Montezuma’s Revenge

Well, I finally got bitten by a tummy bug. But that makes it sound much nicer than it really was. Strangely, the warning signs cam on a week earlier, with a strange gag reflex just while walking down the street. “That’s odd, I thought” but nothing more. It happened again a few days later, but equally nothing more followed. And if I think back, I noticed a slight soreness in my throat.

Then during a yoga class, my neck started aching, and gradually throughout that day my whole body started aching like I had flu or something. That night came sweats and chills, and by the morning I was also having attacks of diarrhea.

Hoping it was just a 24 hour bug, I went to the pharmacy and explained my symptoms. The girl looked concerned and suggested it would be an infection, for which I should visit a hospital to get a prescription for antibiotics. But at the time the symptoms had calmed to just aching and a grand headache, so she dispensed some strong dosages of paracetemol and ibuprofen.

The drugs kicked in and I was happily distracted with extracting my van after parking too close to edge of a dirt birm, and slipped over the edge. But that’s another story…
The next day, medicated and preoccupied with bits and pieces, I was fine, but again that night, with the drugs wearing off, it started all over again.

By 4 in the morning I’d had enough and drove to the Portimao emergency room for help. They were very helpful, and although the doctor didn’t speak English, the receptionist and nurse did, and I managed to get the idea across. They were thorough – blood and urine tests, and even an x-ray, then left me on a saline drip for a couple of hours before declaring there was no sign of infection, and that it must have been something I ate or drank.

So I walked away with a prescription for amoxicillin, after paying a very reasonable (but for my current financial status, expensive) bill of 125 euros. This was due to my lack of residency or European insurance card, which would have made it almost free, I understand.

I filled the prescription and checked into the local youth hostel. Other than struggling off my sick bed to do my laundry, I spent the majority of the day in bed or on the can!
But when you have a bad day, it just seems to invite incidents to compound upon each other. In this case (and I’ll blame being a bit drug-addled), I locked the keys in the car. Great. But the hostel provided a length of wire that they used to repair their chain-link fence. Low and behold, I had the lock popped open in just 10 seconds! Well, not bad – and now I have a ‘spare key’
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By day’s end, the drugs and sleep had balanced me out enough that I was available when my students called saying there were kites in the air. We went out and had a great couple of hours of them getting drug around through the sand and water in their first kite-flying experience! Finally a bright spot to my day. And just enough activity to wear me out so I slept through the night (other than the frequent runs to the bathroom).

The next day, things improved. I stayed awake all day, mostly working on repairing the school kites I’d been given. But I was still running to the toilet hourly. At the end of the day, I took my 2 students out for lessons and the fun and activity distracted me enough to make it through 3 hours in a wetsuit without incident. Plus my head felt clearer, although I was still on painkillers.

Dawn the next day of good solid sleep, and although not perfect, I could definitely feel the old self reemerging. Now I’m just sweating honestly, from the heat of the day. Highs are in the mid-30s.

I could not believe the intensity of this infliction! Without the aide of modern medicine, I would have been completely incapacitated by this simple germ. (The daily temps in the 30s didn’t help at all.) I can’t know where I picked it up, especially if the gag reflexes and sore throat were actually precursors. I do believe the yoga activity freed it up from its latent state – that is one of the purposes of yoga: to purge the system of embedded toxins.