this added to the nausea I felt most of the time. When I would walk downstairs in the morning to get some breakfast, I couldn't stand the smell of the scrambled eggs. I also couldn't eat the buttered rolls I normally ate for breakfast because the idea of butter turned my stomach. The only thing I really wanted to eat was chocolate! One night I bought a bunch and was eating it all, so my friend Josh had to hide it from me in my own room!
Not only did smells make me nauseous, but my system was holding in gas and making me incredibly bloated, like I'd just eaten a Thanksgiving dinner (or two). I didn't even have room for food! This didn't help the nausea at all. Most meals I couldn't eat, so I just ate a few soda crackers so that I could take the antibiotics with food, like the doc instructed. After a week of misery and two bouts of vomiting, my Spanish-speaking friend Louisa took me back to the doctor to request a change in medication. She said she could not change the medication - I had to take these ones because typhoid is a serious illness and requires strong antibiotics. She was able though, to give me some gas relief tabs that tasted really nice and relieved a bit of the bloating. I asked her if there were foods I should be avoiding, and she said I must have forgotten all she had told me! No condiments (that basically meant spicy sauces), and I should only eat certain fruits, rice, vegetables, and vegetable soup. Must have forgotten...yeah right. I can understand enough Spanish to know that she didn't mention any of this in my first visit. Either way, I did feel much better when I stuck to this diet.
Things started to get better after this visit. I was still very tired, but one weekend toward the end, I had the energy to camp in Paracas again. The group was just too awesome to miss this one! I had a great weekend and was only queasy once. I came back to PSF feeling alright. But then I made the mistake of straying from my diet. On Tuesday morning, my last day of antibiotics (only had to take a breakfast and a lunch pill!), I ate chocolate cereal with yogurt. I could barely help it at this point, I was craving chocolate so much! I've never felt such strong cravings! Along with my bloated stomach, my friends joked that I wasn't sick, just pregnant. Very funny. Anyway, for lunch that day, I had some fried stingray with rice and beans (normal Peruvian food). HUGE mistake. That afternoon my stomach started acting up as I was being jostled around in the work truck, so I went straight home and back to bed to rest. Very soon after I was up and in the bathroom, sick. I was in and out of the bathroom vomiting for an hour and a half. It was so violent, the blood vessels around my eyes broke and I had little red dots all over and under my eyelids. I also was crying out of the discomfort, so my eyes puffed up and I looked a mess. Luckily, after one of my trips to the bathroom, my friend Josh (on the right in the photo below) noticed me and ran up the stairs to the rescue. He held me for a long time, reminding me that I had no more pills to take; it was all over. Then I curled up on Karine's bottom bunk and he read random bits out of one of her books. He also did the cleaning duty I had signed up for that morning - DISHCO, which is doing the dinner dishes (one of the biggest cleaning jobs you can sign up for). I couldn't have asked for a better friend!
I couldn't eat that night, which was a shame because Mel made pizza for dinner. I went right to bed after I was done being sick, and my eyes stayed puffy into the next morning. The entire next day I was too tired to work, so I spent one last day of laying in bed. Finally, the next day, one day short of three weeks of being sick, I finally felt better. Then the next day I had three ice creams, all bought by my friend Jack (on the left in the photo), because he felt sorry that I couldn't eat ice cream for three weeks without getting nauseous. He also bought us TWO bottles of my favorite wine to share! We had this wonderful sit-down meal at PSF that night, where four of the volunteers cooked an amazing AMAZING meal and served it to us at our tables. Complete with candles and apple cobbler with homemade custard for desert. Then the DISHCO crew (dishes/disco) put on some amazing tunes and we all danced in the kitchen, probably making it more dirty than it was before! It was a riot! I got a little tipsy and ate so much food I felt like I was going to explode! It felt amazing to be able to eat and drink again, to have energy, and to be with incredibly sweet and caring friends. It was one of the best days of my life.
