Despite their best efforts, there are a few things my fantastic coworkers cannot make comfortable. Illness, however tame, is one of those things. I almost made it a full week when my first bout of discomfort hit. My first weekend in Pune was spent in the office reading blogs through squinted eyes and maintaining a safe running distance from the washroom.
Such afflictions tend to have a humbling effect. In essence, my behaviour while sick resembled that of a toddler: I thought about food a lot. When I wasn't thinking about food, I was thinking about poop. If not thinking about food or poop, I was probably probably pooping or sleeping. Or both.
Segue to my definition-of-sick diatribe: At its height, I was stuck in the office until 3:00 AM on Sunday night thanks to aforementioned illness. Why? Because I was sick. A number of people that night (on the other side of the Earth) asked me why I didn't go home if all I had was diarrhea. In short: Diarrhea alone does not a sick man make; I expect to have plenty of diarrhea while I'm in India. As a Canadian, that's pretty much all you know about India before you get here.
"Expect diarrhea!" they all said. "Ha!" was my brash response. I'm tough. I can handle the trots. I'm a man. "Expect to get sick!" warned a knowing few. "Sick?" I asked. "What is sick, exactly?" The answer came that weekend:
sick = incontinence
(or worse)
(or worse)
It sounds a lot worse than it is... compared to my 2006 trip this was a joyride. But that's probably more than you wanted to know already.
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