Free at Last!

"Congratulations, Little Bunny, you are now well on your way to getting your goat's stomach." --Eric Showell


My husband can eat almost anything and not get sick.  Past-prime leftovers?  No problem.  Souring milk.  Check.  Eating straight from the garbage can?  Uh, not verified.

He attributes his good goat stomach to living in Honduras for six months.  That's when he battled all sorts of stomach bugs.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Saturday morning the doctor found an amoeba living in my belly.  Said amoeba, I'll call him "Justin Bieber", wreaked havoc on my stomach, and wasn't going down without a fight.  He dropped-kicked the antibiotics right out of me.  Soon I looked like this:

Self-portrait

Saturday night Eric escorted me to the hospital, and they kept me there for three nights. The staff took great care of me, and I am now stabilized and back home.

It was unlike any hospital experience I've ever had.

It was more along the lines of 6th grade camp, only I had an IV.   Never mind that the bed sagged like a hammock, or that there were lizards in the bathroom, or that the shower curtain was three inches too short.  I mean, this is one of the nicest hospitals in Zambia, and I've been in some village "emergency rooms" with chickens running through them.  I'm not complaining about the ambiance.

Special Touch:  a sticker on the trash bin

Guess it's time to tape the edges too.

Here's my beef:

• There was no soap/sanitizer in the bathrooms. 

I mean, seriously?  I shared a room with two post-surgery ladies who probably wouldn't have appreciated taking home Justin Bieber Jr. [Editor's note: paternity is still in question].

So I had Eric bring in some soap and a large bottle of hand sanitizer or "hanitizer" as my kids would say.  It was the least I could do.

And after my experience with Justin Bieber, you'd better believe that now I carry a gallon of that stuff everywhere I go.