And the winner is...

July 17 2009, Friday

Just a couple quick updates to mention. First things first, the PC decided to not really give us a day off this weekend as we have language class first thing in the morning tomorrow and then for people who have a long trip to their site, like me, we get to leave right after for the buses. So my long journey will be tomorrow and I am actually kind of excited for it because I am sure that after two years of living down south I will be pretty familiar with this trip at the end of it all (we have to go back to Quito for certain things here and there throughout our service).

Today we just had language classes and we were able to go to Cayambe which was really good because we all needed money from the ATM for our trip. We also had to pay our host families here in La Chimba their money as well so we all definitely needed to get more money with both paying our host families and having enough money to take on our site trip with us. The ATM machines were not really working very well and it took us a couple of tries and three different machines in the end but we all ended up getting our money (the PC is still having problems with the banking at the moment). I think pretty much everyone struggled a little with the ATMs though so no one was left out.

For the fun update, I woke up this morning and couldn’t talk. Well more so as one of the PCTs said today, I sounded like one of the cartoon characters from Family Guy (I think she said the baby, Stewy) or my personal favorite and one I know that my father will love, the Godfather, when I tried to talk. I stayed up last night as well using the last of my voice to talk to my mom on the phone, which was total worth it, but it was definitely gone this morning. Once we all got together though four out of five of us realized that we needed to talk to the doctor about something or another. So we called him and he was actually going around to the communities to give out the mosquito bed nets for the people in the Malaria Zones (yes this includes me…). So he came and handed out our mosquito bed nets and then had a consultation with each of us, minus the one healthy one.

One girl has to wait on her next bowl movement to see the outcome as to if she can even go on her site visit this weekend or not (I definitely think it sounds like she’s got it the worst out of all of us!). Another girl has to go to Quito at some point to get tested to see if she is diabetic and the other girl I believe just has a cold right now with diarrhea that seems to be pretty constant. My diagnosis was the only one that the doctor could actually put a name to right now (and drive around the corner to get the medication)…and the winner is…laryngitis!

Basically, I have had a cold for about the past week and it just decided to move a little further down south into my esophagus and lungs. Everything that is coming out of my nose is really clear but when I cough I have green stuff come up from my esophagus and lungs (not to mention I have pressure around both of my ears). I also get light headed really easily especially with the altitude here. And today was the top off with my inability to speak in either Spanish or English. So I have antibiotics that I get to take over the next three days, one pill a day, and some lovely cough type medicine that I take a teaspoon of every 6 hours along with 2 ibuprofen, and I got told that my voice will be sore for about five days or so.

I realized this morning though that I was taking a total of 7 pills in the morning for the past few days give or take (2 Tylenol, 2 nasal decongestants, 1 malaria, 1 anti-allergy and 1 birth control). Now I just have to take 5 pills in the morning (2 ibuprofen, 1 malaria, 1 anti-allergy and 1 birth control) with a few more ibuprofen during the day and an antibiotic during lunch for the next two days. Got to love the crazy things a different altitude, area, and climate do to your body. There really are so many illnesses out there!

So that’s my interesting update though…that I have laryngitis and now the local people really look at me like I’m crazy when I try to talk because I’m speaking really broken Spanish in a voice that even makes the Americans laugh at me because of how weird I sound. Oh well, another experience to put in the books!