Pepto saves the day (well night actually)

I've avoided tummy troubles in Ethiopia since we've arrived (minus those first two days of travelers tummy).  My parasite free lifestyle I attribute to 99% of our meals being cooked at home by yours truly.  When we do eat out we are choosy about where we go.  I am a hand washing Nazi and force the kids to wash whenever I feel their hands getting gummy (which is like every 17 minutes or so).  After all my parasite ridden days in the Philippines I was not looking forward to this kind of issues upon moving back to a third world country.  I assumed I'd be dealing with the same in Addis as I did in Manila.  Five months without a stomach issue deserves some kind of ribbon.  After last night, five months becomes my previous record.  My days without stomach trouble has gone back to zero.

The cramps hit, the chills came on, suddenly I was fatigued, then I upchucked my dinner and still didn't feel better.  My mind immediately thought of the worst.  I tried to mentally locate our leftover laboratory sample cups from the med clinic in Manila.  (We literally brought extra home with us to have one ready for the next time we'd have to provide a sample to the lab. I made sure those extras got packed up in our household effects to come straight to Africa.)  I laid in bed and prayed the girls would sleep soundly and the baby might miraculously sleep through the entire night.  No luck on either fronts.  I just felt worse and worse.

Then I remembered my friend Pepto Bismal.  Justin took the bottle with him on his travels (Pepto travels like a hard core diplomat), so I had to get out of bed and make my way outside to our pantry and retrieve another bottle.  I took some and then as a testament to it's fast acting relief,  fell asleep.  Two hours later when Bella woke from a bad dream I was my normal body temperature again and my stomach wasn't cramping!  I threw back another pink shot for good measure. Hooray for Pepto.  I was wobbly and my stomach was tentative all day today (didn't stop me from eating Bella's leftover eggs for breakfast-what? Maybe I have bad idea genes).  Pepto Bismal has become my new best friend in Ethiopia.  I don't have a parasite.  I know this because I'm not curled in a ball in pain from what feels like razor blades rolling round in my belly.  That, and I smiled today.  Parasites don't make you smile.

But here's how I truly know I must have just eaten a bad slice of salami and not Entamoeba histolytica.  This blog post over at the Sweet Beet about cheese had my mouth watering.  I can't stop thinking about cheese most days anyway, but after reading this I think I'm going to have to blow $50 on a morsel of Gorgonzola at the Addis Ababa Hilton deli.  If I had an amoeba I would be dreaming about a hefty dose of metronidazol not blue cheese on cracker, or Gorgonzola on salad, or Fontina in egg souffles, or New Zealand cheddar on wheat with pastrami, or brie with dates, or Camembert with sun dried tomatoes, or Monterey Jack in enchiladas, or smoked Gouda on BBQ chicken pizza with caramelized onions.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't have a parasite.