Monsoon Nightmare

Picture: One of the weird frogs we saw on the first night of heavy rains.

Last week was another typical work week, except for a 24 hour period from Tuesday night to Wednesday evening. We can call this period my first bad day. This was mainly caused by two events. First, Tuesday is what I would label as the official start of the monsoon. Although it had rained several times in the first two weeks that I was here, Tuesday was the beginning of non-stop, four-days-straight rain. Second, Wednesday was my first experience with traveler's diarrhea.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to the sounds of someone getting sick in the bathroom. By Tuesday afternoon four of the girls had fallen ill. Brenna landed in the SEARCH hospital. Only, Miriam, Amy, and I were left standing. Before dinner we made the rounds visiting each of the girls. While eating dinner, the heavy rains began. We sat in our mess hall enjoying the sounds of the rain and playing with some dogs that ran into the mess hall and under the roof of our residence building for shelter. Back in our bedrooms, I took some time learning to write my name in Marathi. I was enjoying myself and having a good time. The power went out several times, something that happens more frequently now that it is raining a lot. Then, Miriam, Amy, and Bhagyashree discovered these weird looking frogs hanging outside in our courtyard. They were very fat frogs and instead of jumping they walked on four legs. We watched the frogs try to escape the pooling waters and climb to higher ground. One after another they tried to climb up the side of our elevated landing outside our bedrooms. They were cute, but their genetic adaptations were kind of creepy. At one point, Miriam made a comment that the frogs, snakes, and scorpions come out during the rains, driven out of their underground hiding places. Amy took tons of pictures of them. My camera's charge had been used up during a nature walk we took earlier in the evening, so I had to wait a bit before it was ready. By the time I went back outside to take my own photos, the other girls were heading into their rooms and we said goodnight. I stood outside for a few extra minutes taking pictures of Mr. Fat Frog. When I stood up to go inside, I saw something jump off the wall about 15 feet away. "What a funny looking gecko," I thought. It was relatively dark, and I couldn't see that well. I moved a bit closer. "Why is that gecko carrying something on its back?" As the "gecko" turned its body so that I was no longer seeing it in profile, I was horrified. This was not a gecko. No it was not. This was a big, live, scorpion.

Time out.

I was petrified. I saw the curve of its venomous tail curled up over its body. This is what I had mistaken for the load the gecko was carrying. I saw its pincher-type claws. It started trying to hop off the elevated platform of our residence building, decided this was too risky, walked over to a wall and attempted to crawl its way down to the ground. "Guys, guys, there's a scorpion out here!" The sound of the fans in the rooms and the pounding rain easily drowned out my voice. Besides, I'm not even sure if I was speaking audibly; I was frozen with fear. For a quick second I thought about snapping some photos, but then my senses came to me, and I ran inside my room and slammed the door.

Let me just say, the image of this scorpion, with its gigantic black grasping claws, strutting across our landing is forever burned into my brain. It is straight out of my nightmares. I was severely disturbed. Although the walls are made of cement and this thing was far too chunky to ever make it under the door, the fact that I had seen something so terrifyingly nasty close to my bedroom convinced me that there was a way it could make it inside my room. On Tuesday night I felt like I was falling asleep in a horror film. In this movie genetically mutated obese frogs roam the planet on their tiny legs. Black scorpions start crawling out of the walls. Water is flooding everywhere you turn. And half of your friends are falling ill with gastrointestinal illnesses.

On Wednesday morning when I woke up, the first thing that happened is I made a trip to the bathroom with an upset stomach (and it was very very upset; I will spare everyone the details though since this is, after all, a public blog). I had braced myself for this upon arrival in India, and then I thought I had lucked out and skipped this step. On Day 17 my immune system caught up with me.

