Mystery Meecrob
There’s nothing like starting a 90-plus degree day in Damascus with a good vomit.
Ah yes. Only two days into my magical mystery tour, I came down with a serious bacterial infection from something I ate or drank and spent the next 24 hours perched over a trash can, wondering whether I would live another day. The magic was definitely gone.
I should have known better. Most Americans who come to Syria, from what I’ve been told, come down with this kind of illness sooner or later because we aren’t accustomed to the bacteria in the water here. On both of my two previous trips, I’d spent at least one day over a bucket after stupidly eating raw vegetables washed in this water or drinking soda with ice made from the water.
This time, I even had a little booklet from the nice VNA nurse in Monterey who gave me my immunizations, telling me exactly how to avoid this sort of thing. Or at least try.
Instead, I spent my first days following Zoo around Damascus' beautiful Souk Hamidia and eating ice cream (which may or may not have contained tap water!) covered in pistachio nuts, chowing down on foul, a hot, garlicy bean stew with (drumroll) raw parsley and brushing my teeth with water from the bathroom sink.
Even without my carelessness, I’m pretty sure this would have happened sooner or later. It’s just hard to think about the cause and effect of invisible bacteria when it’s really hot outside and you are thirsty. Or when your family puts familiar, delicious Arabic food in front of you and says “Eat! Eat!”
However, this particular episode of Traveller’s Illness or whatever we want to call it went far beyond my previous experiences in terms of discomfort, disgustingness and the sheer staying power of this bacteria.
After 10 hours of vomiting – including a period of time in which I believe I was hallucinating, another spent curled up in a writhing ball, throwing cups of water on myself as I watched CNN to pretend everything was OK, and one very expensive phone call home to my mom in which we concluded that this was a ‘character building experience’ – my aunt, helpless to stop this purgathon, tried to lie down with me in bed and put her hand on my bare back. She suddenly snapped to her feet.
“Feh fever! Feh fever!” she said. “Dania, we are going to hospital. Change clothes.”
“Hospital?” I said, flailing my arms around and trying to make the sound of an ambulance.
“No. No,” she said, as she went to talk to my uncle.
Oh my. I was honestly relieved to seek professional attention. I had never been in this much pain before or lost this many fluids in such hot weather as far as I could remember. I mean, I was pretty sure I was hearing voices at one point. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the scene in “The Secret Garden” when young Mary wanders around her family’s house in India on a hot summer morning, only to find her dead parents around a table of gorgeous-looking food that had apparently killed them. This was bad. But I was also scared about what was going to happen next. Where were we going? What would they do to me? Was this illness as bad as it felt?
I had never had to see a doctor in Syria before, but a cousin and a friend who both had the misfortune to need one had had IVs put in their arms to replace their fluids. Eww. Just behind snakes, I think IVs are my worst nightmare. Eww eww eww!
There was no ambulance. The “hospital”, which was truly more a ‘Doctors on Duty’ than a hospital, was right across the street from my aunt and uncle’s apartment. My aunt and I walked slowly around the corner and right into a florescent room with cots and curtains, and a young boy who seemed to have a broken arm and was crying and wandering around. A male nurse ushered me to a cot and a young doctor in scrubs appeared.
“Am I going to die?” I joked, realizing too late that this was not a time for humor. My aunt shook her head.
The doctor smiled, but didn’t seem to register what I was saying. This was not a good sign.
Through my aunt’s translation and several theatrical gestures, I tried to explain what had been happening just across the street, all day long. He and my aunt continued to talk a little in Arabic and then he listened to my stomach with a stethoscope.
“Blood,” he seemed to conclude when he was finished.
“What!?” I asked.
Then, he said something to my aunt.
“Is there blood?” my aunt said.
“You mean when I vomit?” I said, putting my hands on my stomach, sticking my tongue out and gurgling. “No! No!”
They both seemed to process this fact. Then, the doctor listened with his stethoscope under my arms. I was becoming a bit suspicious of all this stethoscope work.
“Do you smoke?”
“No,” I said emphatically.
He moved to the other underarm.
“Are you married?”
“No,” I said, laughing. Was this 20 Questions or what?
Finally, he took my temperature.
