Dried Papaya seeds, Secnidal, Flagyl, Perricon tea, cloves of raw garlic, part time Veganism, chlorinated vegetables, wearing green underwear when the moon is full, braiding the pubic hair of a mountain goat whilst performing an Irish folk ballad : I've tried almost, if not quite, everything to shift them. From the hardest the Mr Miyagi man in the pharmacy can provide me with, to the most unlikely sounding whimsical shite-bags Google can muster, still they thrive.
I have become au fait with such terms as ''host'' and ''incubation period'', I spend a lot of time boiling herbs and I discuss my bowel movements with people I've met moments before. I have become one of the stricken, one of the damned, one of the people you see despondently propping up the end of the bar with a fizzy water and a sachet of re-hydration salts, glaring enviously at ''The Healthys''.
Amoebas: they aren't funny, they aren't clever and they certainly aren't sexy but, they have now formed a large part of my life for the past three months and it's time to talk about it. Before I share my experience with you, please forgive me for any vulgarity, it is written in the spirit of honesty and openness. Having said that, I continue with the full understanding that it is likely I will lose any residual street cred which still lingers from the days before I become someone who perpetually wailed about abdominal cramping and, with the article that follows, knowingly relinquish any future hope of romantic/ intimate relationship with anyone stumbles upon this post...
I'll begin by saying that I've almost forgotten what live was life pre-parasites. These days I seem to exist in some kind of godforsaken, low budget, Alien sequel. The little bastards have resisted numerous extermination attempts, coaxing me into a false sense of security as they lye low for a period of weeks only to sally forth with renewed gusto. I am evidently somewhat of a catch in the world of single celled organisms, providing this potent breed of flesh eating buggers with a rollicking good time as they merrily chow down on my innards. With apparently no regard to the laws of traditional (and not so traditional) medicine, maybe the only solution is to shave my head and throw myself into a ravine of boiling lava, Pacaya is only 45 minutes and $10 dollars away after all.
In all honestly, however, I am semi-worried that I might be heading to an early grave thanks to the little critters. If you look them up on the net, which I don't advise if you are a sufferer, you will encounter many many gruesomely disturbing images, a great deal of scary statistics, and numerous news stories from the States regaling you with various individuals who fell victim to one terrifying brain eating Amoeba or another and died a slow and painful death. Heartwarming stuff eh?
Living with Amoebas not only tests your patience and your immune system, but it examines the limits of friendships. Where do those relationship boundaries lie? How far would you go for a mate? I am pleased to say that one of the things to come out of this continuing and sorry episode is that my friends have fared pretty well on this count. An example: one day, unable to get back from the city in time to make it to the laboratory with my ''sample'', I gave it to a gal pal of mine to deliver on my behalf. The mission was ultimately unsuccessful as the confounded container leaked its contents into her bag and later, onto a shelf of her fridge (where she had, for some bizarre reason, placed it for safe keeping). Despite the fact that I almost died of embarrassment when she told me about it the next day, particularly during the part where she explained how she mistook the mystery brown substance seeping through her backpack onto her hands as coffee, if anything I feel the incident brought us closer together. She may, however, not agree.
Conversely, the issue of finding an appropriate vessel to serve the purpose of ferrying ones business is a complex one. It rarely seems to be the case that the moment you need to go the bathroom correspondents with doctor opening hours or having an appropriate container to hand. You find yourself looking around the house for things that could be used to llevar your latest passing to the hospital for analysis. Ironically, I once resorted to the use of a Sabe Rico jar, it even still had the label on. Presumably the staff of San Hermano Pedro Hospital now consider me as some sort of sicko fetishist.
And where do they come from these Amoebas? I am not sure if this is the same resilient batch, or if I keep catching them, which admittedly seems less likely. More likely is that they never went away and the lotions and potions entrusted to me at various pharmacies around Antigua have failed miserably to perform. I have spent a long time trying to work out the source of my current plight. And everyone seems to have a theory. The trouble is, the most likely one is the one I don't want to be true, involves swimming in lakes and rivers which might not be one hundred percent sanitary. I kind of think you really have to decide if you are going to be one of those people who bleaches the fuck out of everything you eat before you eat it, wearing closed toed shoes through a heatwave and generally opting out of life, or, you just press on through and hope for the best. I have opted for the latter. Perhaps unwisely. Indeed, when I am on my deathbed having failed to shift the blighters, please don't quote this paragraph to me.
A disputed issue around Amoebas and the consumption of the various medicines used to counteract them, is for how long alcohol should be avoided. Some say that it has little negative effect and you should jump back on the liquor wagon within 24 hours of your last dose, whilst others warn that the whole business of taking these various lotions and potions will be spectacularly and unequivocally negated if so much as a drop of four percent beer passes your lips. Erring on the side of caution I have actually been pretty strict with myself on this count, and have decided to heed the advice doled out by advocates of teetotalism. I was rather annoyed, therefore, when on my third visit to the pharmacist, having ascertained that I had stayed off the sauce (his expression suggested he wasn't convinced), the guys tells me that the reason the first two batches of pills failed to the job was that I must have drunk a Coca Cola. Coca-bloody-cola?? They just make this stuff up as they go along. Um, come on Sunny Jim, I think it is much less likely that having a class of Coke brought the house of cards tumbling back into a parasitic puddle, than him peddling me a placebo at some extortionate cost. Plus, if these drugs really are as susceptible to carbonated drinks as he seems to suggest, it may have been worth giving me a heads up on their respective Achilles Heels before I started forking cash, almost literally, into the toilet.
It is now just moments before I commence with my next tranche of treatment. The aluminum on the foil wrapped capsules, my latest pharmaceutical offering, glisten seductively from where they lie on the table next to me... little pellets of false hope winking seductively a promise of more wholesome times to come. Please forgive me if I don't crack out the celebration Moet just yet...In the meantime, if you are a fellow carrier, pop over for a cleansing cuppa, I've just boiled a fresh pot of Jacaranda.
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