I know I haven’t written in a long while again, but I
actually do have quite a bit to write about.
I even have the time to write now, as the girls are all on break for all
of December and I have pretty much spent my recent days alternating lying around being nauseous from
my second round of giardia meds and painting.
But more on all that later. I do actually
have a valid excuse for why I haven’t written—my laptop has decided that
Tanzania isn’t a suitable climate for it to continue carrying out basic
functions.
Basically, that means it just randomly decides that it has
had enough and shuts itself off. It can
stay on for hours at a time or it can decide it’s had enough after 10
minutes. Definitely not conducive to
sitting down to write a long blog post when I am nervous it might shut off and
I lose all my work at any moment.
But, I will save often and try and break this up into more frequent small posts so that I can avoid the oft-occurring laptop meltdown. I am warning you though,
as the speed at which I need to get down information increases, the post
quality will undoubtedly decrease. Anyone
who has tried to write a paper the night before it’s due knows what I am talking
about (if any of my past high school teachers or college professors are reading
this... I promise I never did this in your class sorry).
And here’s a poorly drawn supporting graph of this phenomenon for
the visual learners in the room… on the blog… whatever.
You probably can't really tell, but I actually do spend a lot of time editing these
because I tend to go on frequent tangents that require me to explain things via shoddy Microsoft-Paint-created
illustrations. Before now those have all just been edited out. You're welcome. But rejoice (I know I
am)! I will be back to my regular well-edited posts in January when my new
laptop from the states arrives. Shout-out
to dad for the incredible Christmas gift, to mom for taking the time to load up
all the software and sending it to Dana, and to Dana for agreeing to bring a bigger carry-on so she
can lug it back to Tanzania for me after winter break.
But, anyways. First things first.
Giardia Medication Induced Nausea and Headaches: a Cautionary Tale.
My first round of giardia meds didn’t work. Despite being really strong and giving me
some seriously wonky side effects, a few days after I stopped I was still
having some of the same symptoms I had before starting the meds. Apparently this isn’t uncommon—if you have it
for a long time like I did there can be a lot of it in your system and it can
take more than one round of meds to get rid of it all. So, after consulting the nice lady in the
pharmacy, I got a second round of meds.
Well, a different medicine, but for the same purpose.
So, the first day of taking my new medicine, I got a really
killer headache and was nauseous. It was
one of the possible side effects of the medicine which is no surprise
considering there was a small war going on in my stomach (side note, my roomies
told me that I reminded them of the movie Osmosis Jones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeSpW75M2w8).
I shrugged it off and grabbed two advil. This is a weird place to say this, but LOOK UP
DRUG INTERACTIONS ONLINE before taking anything. I was about to take the advil for the
headache when I decided I should make sure that there weren’t any weird interactions. Good thing I did, because it turns out if you
take NSAIDs (like advil) at the same time as the antiparasitic meds I was on it can cause convulsive seizures. It didn't say that in any of the warnings included in the box. In all likelihood, that's because it probably doesn't effect most people and nothing would have
happened to me. But, those aren’t risks I really want to take. I’ll ride out the
headache, thanks.
UP NEXT: The Circle of Life.
And don’t worry; it’s not a video of me singing the Disney classic. I have a singing voice that’s really only fit
for the shower or the car when the music is loud enough to mostly drown me out.
Peace, Love, and (hopefully) No More Stomach Parasites,
Carolyn