Meet my parasites

This little guy's name is Giardia....and I'm pretty sure he and about a million of his little buddies are having parasitic Olympics in my intestines as we speak. "It's Giardia 679 ahead by a flagella! Oh wait! Here comes Giardia 888, he may just pull off a win!"

Why, you ask, do I have parasites? Remember my fun story about swimming in the river on day two of our Mindo trip? Yeah, well, I unfortunately ingested a bit of river water during an attempt at swimming (see me and Ben below).
On Monday morning I awoke after a restless night reminiscent of my bout with food poisoning (but thankfully without the vomiting). I still went to the gym with Justin, but my efforts weren't up to par. After putting on my makeup while sitting on the toilet (and still somehow managing to deny that I was sick), we headed off on our 30 minute hike up the hill to get to the bus that would take us 50 minutes out to Pifo (see Justin's post). By the time we arrived I was chilled to the bone (yet somehow managed to miss the fact that Justin was sweating under the glaring equatorial sun). Justin suggested I return home, but I brushed him off saying that we only had four days left in the hospital, and I really hated laying in bed sick all day. Two minute later I was sitting on a stool with my head between my legs trying not to pass out. When Justin handed me some money to take a taxi home, I didn't resist.
Another day of fevers, orthostatic hypotension, and diarrhea followed. After ten hours of sleep last night, I was reasonably better today, but something is definitely still going on down south. If you've ever heard the word borborygmi, this is an accurate discription of the noises emanating from my abdomen. I think all of my giardia are competing at the same time. I am definitely riding the D train, but without fever or hypotension, it's reasonably tolerable. At some point I'm going to go grab some Flagyl, but for now, at least the parasites are having fun :)