DelhiBelly strikes us all, sometime

Journal entry from 31July:
Attached here is a picture of the boys enjoying a video game in ou livingroom – all the floors are bare concrete, though the livingroom should be getting a large coir mat soon, from the school.


Actually, Coleman started feeling sick Friday evening, as we walked from the school to town with Melanie Smith (helpful PCUSA friend who’s been here a few years). A taxi came by, asked if we wanted a ride—Melanie negotiated a short ride to the top of the hill near the tailor.

Barb and Melanie stopped at the tailor with Barb’s recently-purchased material, and she got measured for her new “salwar kameez” , while Chris and Cole and I walked on down the hill. We stopped at a small electrical shop to buy some extension cords and electrical tape. As we all continued walking down to the stationery shop where Cole bought a pencil case and Barb got a nicely framed color print of a maharajah elephant hunt in the monsoon…. For hanging over our fireplace. By this time, Cole was really drooping. I asked the shopkeeper to call a cab to take us home, while Barb and Melanie and Chris walked on down through the “bazaar” to Domino’s Pizza place (at the other end of town).

Coleman was really sick: diarrhea and severe stomach cramps, from 9pm to 9am. I phoned the health center: the nurse on duty said we could bring him up there, or if really serious, she could arrange to get him to the hospital. We had some “buscopan” left over from a previous episode, so she said that was appropriate to help with the stomach cramps. No nausea, no vomiting; just stomach cramps off and on, until 9am. Then sudden recovery! So we didn’t take him (or his stool sample) to the health center… but then again around 9pm, the cramps started – not as bad, but still disruptive, and still continuing occasionally even through 5pm Sunday as I’m writing this. The nurse on duty asked us to bring him in tomorrow morning, along with a fresh stool sample.

DelhiBelly diagnosis and treatment? Because the local hospital is so close (both physically and socially), the school health center can readily get samples tested in the lab. So far, the diagnosis seems to be between bacterial or amoebic causes. Bacterial gets treated with cipro; amoebas, with flagyl. Stomach cramps are treated with Buscopan. And a few lactobacillus capsules are given, so as to help restore the gut’s normal flora. And of course they urge the usual bland diet: bananas, rice, crackers, and the awful-tasting oral rehydration stuff.

This weekend has therefore been a resting time at home, getting more unpacked and organized. We also unpacked a big tin trunk full of miscellaneous kitchen items like tupperware, silverware, a juicer, some pans, some picture frames, that we bought for forty dollars indirectly from a mission family that just moved from Woodstock to go to Thailand.

Here is a picture of our house, from the outside, during a few sunny moments today.


--j.t., 31july2005