dysentery

yup, i had my first bout of bloody diarrhea yesterday. such a nice way to start your day really. i went to find carmenza and told her that i didn't want to take cipro because it makes me nauseous. she prescribes me an injection a day of an antibiotic for four days, which is fine with me. as we're walking to the pharmacy she says "do you want us to give it to you intravenously?". i say no, injections are fine. she says "are you sure? we can just put a cannula in and you can keep it in for the four days". i say that sounds a bit drastic, i'll just take the four injections. she says "are you SURE? it's really painful". i'm thinking that she thinks injections are painful (because she's clearly not as hardcore as me) and that she's sparing me 3 injections if they put in one i.v. cannula, so i say no, it's fine, injections don't bother me. milena and i go into the dressing room and she tells me she wants to put it in my thigh. i say i'd prefer it in my upper arm. carmenza says to put it in my butt, which i flat out refuse. we compromise on thigh. now i have to take my jeans down, which is more than i bargained for (not doing a lot of shaving these days), so carmenza guards the door. milena puts the needle in and all of a sudden she injects me with LIQUID FIRE. i was in so much pain i could barely swear. she kept injecting and i kept writhing on the table, biting my hand, covering my face, cursing her mother, trying to stay still enough that she wouldn't break the needle off in my leg. she apologized profusely, but the only thing i wanted from her was for her to stop injecting lava into my thigh. holy shiite. afterwards i had to lie there for a few minutes to get my breath. as i limped out of the room carmenza says "i told you it was painful". i tell her to shut up.
tonight i agree to getting the antibiotic intravenously so milena decides to just inject it straight into my vein, rather than putting in a cannula. i'm definitely nervous after yesterday, and for good reason apparently. she starts to inject and i immediately start to try to get away from her and her syringe of torture. she's telling me to stay still and i'm telling her to get it the hell out of my arm because it burns like acid. she takes it out and i do lamaze breathing for a few minutes. finally she puts a cannula in my wrist and injects it into that. it burns but not nearly as badly, so i sit and accept it as gustavo takes pictures of the look on my face (it was not a happy look). i tell them that next time i have dysentery i'm not telling them, i'm just going home.
yay africa.

note: about two months after this story happened, carmenza figured out why the injection is SO painful. we were dissolving the powdered antibiotic in a small amount of sterile water and injecting it. what we should have been dissolving it in is a liquid that contains an anaesthetic that numbs the site as you inject it. our other option would have been to dissolve the antibiotic in 1-2 litres of water before injecting it. good to know :)