Sick Sickly in Paradise at the Bosque de Puke

I have to admit I have been getting bolder in my eating choices here in Ecuador... and it has, after a month, bit me in the ass. Literally.
Sometime this weekend I ate something that contained a family of parasites. It could have been the french fries at a street market in Ibarra or the fried fish here in Quito... but at this point, it doesn't quite matter what it was... just that it was, and is.
The weekend played out something like this: on Saturday afternoon, Lukas, Bianca and myself headed out on a 4 hour trek to the Bosque de Paz (the Forrest of Peace, owned by a lovely gent from Holland named Piet) so Bianca could have a look-see about a potential job. We arrived after dark but we could see enough of the forest to know that it was heaven... if mosquitoes live in paradise. There were hammocks and mountains and two little girls who gave us stickers and chattered incesantly about their pet sloth that had just died.

About 4 am that night, I knew something was wrong... I woke up with a slight ache in my belly and the urge to vomit. I held it together, for no particular reason other than I did not want to climb down a set of steep stairs to vomit in the organic farm, for the next 6 or so hours, when I did, in fact, vomit, in the organic farm. Multiple times. While Piet, Bianca and Lukas harvested bamboo a mere 10 feet away and Piet's daughters looked on with intrigue. Not so organic anymore.

I spent the next 4 hours reading and moaning and napping and then we headed home... on two buses and in a taxi, over the course of the entire afternoon. The first bus might have been the worst 1.5 hours I have ever spent in my adult life. Perhaps it was my spot on the floor of the bus, between a ricky guardrail and the open door, the whole time atop an older gentleman's shoes (there are no weight or space limits in Ecuador... if you can squeeze someone in, in they go).
I managed to hold everything in (save for a few self-pitying sobs on the side of the road as we waited for a taxi) until we came home, and then my body had enough of hosting the buggers and evicted them over the course of the next 36 hours.

This leads me to this afternoon, where I sit in a puddle of sunlight, watching Quito go about its daily activity and dreaming about Papa John's Pizza (perhaps I am Louisville-sick a bit). I went to the ER last night, for lack of appointments with a doctor, and was quickly hooked into an IV and given a barrel of apple flavored Pedialytel to drink (which almost induced vomiting again). I have meds that promise to kill anything and a sudden vacation from work... and it would be lovely, if only I could eat a slice of extra cheese and drink a beer.
However horrid this has been (thank you, Angus and Kelly, for braving my feverish phone calls and Mom and Dad, for not panicking), it has brought into focus so many things for which to be grateful:

*medical insurance that pays for itself by paying for a (maybe unnecessary) visit to the ER
*housemates who carried my bag, bought me liters of Gatorade and bunches of bananas and have checked on me, on the hour, for almost three days
*my supervisor, who brought Pedialyte and safe food over to house, who took me to the ER, who talked me through my new meds
*the woman on the first bus who put the whole thing into perspective by asking if I had cancer and then laughing when I told her it was something I ate
*and perhaps most sharply in my mind, the older gent who allowed me to perch precariously atop his sunday best dress shoes for almost 2 hours without complaining once
*my first real meal in three days, of Ritz Crackers and Special K, which tasted like heaven

I am grateful to be from a country where we don't worry about drinking water or contaminated food. I am also grateful to currently live in a city where there is a Papa John's... as soon as I am back to walking, that is certainly where I will venture, with housemates in tow. To health and yes, to pizza that tastes like home. You can take a girl out of the midwest but you can't take the midwest of a girl...