“Thirty-eight and five,” he said. “Thiry-eight and half.”
“What is that in Fahrenheit?” I asked.
No one seemed to know. I knew that 33 C was definitely over 90 F. And I also knew, or at least I thought I remembered that 41C was something like 120F…I recalled seeing a weather report for Saudi Arabia in the summertime, seeing 41 degrees and knowing, somehow, that it was 120F. So I had a fever somewhere between 90F and 120F. This was that crucial moment we’d mindlessly prepared for in seventh grade math, converting our Celciuses and Fahrenheits, and I was bombing out!
I saw the doctor rattling an IV bag over my head. Luckily, he was only moving for the blood pressure machine. One more test and he made his final decision.
“Two injections,” he said.
“So this,” I said, making my vomit gesture again, “no more?”
“Yes,” he said.
Alright. I’d take that trade: Two shots to stop the vom. No prob.
“Can I have them here?” I said, pulling up my shirt sleeve.
“No,” he said.
“In your bottom,” my aunt explained.
Just feet away, the male nurse started loading up the shots. The needles were as long as toothpicks, distracting me enough so that I was easily coerced into dropping trou to get the shots, whatever anti-vom magical miracle they contained. How awkward to toss away your insides and reveal your outsides all in one day.
My aunt and I walked slowly back home. Her knees were aching and you can guess which part of my body hurt. I didn’t feel that much better, but I just hoped that even if the shots were salt water, even if there wasn’t some opposite version of ipecac, that the power of the placebo would work.
Unfortunately, the evening was spent much like the morning and the afternoon, huddled over the trash can, tossing and turning in a warm bed and having strange dreams about Cherie and Tony Blair. At one point, I tried to mentally think my way out of the illness. Maybe it was thinking about vomit that was making me vomit? I tried to think about something pleasant, but even dashing through a field of green grass in England turned into the memory of our family dog, Scout, eating grass after she barfed. Somewhere around 3 AM, I was resigned to spend the rest of my life barfing every hour and I finally passed out.
When I came to, Mousliyah, my aunt and uncle’s Indonesian housekeeper, who is also 27, was laying a tray on the table by my bed: Potatoes, small pieces of garlic and a can of 7UP.
My aunt soon followed, a hopeful look on her face, wanting to know how the night had gone. I had to bring back the now tired gesture.
“Blaugh! Blaugh!” I mimed towards the trash can by my bed.
A look of horror came over my aunt’s face: I had left a trash can of vomit by the side of my bed.
“Mee-crobs! Mee-crobs!” she screamed. “Mousilyah!”
Her thinking – and I have no way to prove her wrong – was that the ‘microbes’ from the vomit would get into the air in the room and reinfect me. My thinking was that I was too weak to think clearly, let alone traipse around to an unknown disposal location with a bucket of puke.
Mousilyah, to whom I will be forever indebted, grabbed the can and skittered out of the room, while I tried head off the talk about ‘meecrob’. This discussion was beginning to get bubonic on me and I just wanted to close my eyes. So I did.
I am happy to report that 10 7UPs, two potatoes, two pieces of Arabic bread, lots of plain yoghurt and several antibiotics later, the curse of the mystery meecrob seems to have come to an end. They say that once you get this first episode out of the way, you start to get used to the bacteria and usually don’t get sick again.
I’m not chancing it: I’ve adopted a new anti-meecrob policy and it hasn’t been pleasant to enact. I completely offended a lunch hostess on Sunday, refusing to eat anything but bread and yoghurt at her fancy dining table. I’ve spent the last two nights boiling water, stashing it in Perrier bottles and hiding them in refrigerator compartments, while Mousilyah watches Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic and laughs at me. Finally, I’m coming to terms with the fact that my near future does not include my most favorite meal, salad, and that I might need to consider brushing my teeth without water.
These are drastic measures for sure, but if the meecrob can fly, so will I.
Ah yes. Only two days into my magical mystery tour, I came down with a serious bacterial infection from something I ate or drank and spent the next 24 hours perched over a trash can, wondering whether I would live another day. The magic was definitely gone.
