Mini Monsters, Snowballs, and Shots

As Pulpo (AKA Oso) and I have been planning our honeymoon, we've fielded a lot of questions about our choice of destinations. Most often it's something like, "You do realize that France and Thailand are nowhere near each other, right?". Yes, we do, but I think we've established by now that Pulpo and I are a little nuts. Another common one has been "Why go to Thailand? Don't you think you'll get sick there?". And I have to admit, that question leaves me a bit perplexed.

I have never been to Thailand. I don't think I've ever met anyone from Thailand. I used to send stacks of papers to Thailand for my old job, but to my knowledge, viruses haven't figured out how to fax themselves. So it's pretty much guaranteed that I'm going to run into a whole universe of pathogens I've never encountered before. Mini-monsters lurking in a bowl of coconut soup, plotting an extended vacation in my digestive system. Squadrons of airborne bacteria released when someone sneezes next to me in a spice market. Monkey-riding insects with cartoonishly evil Latin names, trying to hail a human taxi. Yeah, I think there's a good chance we might catch something.

I do not have an invincibility complex. There are lots of those people traveling the world. Sometimes they fit the stereotype: a 23-year-old college dropout who goes by the name OakFish who hasn't washed his hair in three months and doesn't own a pair of shoes. OakFish will walk off alone at night with any person who offers an invitation. He will eat raw sheep eyeball, if the opportunity presents itself. He thinks common sense gets in the way of "the experience." But let's not pick on OakFish. I have met plenty of well-educated, well-dressed, well-informed people who proudly proclaim, "I didn't get any vaccines or malaria pills before I went to Kenya, and I'm just fine." And they are just as crazy as OakFish. Survival is not proof that you used good judgment. It just means you were lucky. I, on the other hand, am I human pincushion. I'll list my vaccines at the bottom, in case anyone is interested.

Still, no matter how well you try and protect yourself, infections and injuries will still happen. And unfortunately, sometimes they snowball. Take for example, my trip to India with my friend Sneezy (Obviously Sneezy is not her real name, but it works for this post). When we got off the plane, Sneezy already wasn't feeling so hot. By the time we got to our host family, Sneezy had a full-on nasal/respiratory/swamp monster cold going on (which she had obviously caught in the U.S., but would now have to deal with in India). That night we accidentally knocked down the privacy curtain shielding our room from the other household occupants. While trying to put it back up, I managed to fall off the wobbly chair I was standing on and slam my ribs on the backrest. I spent the entire trip trying to breathe like a hamster, because if I inhaled completely, the pain was like being stabbed with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, Sneezy's immune system, already overwhelmed by the swamp monster cold, fell prey to everything else we encountered, including (but not limited to): a second cold, a sore throat, a stomach bug, and finally, some lovely intestinal parasites. I managed to stay comparatively healthy until we started traveling outside Delhi, when I was overtaken by some kind of fever. I remember dragging myself through the Taj Mahal, cold and miserable. It was my sickest day of the whole trip. It was also the day we got attacked by a monkey.

These things happen when you travel. They're also just part of life. (Well, maybe not getting attacked by a monkey, but you know what I mean.) The sickest I've ever been, without comparison, was in Western Europe. There are no special health hazards there. I just happened to pick up a nasty stomach virus, which, thanks to appallingly bad medical care at a Swiss clinic, got worse and worse, until I ended up hospitalized in Germany. I was ferried from doctor to doctor for two hours at the German hospital, trying to communicate in a pathetic mixture of German and English ("Ich bin sehr, sehr krank. Doktor bitte."), before getting to a wonderful internist, who explained that my kidneys weren't working. She gave me tons of IV fluid, and for the first time in days, I was able to sit up without the room spinning. It was a miserable experience.

But aside from the language barrier, it could have happened anywhere, even at home. At least if I'm traveling I get to see cool things while I'm ill, like pagodas and catacombs. I mean, seriously. Pagoda vs. bedroom ceiling? I'll take the pagoda anytime. I don't mean to be trivial. Obviously there are some bad diseases out there. But I'll take that risk over not getting to see the world.

So fingers crossed neither Pulpo nor I will get sick on our honeymoon. Obviously, trips are more fun when you're healthy, especially on a honeymoon. But if we do, it's OK. After all, true love isn't roses and champagne. True love is taking care of someone when they have food poisoning. And we've traveled enough to know that from experience :-).

NOTE: As promised, for those of you interested, here are the vaccinations listed on my yellow card: Hepatitis A (1st dose), typhoid, the adult polio vaccine, typhoid again, Hep A (2nd dose), Tdap, Hepatitis B Booster, 2 flu shots, and yellow fever. This doesn't include my pandemic flu shot from 2009, my three doses of Gardasil, or my childhood vaccinations. Told you I'm a human pincushion.