Sicknesses of the Human and Laptop Variety

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