I shat in the hat, with my license to ill

September 20, 2005 - 4:35 p.m.

I got back from my trip a week ago but have been incapacitated and unable to write. My trip to Bolivia was a journey deep inside of myself, and by that I mean that I got a close look at the inner workings of my body and an even closer look at my own blood and digestive fluids.

Day 1: Altitude Sickness. Despite chowing down on the Diamoxx, we both got very sick from the thin air and spent the first day lying in bed dizzy and groaning, unable to sleep but unable to become alert. Killing millions of oxygen-deprived brain cells is hard work, and after a brief trip to the Witch’s Market down the street and spacing out on the racks of Llama fetuses, we heaved back to the hotel in our weakened 78 year-old bodies, and crawled back into bed, crabbily, to watch Legally Blond and an Evel Knievel movie on cable.

Day 2: I get my period. No big deal, I knew it was coming, and thanks to my birth control pills my lady functions are a walk in the park, like a lone drip from a faucet - a faucet that exudes pink sunshine with a hint of roses. I’m a mini-pad woman, a panty-liner girl, and I haven’t used a tampon in years because they are about as necessary for me as a janitor’s mop to soak up a sneeze.

However.

Little did I know that altitude would affect my menstrual flow.

Suddenly I was 13 years old again. Doubled over through wave after wave of crimson tide, my entire midsection twisted and clenched, squeezing out every last ounce of my vital life fluid. It was red, black, brown, thick, thin, clotted, clinging and mean. All of those feelings that were distant memories of being a young girl, came back in a flash. I could feel my ovaries, my womb, as tangible as my own fingers. The age old mystery of why does the vagina hurt taunted my brain. Why? For women (who understand the specifics of the female anatomy) – have you ever wondered why the actual vagina, the outer business, needs to hurt? It plays no role in the cramping, the expelling of blood, the shedding of the uterine wall. Why should the vagina throb with pain, like a man’s scrotum after getting nailed with a football? It dumbfounds me. I bend over and peer at her and ask Why? Why do you hurt, dummy? Trying to be obstinate? Going along with the cool kids?

So there I was with a war-torn reproductive system, a bruised vagina flowing cups, ounces, liters of dead blood. I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and all I had was six organic all-cotton mini-pads. I had to learn to say “feminine protection” in Spanish, like ASAP. Luckily I was able to point to Kotex in a convenience store and my problems were solved. Or so I thought. Super large, MAXI with wings and moisture lock barriers.

They handled the job fairly well, though I still found myself in a blood bath and had to bathe myself with baby wipes, like a baby, a few times a day, because we had no access to warm water or showers, and I will elaborate on that another time.

We rented a Jeep-type vehicle for our Andean excursion and the first day was us trying to make our way to Copacabana from LaPaz, and it took much longer then it should have thanks to no street signs, poor maps, and a bleeding navigator (me). Scary bumpy roads, some were gravel, with no guardrails, and I just sat there, bouncing on my tender peach for 5 and a half hours, with what felt like a dying rabid tomcat in my womb, and all I wanted to do was whimper like a Lhasa Apso. The period lasted the whole week.

Day 3: Head Cold. Bad head cold, and I burned through all of my Kleenex and Advil Cold & Sinus in a day. Sneezing, stuffy head, Nyquil commercial kind of cold, which wasn’t the WORST, but it was certainly annoying, distracting, exhausting, and I cared very little for the red reindeer nose. The cold lasted for days.

Day 4: Nose bleeds. Thanks to the high altitude, extremely dry air, constant nose blowing, and the fact that I am a life-long sinner, I got chronic, embarrassing nosebleeds. Not sure how I survived in a third world country with all that blood loss - oh wait. I didn’t. I’ll get to that in a moment.

DAY SOMETHING: At some point, I don’t remember which day, my wisdom teeth became infected and swelled up my gums and teeth and it HURT. I don’t know if this was yet another symptom of the altitude, or if it’s because my oral hygiene suffered due to the no access to water and things.

I challenge you to climb to the top of a mountain, take a seat on a pile of jagged rocks, in the dark with the cold wind whipping around you, and brush your teeth with no water. You could use bottled water, but if a single drip lands on bare skin, it will feel FREEZING, and it won’t dry, and you’ll have clam hands ‘til the next day. So sit there and brush your teeth, and notice that you can’t get the proper foaming action without water, so you just have clumps of blue sitting in your mouth and a dry brush doing just about nothing. Now spit and remove the blue clumps from your mouth, and the drool that has run down the brush and all over your hand. Shake it. Good luck! Cuz ain’t shit gonna happen, fool. You’re covered with blue drool and it sticks like glue. Your mouth is parched, dirty, and quickly sealing shut with gritty foam. You can still feel the food on your teeth so you realize that the whole episode was futile. It made things worse, you’re wet and sticky with no way to clean your hands and face so you just wipe everything all over your clothes, imagining what these white smears are going to look like when they dry tomorrow and you have to wear these same clothes in public all day. The tooth infection lasted until I got home. It hurt to eat and drink for the remainder of the trip.

