DAVID'S DISCLAIMER FOR PARENTS: Do not be swept up in Susan’s colourful descriptions. She has taken some creative license to describe the drama of our internal experience. Really…WE ARE FINE NOW. No need to exchange more e-mails.
SUSAN: So, here we are in Rishikesh. Alive, thankfully, although a few days ago our vital status seemed under question.
We had been blissfully chilling out, meditating, attending yoga sessions led by white-robed yogis (who, incidentally, had a penchant for bouncing their knees against the ground like basketballs when sitting in lotus position to loosen the hips), drinking ayurvedic tea, and pondering wether palm-reading was a wise thing to spend our money on, when, suddenly, IT happened. The big health scare that you hope will never come, but unavoidably is always looming on the horizon for namby pamby Westerners traveling in India.
We had just enjoyed a meal at our favorite resauraunt, Namaste Café, where signs proclaim that the food is prepared with love, and that bottled water is used for all the ice and for washing all the vegetables, where we had eaten delicious waffles every morning, and shared perfect mango and banana lassis with our mouth-watering Indian/health food fare, when Dave started to feel ill.
Ever since he had gone on a 6 hour trek up a mountain to a mysterious monastery with Will, our friend from our last hotel, 3 hours of which were in the most intense 40 degree heat of the day, he had been feeling a little out of sorts, so I didn’t worry too much. But as the night progressed, so did his temperature. By morning he was hot enough to fry eggs on. Unfortunately, by then, I wasn’t feeling so great myself. My old friend Delhi Belly has made reappearance, and, strangely, it was getting progressively more difficult to stand without feeling dizzy.
I thought: OK. You just need to wait till the pharmacy opens at 8am, get yourself there and buy some antibiotics. Then, by afternoon, you will feel well enough to walk down the street to the local clinic and describe Dave’s symptoms to the doctor, and talk about bringing him in. By the time 8am came around, Dave was half delirious, shivering visibly although his body was boiling hot, and my short walk to the store to buy water had resulted in some intense sweating/shivering of my own.
This did not look good. I had just never encountered anything like this. Stomach problems were one thing, but what was this crazy fever/dizziness trip? Had we contracted some weird exotic virus, malaria, dengue fever? I finally got up to go to the hotel office to ask where the nearest pharmacy was (“Just keep it together, Susan,” I told myself, although the floor was feeling very wobbly beneath me, “Davie needs you!”), but by the time I got there, I was quite alarmed at the fact that my vision had degraded into psychedelic flashes of cube-like colors and my entire body felt like it was being poked by hot and cold needles. All I could manage to say as I collapsed in the chair in front of the receptionist’s desk was “Very sick. Husband* sick. Need help. Doctor now.” I’m glad he understood because a doctor with a briefcase showed up within five minutes and, hand in hand, we walked back to the room where Dave was moaning in a pool of his own sweat, using the sheet as a loin cloth.
*Footnote: When in India, boyfriend=husband=no evil looks
The rest is history. It wasn’t any tropical disease. Just plain old bacteria from the salad we had trustingly consumed the night before. After administering a few rounds of antibiotics, mysterious ayurvedic medicines, electrolytes that taste like warm body sweat, head massages, and cold head compresses the good doctor left us lying there, two weak twig-like bodies, to recover. By that evening, our fevers were gone! And, slowly, over the past few days, the bounce in our steps has returned. So much so, in fact, that we were able to flee the advances of an amazingly insistent Sikh who wanted to take a sexy photo with me and would not take NO! for an answer, and chased us down many flights of stairs in a huge temple! But that’s another story…
(Be sure to check out all 75 of Dave's trekking photos by clicking here. You may want to grab some popcorn first)
