My Trip to the Hospital (Carrie at Aldea Infantile)

My trip to the hospital was perhaps the most eventful of my Peru experience thus far. One morning I woke up with a terrible aching in my stomach but the other volunteers had just conquered their bout of stomach aches so I wanted to tough it out too. I took a Pepto thinking it would just blow over but the pain just kept increasing until I really blew over. By the time Marta, the nurse of the Aldea, had come to see what was going on, I was throwing up quite violently.

Marta said we needed to go to the hospital because I was losing my fluids too quickly. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand up, and couldn’t keep anything inside me for longer than 5 minutes—how was an hour journey to the hospital even going to be possible? We tried it anyway. Jason carried me and my dead-body self through the Aldea to the street. A lot of the children outside stopped playing and asked if I was going to be okay. I don’t remember much but I remember their concerned faces. It must have been scary for them because it was certainly scary for me.

After an IV, some antibiotics, and a night in the hospital, I was able to walk, eat, and come back home to the Aldea. (And yes, it’s home now.) Turns out it was an infection in my intestine—I blame the cheese. After we all got back, it was nice to hear we were missed even if we were gone just for a day. When one of the other volunteers went to lunch, she said that one of the little boys, Abran, asked “Is my sister Carrie dead?” Here’s me saying, nope, I’m not dead and hurray for that! There’s no worse time to miss your mother than when you’re sick and many miles from home, but it was very comforting to have so many tias, tios, hermanitos concerned for me.

As our directora told me, this experience was all part of the “experience” in Peru. Let’s just say I’m glad that “experience” is over. At least now I think when I tell the tias not to give me the cheese because it gives me a bad stomach, they’ll listen.