Diarrhea

Diarrhea is defined by the Peace Corps as “Passing of frequent, liquid, watery stool more than four times a day.”

Between the two of us, we easily met the four times a day requirement before leaving for training at 7:00 a.m.

On the bus, we found out that we weren’t the only ones. About 10 other people were having distinct abdominal discomfort and had been frequenting the baño. As it is, the toilets here are a stress for many trainees. Even in the best of bathrooms here, you can’t flush toilet paper down the toilet, but rather have to throw it in the trash can next to the toilet (our home situation). In addition to this, in many cases, the toilets are not “automatic”, which means that after doing your business, you have to pour a bucket of water into the bowl which generates the flushing effect. It is supposedly difficult to get the hang of the manual toilets (neither Max nor I have used one of these, yet). Imagine living with a family that you’ve only met three days ago, speaking barely a word of their language, having explosive diarrhea, and having to ask for their help flushing your frequent poops down the toilet. That’s the situation some of the trainees were going through.

As soon as we got to the training center, about six of the trainees went to the administrative office to call the medical office in Tegucigalpa. They were told to go to the hospital in town to have a doctor look at them, which they all did. Later in the day, we heard that five of them probably just had some simple bacteria that would pass, but were given antibiotics and were sent home. However, one guy’s stool sample showed that he was infected with both salmonella and e-coli. Max was feeling better at this point, but I had been feeling worse throughout the day and figured I should also go get checked out if there was bacteria like that floating around.

Max came with me to the hospital, which is on the other side of town. It’s a very nice hospital, apparently built by some evangelical charity not too long ago. Since it was around 4:30 p.m. at this point, there wasn’t anyone in the waiting room and I was able to see a doctor almost right away. They handed me a cup, and asked for a stool sample. I had already wasted three opportunities to gather a stool sample right before coming, so I wasn’t able to provide. They said it wasn’t a problem, and that I probably had whatever the other trainees had (not the bad stuff). They gave me something for the stomach cramps, which they said was supposed to be given by IV, but instead of going through all of that trouble, a nurse just stuck me with a needle, and over a period of ten minutes or so, slowly pumped the medicine into my arm manually. I spent most of the time pondering the small blood stain on the table I was laying on. Other than that fun little experience, they gave me some antibiotics and sent me on my way.

For those of you who worry about our health, you should know that Max is feeling much better, and the antibiotics I took cleared things right up.