For those of you that haven’t already heard my sob story, I finally succumbed to the disease-ridden food and water of India and came down with a nasty digestive ailment a few days ago. After a day of sleeping, pooping, and occasionally vomiting, I dragged myself down to Delek Tibetan Hospital (the local Western-style hospital in McLeod Ganj) and, after sitting around for the better part of five hours, found out that I have amoebic dysentery. Yay!
Anyway, I’m doing much better these days, what with all the napping and broad-spectrum amoebicide in my life. As much as getting sick sucks, I think it would have been a shame in the grand, dramatic scheme of the universe if I had been in India for this long and not gotten sick. And hey, at least I got something cool!
The other down side is that I now have a great excuse to avoid starting the work in earnest on my research, which I’m pretty uncomfortable about doing in the first place. “What? I have to go out and actually talk to people?” I haven’t been a completely inert blob though; I’ve whiled away the hours reading Imagined Communities and obsessive-compulsively stitching together panoramas.
What’s absolutely terrifying is that in exactly (I think) three weeks from today I’ll be back in Bangor, ME, and this terrifying, eye-opening, wonderful time will be over. I have always been extremely uncomfortable with endings of things, but this one affords the opportunity to really see how strong and pervasive our predisposition to see things as permanently, inherently existent is—hooray, emptiness! Thanks, Buddhism! Here’s hoping for a good, productive three weeks.
(Image ganked from Visibly Worn)
-
1
Pingback on May 6th, 2008 at 12:41 am
[...] place is far from safe. Not only in the physical sense or even the cultural sense, but in the academic, intellectual sense as well. There is a very very [...]
-
2
Pingback on May 29th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
[...] Finding Pants in Pennsylvania Quiet first week home. I did the usual dentist trip, then got desperately-needed ties and a haircut. Also, lots of pants, as I basically left all my clothes in Siena so that I could bring back actual Italian things like books and wine. Thankfully, I did not bring back any microorganisms. [...]
-
3
Pingback on Apr 15th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
[...] Today on my bike ride I had to ford the Green River. There’s a small bridge that’s out on Water Street, and the presence of actual construction workers prevented me from using their little foot bridge like I did last time. This brings the number of things I’ve survived in real life that you can die from in Oregon Trail to two. [...]
Leave a Comment
-
Badges
-
my name is dave
and this is my blog.
-
Flickr
More Photos -
Recent Comments
May 5, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Sorry to hear about the illness, Dave. I’m sending along a care package with 2 wagon wheels and 600 lbs of buffalo meat (alas, you will only be able to carry 200 lbs back with you).
May 6, 2008 at 12:30 am
Thanks a lot, I just broke a wagon wheel, too.
May 6, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Hope the amoebs don’t get you down. That sounds terrible.