Guatemala Part 2 Hospital Visit

This is the story of the last 3 work days in Guatemala and our trip to a Hospital.

Wednesday July 2

I awoke at 5:30am and had my first visit to the restroom. I then slept for an hour and woke up nauseous and had another bathroom visit. After trying to relieve my nausea for 30 minutes with no avail we left for the work site. I took a nausea pill and quickly fell asleep. I woke up around lunch with a fever and chills, still nauseous. Josh returned from town around lunch and was also not feeling well. The rest of the group worked until 4pm and then we started the bumpy ride home. Josh lost the contents of his stomach on the way home and upon arriving at the church we both took the nausea medication again and went to sleep. Josh woke up 4 hours later very sick (I will spare you the details) and it was decided that we needed to go to the hospital. Everyone piled into the van and we drove VERY quickly to Mazatenango. Giovanni, Raul, Nicho (the project foreman) and the pastor of the church all went with us because they were worried about bandits on the way. Raul asked for the longest knife our cook had so he could take it with us! Oh Joy! We arrived at the private hospital safely and the doctor wanted Josh and I to stay overnight. Our team had three nurses and two fluent Spanish speakers so two nurses stayed and Raul, one of the translators. Everyone else went back to the church at 1:30am.

This was my first EVER hospital visit. I did not call me parents because I did not want them to freak out. They gave me an IV and some medication. I tried to sleep but the air conditioning did not work in my room so I sat in Josh’s room for a while. They let my IV bag go dry so they had to pump the fluids though my vein which REALLY hurts. So after urine, stool and blood samples they determined that Josh had an intestinal fungus from his water bottle but they could not tell me what I had. Some of our group members had come back to the hospital that morning while others had gone back to the work site to try and get as much done as possible. We were discharged Thursday afternoon and returned to the work site to get the rest of the group. I was feeling better than when I had gone to the hospital but the nausea and bathroom visits continued until Saturday.

More blogs later on our trip to Tikal and about the people of Guatemala.