Today it finally happened. I got sick. I had known this moment was going to come. There was no way I was going to be here for a month and remain unscathed, but I didn't expect to get so sick. The day started off pretty normally. I didn't feel great in the morning but I was able to get through surveying the birds. I showed Shiva and Shyam my driver's license, after one of the girls said the man who drives them to the clinic didn't realize they could drive. I thought this was funny and asked Shiva and Shyam if they realized I could do that. They did but they were fascinated with my driver's license. Their licenses are these little flimsy photocopied papers that have a thin layer of laminate over them. I could just hear them thinking, even the driver's licenses in America are better.
The afternoon bird watching was when I really started to feel awful. Standing out in the heat made my nausea worse and I started to feel faint. To be honest, the birds in general have become uninteresting. For the most part, we can identify everything easily now and there's no real challenge left. I feel like I count Purple Moorhens in my sleep. I am always more interested in the people that use the busy road by the site. Today there was a little girl helping her dad herd their cow home. I can't imagine what it must be like to go find your cow at the end of every day but it was amusing to watch them. The girl was probably around three or four and much better accessorized than me. She was perched on the front of her dad's motorcycle and just sat there perfectly still every time he'd get off to drive the cow forward. Her real contribution however was to shout "hey!" like her dad to get the cow to go forward. She took some artistic license however and her "hey" became "heeeeeey". Shyam turned to me, noticing my absorption in the scene. I smiled guiltily and told him I'd always been a better people watcher than bird watcher.
About ten minutes later I really started feeling the illness. I eventually had to go sit in the car because I felt like I was either going to pass out or throw up. Shyam finished the last few sites we had and we headed back to the college. Shiva and Shyam were both diagnosing me the entire way back, taking my pulse and determining that I had a slight fever. I knew I had some antibiotics that my brilliant doctor had sent with me just in case, but feeling like the hot Indian sun was a perfect temperature was odd. I am the worst sick person that has ever lived. Any sort of illness, is in my mind, a terminal disease. I'm pretty pathetic. As I lay in bed, I was pretty much resolved that this was it, this was how I die, in India with a fever. I became sorry for thing I never intended to be sorry for, tried to decide if I should write notes to my loved ones, it was all just a touch dramatic. I was, however, wrapped in three layers of clothing and two blankets because I was so cold while my face was burning up. Luckily the meds did the trick and broke my fever, but it was a very long and stressful night.
The afternoon bird watching was when I really started to feel awful. Standing out in the heat made my nausea worse and I started to feel faint. To be honest, the birds in general have become uninteresting. For the most part, we can identify everything easily now and there's no real challenge left. I feel like I count Purple Moorhens in my sleep. I am always more interested in the people that use the busy road by the site. Today there was a little girl helping her dad herd their cow home. I can't imagine what it must be like to go find your cow at the end of every day but it was amusing to watch them. The girl was probably around three or four and much better accessorized than me. She was perched on the front of her dad's motorcycle and just sat there perfectly still every time he'd get off to drive the cow forward. Her real contribution however was to shout "hey!" like her dad to get the cow to go forward. She took some artistic license however and her "hey" became "heeeeeey". Shyam turned to me, noticing my absorption in the scene. I smiled guiltily and told him I'd always been a better people watcher than bird watcher.
About ten minutes later I really started feeling the illness. I eventually had to go sit in the car because I felt like I was either going to pass out or throw up. Shyam finished the last few sites we had and we headed back to the college. Shiva and Shyam were both diagnosing me the entire way back, taking my pulse and determining that I had a slight fever. I knew I had some antibiotics that my brilliant doctor had sent with me just in case, but feeling like the hot Indian sun was a perfect temperature was odd. I am the worst sick person that has ever lived. Any sort of illness, is in my mind, a terminal disease. I'm pretty pathetic. As I lay in bed, I was pretty much resolved that this was it, this was how I die, in India with a fever. I became sorry for thing I never intended to be sorry for, tried to decide if I should write notes to my loved ones, it was all just a touch dramatic. I was, however, wrapped in three layers of clothing and two blankets because I was so cold while my face was burning up. Luckily the meds did the trick and broke my fever, but it was a very long and stressful night.
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