An Empathetic Plainswoman

When I was a kid growing up on the Plains I used to love to read about all the wagon trains, the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail, pioneers, Plains Indians - just Manifest Destiny in general. To this day, down in our pasture you can still see the old Santa Fe Trail tracks crossing the creek. And of course, every week I had to watch Little House on the Prairie.

Being a Plainswoman, the only thing I could never figure out was “how can a person actually die of diarrhoea?” I mean, the pioneers were always getting cholera or dysentery and then dying. It didn’t make sense to me, I mean it is just diarrhoea! Well, this July I learned that not only can one die of it, but that by the end one wants to die.

I still don’t know how I got it. All I know is one day when it was like a billion degrees out I was in downtown Adana and, as usual, the freaking power went out. Not that anyone has air conditioning anyway, but it meant that the store I needed to go to was not open for business until the power came back on. So, we ended up walking around Adana in billion-degree heat for a couple hours. Eventually we went to a friend’s house (who has an AC) to rest and get something to drink. I had water with a fresh lemon slice. I figure I either got too overheated or it was the lemon slice, or a combo.

The next day I woke up with some diarrhoea – no big deal, I thought. Only, it never went away. For the next week and a half I lived in the bathroom. That means that not only was whatever I had painful – but actually using the toilet that long was painful. Not having been brought up squatting, in addition to having bad knees does not make for a pleasant extended stay over a squat toilet. I did ok when it was just for a quick tinkle, but being in there all the time took its toll on my knees to be sure!

Pepto Bismol does not exist over there, and I didn’t want to take anything else since I had just found out I was pregnant. To help matters even more, the family I was staying with kept feeding me fruit. I don’t know about you, but I have never, ever heard of watermelon being a cure for diarrhoea. They kept saying, “Karpuz, karpuz – good!” Yes, watermelon is good but maybe not when you think you are dying of dysentery. It was in season, though, so that is what there was to eat. I lived on blue Gatorade and watermelon that week and a half and luckily lived to tell about it.

What I learned is that not only can you die from diarrhoea, but that by the end you want to die! I was praying towards the end, “Please God just let it end,” because when your body runs out of the liquids you are drinking or eating your intestines are still going to make you run for the bathroom and you will start to lose ALL your body fluids – it is sooo gross! (What’s the main body fluid? That’s right – blood. Ewwww.)

I finally have empathy for all those pioneers who died of the cholera and dysentery. What an awful way to go! (No pun intended.)