I should have known better. Most Americans who come to Syria, from what I’ve been told, come down with this kind of illness sooner or later because we aren’t accustomed to the bacteria in the water here. On both of my two previous trips, I’d spent at least one day over a bucket after stupidly eating raw vegetables washed in this water or drinking soda with ice made from the water.
This time, I even had a little booklet from the nice VNA nurse in Monterey who gave me my immunizations, telling me exactly how to avoid this sort of thing. Or at least try.
Instead, I spent my first days following Zoo around Damascus' beautiful Souk Hamidia and eating ice cream (which may or may not have contained tap water!) covered in pistachio nuts, chowing down on foul, a hot, garlicy bean stew with (drumroll) raw parsley and brushing my teeth with water from the bathroom sink.
Even without my carelessness, I’m pretty sure this would have happened sooner or later. It’s just hard to think about the cause and effect of invisible bacteria when it’s really hot outside and you are thirsty. Or when your family puts familiar, delicious Arabic food in front of you and says “Eat! Eat!”
However, this particular episode of Traveller’s Illness or whatever we want to call it went far beyond my previous experiences in terms of discomfort, disgustingness and the sheer staying power of this bacteria.
After 10 hours of vomiting – including a period of time in which I believe I was hallucinating, another spent curled up in a writhing ball, throwing cups of water on myself as I watched CNN to pretend everything was OK, and one very expensive phone call home to my mom in which we concluded that this was a ‘character building experience’ – my aunt, helpless to stop this purgathon, tried to lie down with me in bed and put her hand on my bare back. She suddenly snapped to her feet.
“Feh fever! Feh fever!” she said. “Dania, we are going to hospital. Change clothes.”
“Hospital?” I said, flailing my arms around and trying to make the sound of an ambulance.
“No. No,” she said, as she went to talk to my uncle.
Oh my. I was honestly relieved to seek professional attention. I had never been in this much pain before or lost this many fluids in such hot weather as far as I could remember. I mean, I was pretty sure I was hearing voices at one point. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the scene in “The Secret Garden” when young Mary wanders around her family’s house in India on a hot summer morning, only to find her dead parents around a table of gorgeous-looking food that had apparently killed them. This was bad. But I was also scared about what was going to happen next. Where were we going? What would they do to me? Was this illness as bad as it felt?
I had never had to see a doctor in Syria before, but a cousin and a friend who both had the misfortune to need one had had IVs put in their arms to replace their fluids. Eww. Just behind snakes, I think IVs are my worst nightmare. Eww eww eww!
There was no ambulance. The “hospital”, which was truly more a ‘Doctors on Duty’ than a hospital, was right across the street from my aunt and uncle’s apartment. My aunt and I walked slowly around the corner and right into a florescent room with cots and curtains, and a young boy who seemed to have a broken arm and was crying and wandering around. A male nurse ushered me to a cot and a young doctor in scrubs appeared.
“Am I going to die?” I joked, realizing too late that this was not a time for humor. My aunt shook her head.
The doctor smiled, but didn’t seem to register what I was saying. This was not a good sign.
Through my aunt’s translation and several theatrical gestures, I tried to explain what had been happening just across the street, all day long. He and my aunt continued to talk a little in Arabic and then he listened to my stomach with a stethoscope.
“Blood,” he seemed to conclude when he was finished.
“What!?” I asked.
Then, he said something to my aunt.
“Is there blood?” my aunt said.
“You mean when I vomit?” I said, putting my hands on my stomach, sticking my tongue out and gurgling. “No! No!”
They both seemed to process this fact. Then, the doctor listened with his stethoscope under my arms. I was becoming a bit suspicious of all this stethoscope work.
“Do you smoke?”
“No,” I said emphatically.
He moved to the other underarm.
“Are you married?”
“No,” I said, laughing. Was this 20 Questions or what?
Finally, he took my temperature.
“Thirty-eight and five,” he said. “Thiry-eight and half.”
“What is that in Fahrenheit?” I asked.
No one seemed to know. I knew that 33 C was definitely over 90 F. And I also knew, or at least I thought I remembered that 41C was something like 120F…I recalled seeing a weather report for Saudi Arabia in the summertime, seeing 41 degrees and knowing, somehow, that it was 120F. So I had a fever somewhere between 90F and 120F. This was that crucial moment we’d mindlessly prepared for in seventh grade math, converting our Celciuses and Fahrenheits, and I was bombing out!
