diarrhea dialogue

Anyone who thinks there is anything romantic about this whole experience would have been disabused of that notion rather quickly after today's lecture from local health professionals entitled "Diarhea dialogue"--a 90 minute lecture and slide show presentation on all the bacterial and parasitic forms of diarrhea we have to look forward to during our time here. Diarrhea is no joke. Annually 2.2 million people, mostly children, die from it, primarily from dehydration. The easy stuff is the bacterial variety, beginning with your basic "Montezuma's revenge" type diarrhea. Then there is salmonella and shigella. None of these are particularly pleasant and have symptoms ranging from loose stools, headache, body ache, fever/chills. But they are not the primary concern. The primary concern is parasitic diarrhea. There is amoebiasis or amoebic dyssentary, giardia, staphylococcus food poisoning and, perhaps most dreaded, ascariasis or roundworm and tapeworm. Some tape worms can reach 30 feet and essential line the intestine and the great thing is there is a good chance you will not know it is there. All of this information was presented with graphic slides, and it is not hard to imagine why they wait till they get you here to show give you this information and don't present it at the recruiting talk.

We have in our medical kit top grade Oral Rehydration Salts which we are to take after the first loose bowel movements. The strategy is not to stop yourself up as it were because that just gives things time to spread around the system rather than get dumped out of your body. We were also given the formula to make our own oral rehydration salts in case we are in a place where we don't have access to the packaged stuff, so the adventurous among you might want to take notes: To one liter of water add two tablespoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt. If you can throw in a little baking soda, all the better. Shake and try to choke the thing down 8 ounces per hour, at least.

This is serious stuff and the danger here is real. On site we will have to use a distiller for all the water we will drink. Indeed, all of us will get this and for some of this it will get pretty bad. The good news is it probably won't kill us and that if we are careful and take precautions we can go a long way towards limiting our risk. It's probably not too much to bring your own chopsticks to a restaurant we were told. The good places not have reusable ones, but there are a lot of places that will and the risk is just not worth it. Wash your hands a lot. We were told to sing "Happy Birthday To You" twice while handwashing and that that should make sure you have washed your hands for a sufficient amount of time. Don't eat anything you can't peel, boil or wash in bleach and water.

When the doctor presenting the talk had finished she said to the hushed crowd, "Enjoy your lunch."