Beth Update 5

hola todos! hello everyone!
feliz dia de los padres atrasado! happy late father´s day!

escribi este mensaje ayer, pero la computadora mala lo comioi wrote this message yesterday, but the bad computer ate it

lo siento mucho! i´m so sorry!

ojala que todos esten bien y que hayan disfrutado el dia de los padresi hope that all are well and that you all have enjoyed father´s day

bueno, no voy a escribir muchas cosas interesantes, pero tengo una historiade mi visita a la sala de emergencia el viernes

well, i am not going to write a lot of interesting things, but i have astory about my visit to the emergency room on friday

primero, hay que decir, ESTOY BIEN! no te preocupes!first, i have to say, I AM FINE! don´t you worry!

es muy dificil escribir en los dos idiomas, y solo voy a escribir en inglesahora, lo siento. espero que tus traductores esten funcionando bien!it is very difficult to write in both languages and i am only going to writein ingles now, i´m sorry. i hope that your translators are working well!

here we go, all during the week i was feeling funny. i was up a few nightsmaking exciting trips to the wonderful smelling latrine, but nothing tooserious. i always felt better in the morning. on wednesday i was not feelingtoo well, i had a headache and my stomach felt hungry even after i ate. butafter a few taking a few aspirin i was feeling good. thursday i was feelingjust fine. i only felt a little funny after i ate and drank a lot. thursdayevening we had a cooking class and i learned to make a bunch of quinoasalads and home made peanut butter. the food was so good ,and allvegetarian. i thought all of the good food would make my stomach feelbetter, i think i was wrong. then friday came along...

friday morning i woke up with a funny feeling in my stomach. i felt like ihad not eaten in days and there was a hole right through my belly. i atesome bread and drank some warm chocolate milk, which made me feel better. myhead felt a little bit funny, but i made it through my spanish class whichwas held at my house. for lunch doña willma served my professor and i saladand fried swiss chard. it was not anything unusual, but i felt sick to mystomach right after eating. so i took some pepto bismol and started to feelbetter.

friday afternoon we had a presentation on nutrition at the training center.it was going pretty well but then the lady started talking about oldbolivian remedies for sickness, such as bathing children in urine to lowertheir fevers. i started to come down with a case of nausea. i thought it wasjust because the lady was grossing me out, so i went and got some water todrink. the water just made my stomach feel even worse, but i made it throughher lecture.

after the lecture we had another round of cooking classes. we were learninghow to make squash bread, dried fruit in a special oven, and home made jellyand preserves. i was in the group in charge of making the papaya andpineapple jelly. so i was just standing there chopping up the papaya, whenthe smell of the papaya started to make me nauseous. i tried to continue,but then the papaya started to look like raw meat to me, which reallygrossed me out. the waves of nausea came over me and i had to leave thekitchen.

once i was sitting outside i felt better for a little while. i talked tosome of my friends and they brought me some rolaids to make my stomach feelbetter. then after about 15 mintues, i started to have intense pains in mystomach. my entire stomach felt like it was trying to jump out of my mouth,but i never did actually throw up. the pains got worse and i started havingreally loud rumbling noises in my stomach. it felt so strange. my friend puther hand on my stomach and said she could feel everything moving around.

i decided to go lay down in the training lounge on the couch. it felt niceto lay down, but after awhile i ended up curling up in the fetal positionbecause i could not handle the waves of pain that were coming over me. ifelt like i really needed to vomit, but i could not. after i layed there forawhile i started to get scared, and therefore started to cry. some of myfriends came in and found me and told the technical coordinator that sheneeded to call the peace corps doctor for me. she she called and i talked tothe doctor. she didn`t know what was wrong me with so she said i needed toget to the clinic as soon as possible.

so my whole training class piled into the peace corps bus and my friendserin and tristan helped me get on to the bus. i curled up again in the fetalposition on one of the benches and could not move. i was pretty scared,because i knew i must be pretty sick. so of course i was crying the wholetime and my awesome friends were singing me little children´s songs andrubbing my back. i do not know what i would have done if i had not beenaround so many great people. the ride to the clinic was sort of long andbumpy, which did not help my stomach at all. erin and tristan agreed to staywith me at the clinic, which made me very happy. i did not want to be therealone.

by the time we made it to the clinic, my entire right leg was asleep frombeing curled up. when i tried to get off the bus i could not walk, andtristan, being the great guy that he is, pretty much had to carry me off thebus. i am sure it looked pretty bad to everyone on the bus, because i don`tthink they knew my leg was asleep. it just looked like i was too weak towalk.

since i had been crying so much, i had given myself a really bad headache, amigraine in fact. so i could not bear to look at all the bright lights. ispent my entire time in the emergency room with my eyes shut tight and mysweatshirt over my face. i do not even know what the place looked like orwhat any of the doctors and nurses looked like. it was pretty scary

immediately when i got there they began to poke at me and ask me questions.i impressed myself and was actually able to answer all of their questions inspanish, i guess my spanish is good when i am in pain and under stress. theytook my temperature, which i was completely unaware of at the time. tristanand erin had to tell me to hold still because there was a thermometer undermy arm. all of the poking and proding hurt my stomach, and they could notdetermine what was wrong with me. so they took me in for an ultrasound. ihad never had one before, and i wish i had been coherent enough to check outmy organs on the computer screen. erin got to be in the room and assures methat they are all there and look good haha. they determined that myappendix, or however you spell it, was not going to burst. that made mequite happy because i did not want to have surgery in the middle of thenight in a third world country hospital.

