Trouble!

My last full day in Goa started off as usual, with some breakfast while overlooking the beach. However, after a stroll up and down the coast, I found myself not feeling well, and went back to the hotel to get some rest. I soon found myself incapacitated in bed with slight fever, headache, bodyache, chills, nausea, and diarhea. Now I'm no hypocondriac, but when you are ill away from home in a country with unknown quality of medical services your mind can start to go on hyperdrive. As I lay stewing in my sweat I began to imagine all the horrible diseases I could have come down with. After several hours of self inflicted mental torture I gathered the strength to hobble downstairs to my hotel lobby to use the internet access point there to put my mind at ease about my condition. Unfortunately after browsing the CDC website on India, and consulting wikipedia and various other medical websites I had become more paranoid since pretty much every terrible disease starts with the symptoms I was experiencing, including Malaria, Dengue Fever, and H5N1 which are present in India. Oh yea, you're supposed to get IMMEDIATE medical attention. I reasoned with myself that if I could some how tough it out for two more days I'd be back in the US and could get some proper treatment. Once it became a reasonable hour in NY I gave my dad a call for a medical consultation. After describing my condition as best I could he seemed to determine that I most likely didn't have anything serious, and could go with the ol' doctor's favorite: the wait and see. I, on the other hand, still thought it was a very real possibility that I had something serious despite the fact that I was on anti-malarial meds, had gotten a flu shot before I left, and that Dengue Fever is pretty much non-existent in the parts of India I was in. This must be why doctors hate slightly sick patients equipped with WebMD (sorry to all my MD or to-be MD friends...) Later in the evening I retched up what was left of my breakfast porrige and felt new life breathed into me, though I was still very weak and sick. At this point it was pretty obvious I had food poisoning and it helped put my mind at rest as I recouped as quickly as possible.

The next day I felt much better, and continued to rest as I spent most of the day and night on a train back to Bangalore. In retrospect, my bout of food poisoning came at pretty much the least disruptive time through my whole trip, with much of my recovery time spent while in transit anyway. I couldn't have picked a better day through my journey to have gotten sick if I had the option. I suppose a trip to India wouldn't really be complete without an episode of food poisoning so I can leave content knowing I got the full experience. Also Jake was pretty amazing at being there for me when I needed him, all while not letting me hold back his fun too much. Yay for Jake. Hes the best!