A Crappy Situation

First of all, before I start off, let me apologize for the lack of posts this past week. Things here are a bit hectic, and while that's not necessarily an excuse, I didn't really feel like spending all of my first week writing in an internet café. That said, here goes.

Travelling has never been that easy on me, or rather, on my stomach. When I was little I'd pop a ton of Dramamine to avoid inevitable backseat nausea, but even that wouldn't help most times, especially since I'd end up taking the pills right before jumping out of the car and vomiting on the side of the road. Ask my parents, or better yet, my brother, who often avoided all contact as I tilted to and fro on the seat next to him.

In recent years, I've met a new foe, one that has nothing to do with motion sickness: traveler's diarrhea. I first had this strange illness in Cuba, just days after spending time in Mexico. Not a good time for the old gastrointestinal tract. Let's just put it this way: I spent more time hunched over a toilet, feeling like a quivering corpse, then I spent reading socialist propaganda. And in Cuba, that's damn near impossible.

A subsequent trip to Venezuela reinforced my worries that my stomach wasn't cut out for travelling. I became Pobre Ian to my travel companions, and my bowels became an open book. Everyone we were with knew I had a problem, and everyone seemed to have a solution. Don't drink ice. I didn´t. Don't eat vegetables that could've been washed in the water. Didn't do that, either. Wash your hands after you, well, you know. No problem there. Unfortunately, the results remained the same, and the toilet became my most-hated but only refuge.

But things changed upon arriving in Caracas last week. Brooke and I brought the power of science and knowledge and organic treatments. We were ready to stave off Moctezuma's revenge, ready to fight it to the death. And we did, at least initially. (In fact, Brooke still is.) But eventually I succumbed on the fourth day, unable to keep the bacteria or the nerves or whatever out of my tummy. So, despite the absurd amount of money we spent on Pepto and grapefruit seed extract and the rest, I got the runs anyway. Big surprise. I probably should've just bought a specimen of giardia or plague from the CDC and gotten it over with before we left.

Add in a decent fever with the 20-minutes-between-squatting routine and you have a bad couple of days. Thanks to Brooke and her dilligent nurse work, I recovered a bit, moving from a water slide to a sand trap in two days. But I still worry.

(Note: if you never want me to write about my bowels again, please, please give me some suggestions. Otherwise, this is going to be one shitty Web site.)