Day 5: What is that strange, familiar feeling? It’s dull, unsettling, mildly painful, a teensy bit nauseating – something is askew. Something is brewing, I can feel it. The quiet before the storm. I think I will go pee now. *Pssst*. Hmm. A tiny pee. A squirt. It couldn’t be…could it?

“Honey, um, I think that I have a bladder infection.”

“No, you’re kidding right?”

The weird tingly/numb/throbbing/pressured feeling was unmistakable.

“If I don’t find a doctor and pharmacy like now, things are going to get very ugly and by tonight I will be curled in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, crying into a puddle of blood.”

Sensing that he is not taking my plight seriously, I say, “I’m totally not exaggerating that the most accurate description for a bladder infection is that it feels like you’re pissing out Chinese throwing stars. It’s like pissing razor blades, over and over…”

He didn’t believe me, but no matter, I was armed with my Spanish Dictionary and quickly set to writing a note that said, “la infección orina - ¿presripción – antibióticos – tabletas?”

I found a nice lady “doctor”, “pharmacist” and she knew just what I needed. She gave me prescription drugs, antibiotics and antiseptics (ew) for 12 cents a piece! God bless her! And not a moment too soon, as the infection had really kicked in, with frequent little pees every 10 minutes, coupled with hair-raising nausea and a wave of hot prickly pain from head to toe. I only had to make it through the night and by the next morning most of the pain was gone.

But the real question is why in the hell did I get a urinary tract infection in the first place? I’ll tell ya why: Cuz I’m dirty. DIRRRTTTY. Or so I assume.

Basically, I have a pampered, yuppie, granola-munchin vagina (in Spanish, pronounced va heena) that receives regular medical check-ups and constant five-star red-carpet treatment. That sassy bitch is spoiled and nothing goes in her or near her that isn’t 100% natural, free-range, hand-fed, utterly pristine and hand-delivered by god hisself. I use Whole Foods unbleached, organic, biodegradable mini-pads. I’m such a stupid yuppie whore, thinking my twat is better than everyone else’s twat. As if.

So yeah, Sassy Vaheena doesn’t get tampons or spermicide, or anything else that is traditionally put in there. All she gets is baby talk, daily affirmations, and fierce protection from dirty men with wandering penises.

My theory: the altitude threw off my whole system, causing excess bleeding, then I used RUN OF THE MILL (horrors!) Kotex which is lined in plastic! And my hoochie coo was smothered! She was gasping for breath, wrapped in plastic wings, *cough* - coughing at the bleach and artificial fibers, heavens!

Perhaps it didn’t help that I was wearing 6 layers of clothes, like polypropylene pants or some shit, wrapped up in a burrito sleeping bag, trying to stay warm in the mountains in 23 degree weather! The next morning I had a bladder full of barbed wire. That infection lasted for days, but it only hurt for one.

DAY 6: Nothing adverse happened! We were both well and spent the whole day shopping, eyeballing giant dead condors with 6 foot wingspans, giant python snake skins, and armadillo guitars! You pluck his whiskers to make a twang! (Not really). And more llama fetuses than you could shake a stick at, though why you’d wanna shake a stick at a fetus, I don’t know!

I bought baby alpaca fur scarves for everyone that I know. Super soft, like cashmere, and fancy!

We went to the cocaine museum, and the prison run by prisoners, and drank delicious red Bolivian wine for $2!

DAY 7: Death rides a pale horse, picks me up from my hotel, takes me to the airport and proceeds to slowly kill me for the 12 hour flight home. Our flight was at 6am so I was tired and out of it. My boyfriend went straight to sleep and I waited up for the delicious meal that was coming to me via First Class (Praise JEEZUS!). I never got to eat it because suddenly I lose my appetite. Two hours later I nudge my boyfriend awake and inform him that I’ve been run over by a 2 ton truck. I want to die. I’m shaking and sweating and freezing and my head is pounding. No medicine has any effect on me. Waiting for the death of puke and diarrhea but it never comes. I can barely stand to stay in my seat. Unrest, I can’t read, I can’t sleep. Waiting.

Finally, 14 hours later I’m home and I go straight to bed. My boyfriend is under the impression that I will wake up fine the next day, but I am beginning to seriously doubt this.

All night long I wake up to throw up black shit that looks like tobacco, and I have diarrhea even though I haven’t eaten in over 24 hours. This continues through the entire next day.

