beaver fever

• I had beaver fever back in the day. Sorry, I just learned what this word meant and had a compulsion to share that.
  
• I was reading a poem in Harpers about a dog in a bus station written by an Indian poet and there I was, waiting inside a bus station, watching a dog get comfortable and fall asleep in the middle of a crowded walkway, halfway between the stairs and snack stand.

back on the T/B border

Oh soo wah my peoples? (that means how are you)...I'm back in Thailand, it's great, as usual. Am here to facilitate a couple workshops and help with some data (1. malaria control - implementing a new artesunate based combination therapy and 2. program planning/mortality/human rights data collection training). It should be interesting given the recent flurry of military aggressions against the ethnic minorities, particularly the karen, since the junta moved their capital away from Rangoon to a city farther north (and closer to karen state). I've been pretty swamped and haven't had much of a chance to write. I actually just got back from a village that I can't disclose the name of b/c the village is 'inside"... plus, Judy C was out here and we totally got to bond during our 4 hr truck ride that went from "what fun sitting back here with the wind blowin in our hair" to "what the fuck. it's raining and we have to keep each other warm with body heat." Because of all the rain, we rode a tractor into the hills as far deep as we could go thru corn fields and then walked the rest of the way. There we did some survey pretesting with the villagers and reviewed their malaria control program, in addition to teaching yoga to the entire village, after which we had a big longan fruit ceremony where they clinic staff sang their village theme song. I'm excited for this new survey b/c we'll be getting some new information - like the total goiter rate, and whether or not an area is endemic with filariasis. (that's the parasite that causes elephantitis of the balls, legs, arms. apparently, you only need to find 1 positive to consider an entire area endemic. we tested out the diagnostic tool on a couple folks here in mae sot and found 2 out of 6 were positive. scary.). I will definitely have to take a treatment course to rid my body of any filariasis worms. A little DEC+the good ole albendy. Did I mention the trauma workshop where the medics used pigs that were injected w/etomidate and then suffocated as subjects to train tracheotomies and other things that these backpact medics have to do due to landmine explosions and other jungle-related injuries? other than that, life is pretty quiet here - no dog attacks, no streets flooding. i've been eating great a ton of green papaya salad. i'll be heading back to LA soon where i'll have to continue my job search, probably go back to my old research place and kiss some butt. speaking of which, i made out witha couple boys in LA before i left. hot. omigod, i gotta continue some translation work...sawadeeKAAAA!!!

la selva, part 2, la souvenir

Ok, so here is the sequel to the jungle story- ready?
well, i have been enjoying myslef, relaxing and going on wonderful hikes in Urubamba, when I decided to accompany my friend back to Cusco (she came to visit me) anyway, being the mother-like person that she is, she decided to check up on all my bug bites, see how they were doing. i have a couple bites that i thought were very infected and so i took, once again, on the advice of a doctor, antibiotics. i really am so fed up with these peruvian doctors. i even went to
the best most modern hospital, actually snuck in, made friendly with a doctor and he helped me out. anyway, i digress. so, yesterday, i was hanging out with my friend and as she was cleaning up my "infected bites" she looks up at me and says, -"Linda i saw something moving." OK, ha ha funny silvia, quit with your stupid humor. But she didnt break out in laughter. at this point, my heart was racing and we both struggled to examine closely what the hell she exactly saw.
mind you, it was a bit difficult because the bite happens to be on my left breast. after a few minutes, lo and behold and oh my fucking god, there we saw a little white head pop out and pop right back in. all right, i am calmer than i expect myself to be, but burst out in fits of
hyperventilation/naseauting-because-i-am-so-disgusted-stupor every 5 minutes or so. we rush to the hospital once again (sneak our way in{love the loose bureacracy here}) and the entire staff is so curious i have the fortune of having 7 or 8 doctors personally tending to me, the highest quality doctors in cusco. however, in the end, they couldnt get the bugger out of my breast and they didn{t have this one plant that forces the larva to come out and breathe.
it kept popping in and out, evading the nimble fingers of the doctor and tweezers each time. so we called our friend who lives in the jungle and she recommended to put tape over the breast and the critter sticks to it in efforts to get oxygen to breathe. we searched restaraunts to ask for a litle bit of this plant(it is like parsley) and we bought some cigarettes (because the smoke
is supposed to make the critter come out for air) and we bought sterile adhesive. and then we went home and after about an hour of using the plant extract and smoke, we restorted to the adhesive. and went to bed, nervous. in bed, i had too much time to reflect what was really happening to me. no big deal, at the same time, i couldn't help feeling so nasty and even violated. luckily, the valium kicked in.
well the next morning, we slowly took off the bandage and THERE IT WAS STUCK TO THE DAMN TAPE! just like our jungle friend said. and so we finished it off by pulling it out with tweezers. and it hurt, not to mention, BIG! AND SO GROSS-white, a bit blonger than 1cm, in the shape of a pear and it had black tiny spines in the fatter part of the body that hurt me when we pulled it out. Did i forget to mention that i also had one on my LEG? so, now, i have 2 big
fat wounds in my body, holes literally over 1 cm deep. i am sending my 2 jungle souvenirs to Itai so if you are interested, call him up to see what was gestating(?) in my poor little violated body.
everything seems OK now, they are not known to be more than one. most likely, they were larvas of a butterfly that bury their eggs in wet clothing and the eggs stick to my body and crawl in through a pore. Or, it was a butterlfy larva that was deposited on a biting insect and that insect got rid of it on me. Lovely. a type of miasis, probably a FURONCUlA(español). they get to be about 2 cm at largest and i really dont know how they turn into butterflies. crawl out and bloom, most likely. so now that i have all of you squirming in your seats with the heebie-jeebies, i will sign off.
until my next souvenir-spree.
miss you all.