I sat down along the wall outside our bedrooms and talked with Miriam and Bhagyashree who were also up early. I felt very nauseous and was afraid I was going to vomit, like the other girls had the day before. I also had a theory that because I spent the night in such fitful anxiety that I had made myself physically sick. When Miriam and Bhagyashree went to go get tea, I went into the bathroom and got sick again. This was not good, a pattern was emerging. I decided I would not get ready for the day and instead go back to sleep. Further, since our bathrooms are only in the residence building, I did not want to be that far away from them. Around 9am Sona came to check on me. I told her I felt weak, dizzy, and sleepy, but that I thought I could start my day. She told me to rest and that she would check in again around 11am. At 10:45am I made my third trip to the bathroom. When Sona came back she said I was going to the hospital to get medication and treatment because now I was officially the fifth sick girl.

The hospital at SEARCH is a rural hospital that primarily serves the villagers, so while there is medical equipment and medications and organized surgery camps, it looks more like a school infirmary than a U.S. hospital. It is also roughly 50 feet from our residence building. I don't want anyone picturing brightly lit hallways, individual examination rooms with hospital beds, beeping monitors displaying vital signs, and doctors and nurses scuttling everywhere. This just isn't so. Ama (Dr. Rani Bang) oversees the entire hospital with the assistance of two Ayurvedic doctors. I first met with Ama who checked me out for a bit and then told me I would get an IV. She told me that we shouldn't have eaten eggs at the restaurant in Chandrapur because there could have been salmonella, especially during the rainy season. I was confused because I thought the restaurant we had gone to was one of the "safe" ones. Either way, it didn't really matter at that point.

Amita, one of the Ayurvedic doctors that shadows Ama, led me to the room I would rest in. It ended up being the same room that Brenna had spent all of Tuesday in, getting four IVs of rehydration liquid. Amita and another hospital assistant/nurse gave me three pills, two red and one white. I'm not sure what they were, but I trusted that they wouldn't harm me. They told me Marie was going to come and get an IV too. I didn't really think I needed the IV, but I had heard from others that once SEARCH is aware that you were sick, they are very overprotective. They are responsible for us, and I'm sure they do not want anything bad happening to the foreign interns because they would like to continue to have them come in the future. Since I knew that getting an IV of rehydration liquid was not going to harm me, I didn't put up too much of a fuss, although I do think this was my first time getting a real IV. Marie tried to protest, telling them that going to the bathroom several times did not warrant an IV, but in the end she was made to get one too. We hung out in the room for about 45 minutes while our IV's dripped away. There was nothing else to do, but stare at the walls and the ceiling and listen to the sound of the rain. So really, it was very relaxing. After our IV's we were given instructions to eat bananas, so we did that too. Overall, the IV was not too bad. It hurt a lot more when the nurse removed the needle than the pinch I felt when it was inserted, but I got over that as well. It was very unclear if we were supposed to stay in the hospital room or not, but seeing that we both felt fine, we wanted to leave. The only problem was that it was raining cats and dogs again, and neither of us had an umbrella. Eventually Miriam came to our rescue and we all went back to our bedrooms.

I played the rest of the afternoon slow and only had to use the bathroom one additional time. I only ate a small amount of rice and sprouts at dinner. I was in good company with the other sick girls. We all showed up in the dining hall because the cook, Vimal tai, was starting to worry that her food had made us sick and we were boycotting it. We really like Vimal tai and didn't want her to feel upset, so we went to dinner in solidarity and pretended to eat. I got very good rest Wednesday night and felt golden on Thursday morning! I did not even have to use the bathroom on Thursday (or Friday...seemed like I now had the opposite problem). I really lucked out. The other four girls who had been sick were sick for at least two days, and most of them had vomited as well. I was a mild case. I had escaped what could have turned out to be an awful week of gastrointestinal issues.

Further, on Friday, the rain eventually let up and we had two days of sunshine with some drizzle, until Sunday when it started to rain non-stop again. At least I know that it is not going to rain every minute between now and the time I leave, and that there will be moments when we see the sun.

The only nightmare I did not escape from was that of the scorpion which plays over and over in my head. Now, the spot where I saw the scorpion will always be "that place." And every time I walk by it to go to the bathroom I will nervously scan the area looking for scorpions. I will probably have this anxiety until the day I leave. Gone are the carefree days of scorpion-free housing.