Health Onboard

This trip is definitely hard on the health. We are being exposed to crazy germs from all over the world, not getting much sleep, and are eating all sorts of crazy food. When you are trying to find your way in an unfamiliar place with a different language, it is very stressful. Many times I have noticed that my hands and jaw are clenched and my shoulders are up in my ears. All day you are very tense without even realizing it. You are running off of adrenaline. It even suppresses your appetite, and you don’t realize how starving you are until you sit to start eating. Many times we eat just once or twice a day. When you are going to be sitting on a bus for seven hours, you have to dehydrate yourself so you won’t have to pee. Don’t drink water in the morning and take a malaria pill or eat something salty right before getting on the bus.

All of this adds up, and at the end of a trip everyone is hungover from it for two days. The ship is basically a bunch of zombies walking around.

The malaria medicine makes you get sunburned to a crisp in a matter of minutes. One girl was taking Lariam, which is a once a week pill. Her doctor mistakenly told her it was once a day. Three weeks after starting the medication, in Burma, she started seizuring. That is pretty intense. The girl across the hall from me got a staff infection in her shoulder in Vietnam and one girl also picked up dengue fever in India, which is not a good thing to have.

And then there is the traveler’s diarrhea. It’s gonna happen, and it’s not pretty. The first two days back on the ship are usually spent eating bread and rice. Taylor likes to insist that he does not in fact have ‘traveler’s’ diarrhea, but that he just has regular diarrhea. Whatever the case, when your body doesn’t like what you put in it, it flushes it out as fast as possible.

Apparently, if more than two percent of the ship is sick when we return to Florida, the ship gets quarantined and investigated. There is no possible way that less than 20 people on this ship are sick. I don’t know what Dr. Bob has up his sleeve, but I’m sure he will pull through.

Even though 90% of the ship is afflicted with some kind of illness, everyone still has a stupid grin on their face from participating in this journey.