Well, every traveler tends to have a bowel story, and now I have mine. It came on suddenly just after dinner and lasted for 12 hours as my body violently tried to get rid of every bit of food inside through every available orifice.
All night I alternately puked, pissed and spewed diarrhea. I called the Peace Corps medical office, my bottle of Amoxocillin clutched in my hand and ready to take some as soon as I got approval. They told me that I was among several volunteers getting hit with gastroenteritis, and the most I could do is curl into a ball and wait it out.
There was no curling into a ball, at least not for long. After everything in my stomach had been emptied, my stomach started filling with gas. So mostly I sat up in my bed, half-awake, back against the wall or footboard, rocking to burp out some of the gas that was distending my stomach.
Not that I stayed in bed for any real length of time. About every ten minutes I’d get up and go to the bathroom and spew or shit out food I didn’t even realize was in me. In a devil’s game, there were a number of times that I sat by the toilet, felt a bit better, and as soon as I got up to walk back to bed, had to run back to the bathroom.
Would my host mother, Anna, not have started freaking out, I would have just dragged my blankets by the bathroom door so that I wouldn’t have to keep crossing the house whenever I felt another bout come on.
And boy did I feel sorry for Anna. After about four trips to the bathroom (mind you, it’s now about two in the morning), I was determined to call Peace Corps Medical the very next time I had to get up. That time was only a few minutes later, but I couldn’t get the phone to dial Kiev. Unsure if long distance was on their phone, I woke Anna up to get her to dial the number, assuming that she’d use her son’s cell phone. Actually, she was able to dial it from the house phone and paced while I listened to the on duty nurse tell me that there was nothing to do but wait it out. The puking would stop eventually, she said, with only a few more days of diarrhea. If I was still feeling bad in the morning they’d put me on Cipro and send a car for me to take me to Kiev. I didn’t tell her that the chance of me getting in a car for a forty minutes trip, one during which I’d have to exit the car every fifteen minutes to empty yet more of myself was nonexistent.
The nurse recommended bouillon, juice and water, and to sip on all three in an effort to keep some nutrients in me. I relayed this to Anna, asking her if she had juice (cik) or water (voda). She had neither and grabbed her purse to go get some. As I was not going to let her go out at two in the morning in the freezing cold, I told her not to go. "Nee cik," I said. "You sleep," I said, pointing at her and mimicking putting both hands on one side of my cheek. Of course, she wasn’t about to.
I began to feel worse about her than I did about myself. She had to listen to me puke and run to the bathroom all night, unable to do anything about it. She kept grabbing the dictionary to look up a word. "Sweat" she pointed out. No, I wasn’t sweating. "Medicine." Nee, nee medicine. She kept looking up juice. Did I want orange juice? "Nee, nee cik. I sleep," I said, pointing at myself and mimicking sleep.
Actually, what I wanted most of all was water. I had forgotten that it’s possible to shit water, but I was reminded that I could as I did it again and again and again. I felt myself becoming progressively more dehydrated, that tightening of the skin, the itch at the back of the throat. But I only had one bottle and every time I drank some I would puke it back up. Ukrainian water is unsafe to drink, and most families don’t keep around bottled water, preferring to boil what comes out of the tap in order to make tea. Anna kept trying to give me tea, which I felt was the last thing I could possibly drink.
I finally realized some of the limitations and problems of being in Ukraine. It seemed so close to America, but it was not. I had to ration this one bottle of water and I couldn’t communicate what was wrong to my host mother, and I couldn’t even pick up the phone and call my own mother. More than anything, I just wanted a comfortable bed.
But then I realized how lucky I was to be stationed in Ukraine, to have a bout in a house with a flushing toilet. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I had to repeatedly run out to an outhouse buzzing with flies and mosquitoes.
Finally, about five in the morning, my stomach had stopped churning and inflating long enough for me to drift off into a couple hours of sleep. And when I awoke, like the nurse predicted, I was feeling better. Peace Corps Medical called to check on me and the nurse gave me a run down for the day: sleep, juice, bouillon, bananas, water, nothing else.
I had the nurse call my Language and Cultural Facilitator, Oxana, who spoke both languages and have her call Anna to tell her what I needed, since going back and forth with the dictionary wasn’t working, especially with how exhausted I was.
The LCF called a few minutes later, and Anna began ranting in high pitched Ukrainian, working herself in a tizzy over my state. She was obviously very worried, and I was really touched. Finally she calmed down to listen to Oxana.
After she got off the phone, Anna made me some tea. At that point I was getting frustrated. I did not want tea. It was too hot, and I couldn’t keep it down. I wanted water, lots and lots of water. I must have lost literally gallons of water during the night, and I felt parched. I gave Anna 20 hrivna and tried to convey that I needed juice, bananas and water. Water, please, water. Anna pushed the money back at me and said that she knew I needed it, but she wanted me to drink tea. As I started sipping it, she left to get the groceries, and I realized that once again even a tiny cross-cultural thing like bottled water was working against me.
Anna came back with the juice and bananas, but no water. I was ready to throw in the towel, resolving to go out and get water myself as soon as I felt a bit better. After eating a banana and sipping some juice I went back to my bedroom. And there, on the bedside table, and newly bought by Anna, were two bottles of water.