of course they still had no idea what was going on inside of me. apparentlyi told the nurse at one point, in spanish, that there was an alien inside ofme that was trying to escape from my belly button. it must have been prettyfunny, but i was so out of it that i do not remember what i said.

they guessed that i had salmonella, but i do not know how accurate of adiagnosis that is. they wanted to put an IV in me, but i refused. my intensefear of needles made me strongly oppose the idea, plus they had no reason tobelieve i was dehydrated. i was not throwing up, and it was not coming outthe other end either. and if i took the IV, they were going to make me staythe night. and i really did not want to spend the night there.

for the pain i was given 2 options. they told me i could get a reallypainful pain medication shot in my arm or i could get a painless injectionof pain medication right into my vein that would be quick. of course i chosethe quick and painless option. come to find out, it was neither quick orpainless.

first the nurse tied my arm really tight to find the vein. then she jabbedwhat felt like an 8 foot needle about 8 inches up my vein. it hurt more thanthe pain in my stomach. then she said it was giong to burn a little. wellshe was wrong, it burned A LOT! i laid there waiting to feel her take theneedle out, and i asked her if she was done yet. she said she had to do itslowly...so much for a quick and painless procedure. they she told me i wasgoing to feel hot. she was wrong again...i was ON FIRE! my whole body feltlike it was burning up and the heat came over me in waves. i was cryingthroughout the whole ordeal. at one point i felt like i was naked, as if theheat had burned my clothes off. at that point they let tristan and erin backin the room. and i think i asked them if i was wearing clothes, which wasalso probably pretty funny for them haha. when the shot was over the meannurse didn`t even put a band-aid on my arm. so i had to lay there with myarm bent until the blood stopped oozing out.

thankfully, after about 10 mintues, i felt much better. the pain was gonefrom my head and from my stomach. the only thing that hurt was my arm wherethe mean nurse stabbed me with the needle.

so then, they wrote me up some prescriptions and sent me on my way. i wasgiven 3 pain killer pills, not sure what they are really. and they alsoprescribed a pill i have to take 30 minutes before i eat to protect mystomach, which is probably quite irritated and some antibiotics. i am notsure what the antibiotic is called, it starts with cipro something. in thepeace corps we call this antibiotic the "cipro bomb", because it pretty muchkills everything in your system that could possibly be there. the only badthing is that it destroys the good bacteria in your system as well as thebad, which means that you are more likely to get sick right after you stoptaking the pills before your system has had a chance to recover. i will makesure to take good care of myself though. i have 1 more pill left.

anyways, so they sent me home with my medications in a taxi with erin andtristan. we had to pay 25 bolivianos to get back to the host communities. iwas so completely out of it that i did not know where i was going or how toget back. thankfully erin and tristan were able to guide the taxi driver tomy house. they are truly my heros, i do not know what i would have donewithout them.

erin and tristan got me out of the taxi and made sure i got into my house,and then they left. doña willma was very worried and she thought that it wassomething she had cooked that had made me sick. i told her that there is noway of knowing and to not worry, the peace corps will give her anothergringo to look after. after about 20 mintues, the taxi driver showed up atthe door again. erin had left her bag in the back seat and he kindly came toreturn it. i was shocked that he came back, and that nothing was missingfrom the bag. but of course i had to pay him 10 bolivianos for the extratrip he made. so at least we had some luck that night, which made me feelbetter.

after that i just went to bed, and after the pain medication wore off...icould not sleep. i ate some pepto-bismol to stop the nausea, but stilldidn´t really sleep. the rest of the weekend was better, i started to feelless pain and less nauseous. as of know i only feel sick to my stomach wheni eat, so whatever i had really messed up my digestive tract. but noworries, i am getting better and everyone here is taking good care of me. iwill be just fine. i am on good medications and a strict bland diet, so ishould feel better soon.

thanks for listening to my story. i hope you enjoyed it, some parts wereactually kind of funny now that i look back.

this week i will be leaving wednesday to travel for our technical week,which is actually more like 11 days. we leave early on thursday morning anddon`t return until the following saturday. we are going to the department ofsanta cruz to visit a few sites. we will be putting on a health fair,nutrition workshop, and a teacher workshop. it should be fun and i shouldhave a lot of stories to tell about that. hopefully no one gets sick,because it is an 11 hour bus trip...on a bus with no bathroom! ahhh! lol...iguess that is why they call the peace corps "the longest vacation you´llevery complain about"

the monday after i return we are having a big bbq and they will announce oursites. so get ready for that, it will be awesome to finally know where i amgoing!

i hope that you all are well, thanks for reading my babble. i love and missyou all and i send lots and lots of hugs. take care! write back when youcan!

note...mom and dad and sara...please forward to the kent´s, mrs gaydos, andanyone else that should be under the "friends" contacts

ps. if anyone knows what pain medication caused me to feel like i was onfire, let me know!

ok bye bye for now, i will write again when i return from my trip!

*all you need is love, love never fails*

paz y amor y hugs, beth in bolivia...dont worry, i am doing fine!