I saw the doctor rattling an IV bag over my head. Luckily, he was only moving for the blood pressure machine. One more test and he made his final decision.
“Two injections,” he said.
“So this,” I said, making my vomit gesture again, “no more?”
“Yes,” he said.
Alright. I’d take that trade: Two shots to stop the vom. No prob.
“Can I have them here?” I said, pulling up my shirt sleeve.
“No,” he said.
“In your bottom,” my aunt explained.
Just feet away, the male nurse started loading up the shots. The needles were as long as toothpicks, distracting me enough so that I was easily coerced into dropping trou to get the shots, whatever anti-vom magical miracle they contained. How awkward to toss away your insides and reveal your outsides all in one day.
My aunt and I walked slowly back home. Her knees were aching and you can guess which part of my body hurt. I didn’t feel that much better, but I just hoped that even if the shots were salt water, even if there wasn’t some opposite version of ipecac, that the power of the placebo would work.
Unfortunately, the evening was spent much like the morning and the afternoon, huddled over the trash can, tossing and turning in a warm bed and having strange dreams about Cherie and Tony Blair. At one point, I tried to mentally think my way out of the illness. Maybe it was thinking about vomit that was making me vomit? I tried to think about something pleasant, but even dashing through a field of green grass in England turned into the memory of our family dog, Scout, eating grass after she barfed. Somewhere around 3 AM, I was resigned to spend the rest of my life barfing every hour and I finally passed out.
When I came to, Mousliyah, my aunt and uncle’s Indonesian housekeeper, who is also 27, was laying a tray on the table by my bed: Potatoes, small pieces of garlic and a can of 7UP.
My aunt soon followed, a hopeful look on her face, wanting to know how the night had gone. I had to bring back the now tired gesture.
“Blaugh! Blaugh!” I mimed towards the trash can by my bed.
A look of horror came over my aunt’s face: I had left a trash can of vomit by the side of my bed.
“Mee-crobs! Mee-crobs!” she screamed. “Mousilyah!”
Her thinking – and I have no way to prove her wrong – was that the ‘microbes’ from the vomit would get into the air in the room and reinfect me. My thinking was that I was too weak to think clearly, let alone traipse around to an unknown disposal location with a bucket of puke.
Mousilyah, to whom I will be forever indebted, grabbed the can and skittered out of the room, while I tried head off the talk about ‘meecrob’. This discussion was beginning to get bubonic on me and I just wanted to close my eyes. So I did.
I am happy to report that 10 7UPs, two potatoes, two pieces of Arabic bread, lots of plain yoghurt and several antibiotics later, the curse of the mystery meecrob seems to have come to an end. They say that once you get this first episode out of the way, you start to get used to the bacteria and usually don’t get sick again.
I’m not chancing it: I’ve adopted a new anti-meecrob policy and it hasn’t been pleasant to enact. I completely offended a lunch hostess on Sunday, refusing to eat anything but bread and yoghurt at her fancy dining table. I’ve spent the last two nights boiling water, stashing it in Perrier bottles and hiding them in refrigerator compartments, while Mousilyah watches Turkish soap operas dubbed in Arabic and laughs at me. Finally, I’m coming to terms with the fact that my near future does not include my most favorite meal, salad, and that I might need to consider brushing my teeth without water.
These are drastic measures for sure, but if the meecrob can fly, so will I.
posted by girlreporter at 11:04 AM
2 Comments:
oh Dania!! that sounds awful! I'm glad you were with your aunt rather than off alone at some hostel or the sort... when I was in India I got used to barfing at least once a week... no fun at all... I only had one really bad sickness, where the doctor insisted that I needed an 'injyecshzun'... I refused, and thankfully got better within about 36 hours...
anyways, I'm really enjoying reading about your travels!! thanks for sharing! The Bay Area misses you!! Best, Jen
Damnit Sylvia, why does every travel blog I read have to detail bodily functions. At least give us a warning -- maybe an asterisk in the title or something. It makes it very difficult for me to maintain the illusion that women don't have certain bodily functions.
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