DAY 8: I can’t take my bladder infection medicine so I’m worried it will come back. At 6pm I wake up from a sleep shaking like I got the DTs and my teeth are chattering like a steam locomotive clamoring down the railroad tracks. I sense that something is very wrong but I can’t stop shaking long enough to call my boyfriend and ask for a ride to the hospital. I take a bunch of Advil to lower my temperature.

Three hours later he drives me to the emergency room, and they take my temp and it is 101. We had to wait 4 hours for me to be seen, and by then I had devolved into a rotting festering corpse, with gurgling guts and I was convinced that I had become a host for a serpentine parasite with clawed tentacles and fly eyes, and that nigger was making his way through my intestines, up and down, popping into my stomach looking for food but I hadn’t eaten since DAY 6 so there was nothin’ havin’.

Not to be gross, but I have to tell you. How does a person continue to vomit and shit when that person has been empty of food for days? Why, that person produces its own homemade vomit and shit! The vicious belly gurgling was just myself secreting vats of stomach acid, so that I could turn around and puke bile! And shit stomach acid! Oh my god, it wasn’t poop, it wasn’t diarrhea, it was just a high-pressured garden hose shooting out pure yellow stomach acid!

So I was finally taken to the examination room and the hot nurse says, “If at any moment you feel that you can give me a stool sample, let me know and I will run and get The Hat.”

God, The Hat. I can only imagine what kind of hat they want me to poop in.

“Well, considering that I am a human poop spigot, wide open, constantly pooping, that shouldn’t be a problem. I think I’m pooping right now.”

She ran and got the hat and I filled it with ass bile. I always feel self-conscious when filling specimen cups, or hats for that matter. Am I over filling? Is that rude? Am I offending the lab worker with my large sample? Is she talking shit (heh) about me to the other lab people, like: “Who does she think she is, sending us this hat full of poop? She thinks we want her extra poop?? We only needed a teaspoon of poop, ugh!”

Then the nurse hooked me up to an IV to rehydrate by brittle ass. The first liter of saline that she dropped into my arm was cold, and it immediately chilled me to the bone, and she covered me with heated blankets. A few minutes later the radiologist wheeled me to get x-rays and I was shaking so hard she got scared. She placed me up against the chest x-ray machine and my bony shoulders rattled against the metal, causing a ruckus. She put blankets around me to muffle the sound, but it still sounded like a lunatic trying to escape a padded jail cell.

In the end they covered me with 8 heated blankets. A nurse came in to give me my second liter. “Hi, I’m nurse Lisa. A different nurse Lisa.”

I just laid there, shaking and drooling.

She said, “Oh my, you are SO COLD! You know, I’m going to give you warm water this time.”

Warm water? You mean, there’s an option for warm and the Other Nurse Lisa chose cold??

She hooked me up to warm water and I was immediately bathed in warm love, coursing through my veins. I emanated warm and fell into a deep sleep, murmuring I love you Nurse Lisa!

Hours later I became semi-conscious that someone was changing my IV again. The cold hit me like a slap on the arm, and I sat bolt upright and projectile vomited across the room. LOUDLY, hurling, with stomach acid splattering all over the examination table. I looked and the First Nurse Lisa was standing there, feeding me cold water, and she said, “Oh my gawd, I thought you were done vomiting??”

I stuttered, “I-I-I was. I-I-I think it’s the cold water. It just hit me hard. And I sat up and puked.”

The uncontrollable shaking came back, I couldn’t sleep, and I just sat there while ice ran through me. Fuck you, Original Nurse Lisa!

By the time I finished my IVs, it was the next day, and I still had the death gurgle. I went home and slept and pooped for days. I didn’t eat a goddamn thing and lost 8 pounds in 4 days.

I took a bunch of Cipro and I feel a lot better. All of my tests were inconclusive because, as the doctor said, “There are millions of bacterias and parasites in third-world countries. We can’t possible test for them all.”

I’ve gained back 4 pounds through the simple act of eating. I’m back to work, but the scars remain. I can’t even look at anything from the trip without feeling ill. I washed and sterilized everything, but I can’t even touch the clothes I had worn, or the left over Kit-Kat bars. I can’t finish the National Geographic I was reading when I first got sick. It’s sitting on the floor, discarded until I can distance my memories from the pain.

There’s actually all kinds of positive stories I have to tell of Bolivia, and despite being sick I greatly enjoyed the experience. I couldn’t have asked for a better country to visit, honestly, and as soon as I can stomach looking through my photos I’ll have things to write about.

Just as soon as that fly-eyed nigger gets the hell out of my belly, and I am so gonna flush that fool straight to hell! Or Lake Michigan, whichever is worse.

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The Fast, Days 1-6
January 28, 2007